SERMON XVIII.
[PREACHED AT ASHBOURN.]
"Nay, you do wrong and defraud, and that your brethren." 1 Cor. vi. 8.
To subdue passion, and regulate desire, is the great task of man, as a moral agent; a task, for which natural reason, however assisted and enforced by human laws, has been found insufficient, and which cannot be performed but by the help of religion.
The passions are divided by moralists into irascible and concupiscible; the passions of resentment, and the passions of desire. The danger of the irascible passions, the mischiefs of anger, envy, and revenge, every man knows, by evil which he has felt, or evil which he has perpetrated. In their lower degrees, they produce brutality, outrage, contumely, and calumny; and, when they are inflamed to the utmost, have too often risen to violence and bloodshed.
Of these passions, the mischief is sometimes great, but not very frequent; for we are taught to watch and oppose them, from our earliest years. Their malignity is universally known, and as universally dreaded. The occasions that can raise them high, do not often occur; and when they are raised, if there be no immediate opportunity of gratifying them, they yield to reason and persuasion, or subside by the soothing influence of time.
Of the irascible passions, the direct aim, and present purpose, is the hurt, or misery of another; of the concupiscible passions, the proper motive is our own good. It is, therefore, no reproach to human nature, that the concupiscible passions are more prevalent; for as it is more natural, it is more just, to desire our own good, than another's evil.
