Folly -- Early works to 1800; Folly -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
last place to their soul, which yet most of them do scarce believe,
because they can't see it with their eyes. On the contrary, the others
first rely wholly on God, the most unchangeable of all things; and next
him, yet on this that comes nearest him, they bestow the second on their
soul; and lastly, for their body, they neglect that care and condemn and
fly money as superfluity that may be well spared; or if they are forced
to meddle with any of these things, they do it carelessly and much
against their wills, having as if they had it not, and possessing as if
they possessed it not.
There are also in each several things several degrees wherein they
disagree among themselves. And first as to the senses, though all of them
have more or less affinity with the body, yet of these some are more
gross and blockish, as tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, touching; some
more removed from the body, as memory, intellect, and the will. And
therefore to which of these the mind applies itself, in that lies its
force. But holy men, because the whole bent of their minds is taken up
with those things that are most repugnant to these grosser senses, they
seem brutish and stupid in the common use of them. Whereas on the
contrary, the ordinary sort of people are best at these, and can do least
at the other; from whence it is, as we have heard, that some of these
holy men have by mistake drunk oil for wine. Again, in the affections of
the mind, some have a greater commerce with the body than others, as
lust, desire of meat and sleep, anger, pride, envy; with which holy men
are at irreconcilable enmity, and contrary, the common people think
there's no living without them. And lastly there are certain middle kind
of affections, and as it were natural to every man, as the love of one's
country, children, parents, friends, and to which the common people
attribute no small matter; whereas the other strive to pluck them out of
their mind: unless insomuch as they arrive to that highest part of the
soul, that they love their parents not as parents--for what did they get
but the body? though yet we owe it to God, not them--but as good men or
women and in whom shines the image of that highest wisdom which alone
they call the chiefest good, and out of which, they say, there is nothing
to be beloved or desired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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