y
cloath the Soul. We may also consider that these high pamperings and
feasting our selves have no real pleasure in them; and this I am sure was
the Orators judgment, when he said, [25]_I would not fancy or imagine with
my self as if luxurious gluttons lived pleasantly, and such who vomit upon
the table again what but now they took off, and with their crude stomacks,
carried from Feasts, the next day ingurgitate themselves into them again;
who, by reason of their laziness and surfeiting, see the Sun neither rise
nor set, and are in indigency of those Estates which they have profusely
expended: none of us_ (saith he) _ever thought such gluttons as these live
a pleasant life_. And the same Author tells us, [26]That there is no less
pleasure to be taken in a slender and spare diet, then in the most
exquisite dainties; there being no less delight in the _Persian
Nasturtium_, then in the richly furnished _Syracusan_ Tables, so much cry'd
down and {23} discommended by _Plato_. But this shall suffice for the
second _Recipe_: and my third is this.

3. Secure your Heart so well that no ill thought creeps into it, and proves
an incentive to lust; let not the smallest ventricle of your heart conceive
an evil thought, lest at last it bring forth sin. One little Flie will
taint and corrupt a great quantity of flesh; and so one little thought
hovering about thy heart (like a little Flie) will quickly taint it. Be
sure therefore (like the Emperour _Domitian_[27]) alwayes to be catching
and killing these Flies. Consider, that if you indulge your selves in
wicked thoughts and lustings, there wants nothing to the consummation of
the act but some convenient circumstances, which because they are not then
attainable, the act is for a time impeded, but the malice nothing abated:
For [28]the Law of _Not coveting_ no less forbids sinful desires and
concupiscences then sinful actions; for no man desires or lusts after any
thing {24} but what pleases him: But every complacency or delight in an
unlawful matter, although short and transient, nay, although at last
repulsed and cohibited from breaking out into an external act, hath
contracted by that very motion the blemish and spot of an internal sin. And
hence S. _Augustin_, following the Doctrine of S. _Paul_, affirms, [29]That
the _concupiscence of the flesh_ is sin in a good man, _Because he has in
him a disobedience and reluctancy against the government of the rational
faculty_. Again, He sins