Joseph Benson
Sermons on Various Occasions
On the Nature and Extent of Sanctifications: Appetite
「1772」Joseph Benson, “Sermon XII. On the Nature and Extent of Sanctification,” in Sermons on Various Occasions and Most of Them on the Principal Subjects of Genuine Christianity 「Google Books」(London, 1802) 299-323.
By the appetites, I mean those propensities inclinations which are suited to an animal nature, and which God hath for wise implanted in us, whom he hath endued with such a nature. These it is not the will of God to eradicate, any more than our passions,, but only to regulate and restrain them, of which surely they have great need. For, alas! How frequently, how almost universally are they indulged to excess! How much delicacy and expensive superfluity in eating and drinking! How many useless, nay, destructive dishes and invented liquors! How much gluttony and drunkenness! How many estates are squandered away! How many families reduced to beggary, to gratify a vile appetite, to fulfil a beastly desire! And ,what is yet more to be deplored, how many thus ruin a good constitution, and bring various diseases upon themselves, at once painful and loathsome, which is beyond the power of medicine to remedy, and which terminate at last in an untimely death; while, in the meantime they deprive themselves of the divine favour, and cast their soul into endless perdition! “Their end is destruction, because their God is their belly ,and their glory is their sham.” In fine, how much uncleanness of every kind, the scandal and reproach, I will not say of christianity, but of human nature itself! How far, in these respects, is man degraded beneath the brutes that perish! (316-317)
Then shall we only take that quantity of food which is most conducive to our bodily health, and best fits us for the service of God. (317)
Biography-Commentary-Excerpts
Reference-Reprints-Reviews
「1868」Howard Malcom, “Cruelty to Brutes,” in References to the Principal Works in Every Department of Religious Literature (Boston, 1868).
Richard Treffry, Memoirs of the Rev. Joseph Benson (1840; New York, 1853); Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks.
