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| Chapter V.
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Chapter V.
The argument for Christian practices becomes all
the stronger, when also nature, which is the first rule of all,
supports them. Well, she is the first who lays it down that a crown
does not become the head. But I think ours is the God of nature, who
fashioned man; and, that he might desire, (appreciate, become partaker
of) the pleasures afforded by His creatures, endowed him with certain
senses, (acting) through members, which, so to speak, are their
peculiar instruments. The sense of hearing he has planted in the ears;
that of sight, lighted up in the eyes; that of taste, shut up in the
mouth; that of smell, wafted into the nose; that of touch, fixed in the
tips of the fingers. By means of these organs of the outer man doing
duty to the inner man, the enjoyments of the divine gifts are conveyed
by the senses to the soul.398
| 398 Kaye [p. 187,] has
some valuable remarks on this testimony to the senses in Christian
Philosophy, and compares Cicero, I. Tusc. cap. xx. or
xlvi.] | What, then, in
flowers affords you enjoyment? For it is the flowers of the field which are
the peculiar, at least the chief, material of crowns. Either smell, you
say, or colour, or both together. What will be the senses of colour and
smell? Those of seeing and smelling, I suppose. What members have had
these senses allotted to them? The eyes and the nose, if I am not
mistaken. With sight and smell, then, make use of flowers, for
these are the senses by which they are meant to be enjoyed; use them by
means of the eyes and nose, which are the members to which these senses
belong. You have got the thing from God, the mode of it from the world;
but an extraordinary mode does not prevent the use of the thing in the
common way. Let flowers, then, both when fastened into each other and
tied together in thread and rush, be what they are when free, when
loose—things to be looked at and smelt. You count it a crown, let
us say, when you have a bunch of them bound together in a series, that
you may carry many at one time that you may enjoy them all at
once. Well, lay them in your bosom if they are so singularly
pure, and strew them on your couch if they are so exquisitely soft, and
consign them to your cup if they are so perfectly harmless. Have
the pleasure of them in as many ways as they appeal to your senses. But
what taste for a flower, what sense for anything belonging to a crown
but its band, have you in the head, which is able neither to
distinguish colour, nor to inhale sweet perfumes, nor to appreciate
softness? It is as much against nature to long after a flower with the
head, as it is to crave food with the ear, or sound with the nostril.
But everything which is against nature deserves to be branded as
monstrous among all men; but with us it is to be condemned also as
sacrilege against God, the Lord and Creator of nature.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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