Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of the Evil of Lust,—A Word Which, Though Applicable to Many Vices, is Specially Appropriated to Sexual Uncleanness.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 16.—Of the Evil of
Lust,—A Word Which, Though Applicable to Many Vices, is Specially
Appropriated to Sexual Uncleanness.
Although, therefore, lust may have
many objects, yet when no object is specified, the word lust
usually suggests to the mind the lustful excitement of the organs
of generation. And this lust not only takes possession of the
whole body and outward members, but also makes itself felt within,
and moves the whole man with a passion in which mental emotion is
mingled with bodily appetite, so that the pleasure which results is
the greatest of all bodily pleasures. So possessing indeed is
this pleasure, that at the moment of time in which it is
consummated, all mental activity is suspended. What friend of
wisdom and holy joys, who, being married, but knowing, as the
apostle says, “how to possess his vessel in santification and
honor, not in the disease of desire, as the Gentiles who know not
God,”741
would not
prefer, if this were possi
ble, to beget children without
this lust, so that in this function of begetting offspring the
members created for this purpose should not be stimulated by the
heat of lust, but should be actuated by his volition, in the same
way as his other members serve him for their respective ends? But
even those who delight in this pleasure are not moved to it at
their own will, whether they confine themselves to lawful or
transgress to unlawful pleasures; but sometimes this lust
importunes them in spite of themselves, and sometimes fails them
when they desire to feel it, so that though lust rages in the mind,
it stirs not in the body. Thus, strangely enough, this emotion
not only fails to obey the legitimate desire to beget offspring,
but also refuses to serve lascivious lust; and though it often
opposes its whole combined energy to the soul that resists it,
sometimes also it is divided against itself, and while it moves the
soul, leaves the body unmoved.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
