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Saint Francis, if you will believe the Writers of his History, was particularly persecuted with wicked and raging Inclinations to Women; and the Devil, who, by the way, knows how to prompt us in that particular Article, where Nature is weakest and most inclined to yield, often laid Snares for him, and would appear to him in the shape of a beautiful Lady, or in the appearance of lewd and indecent Gestures. But to resist him, and keep down the rebelling Vice in his Blood, he would fall upon his Body, with the Scourge and the Discipline. Ha! Brother Ass, says he, that was the best Title he could give his Carkass, do you want Correction? Is your Blood so hot still? Then he would fast forty Hours, and all the while whip and tear himself with a Wire Scourge, till he made the Blood come.
Be the History true or not, the Moral is good. The unmortified pampered Carkass is the real Fund of all these raging, tyrannizing Inclinations, which we make our simple Excuses for doing sordid Things, and though I do not prescribe Disciplines and Fastings, by way of meritorious Mortification in this Case, as the Papists do; yet I must tell my guilty Reader, they are absolutely necessary in the Case, to reduce the (Carkass) Body into a due Subjection to (the Soul) Reason; and he that cannot otherwise conquer an outrageous Appetite, ought, and must use the proper Methods to reduce it, the Cause must be taken away that the Effect may cease.
A Man who not only has a rational Soul, but has the Powers and Faculties of it, (viz.) His Understanding and Will in their due Exercise, should be ashamed to say, he cannot re-strain
