A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

¶. 7.

How easily the Body is moved and stirred by the passions and affections thereof.

Fourthly, The body is from the original defiled, in that it is easily and readily moved and stirred by the passions and affections thereof. It cannot be denied but that Heathens and Heretics have declaimed against, and reviled the body of man, (as appeareth by Tertul de Resurrect. Carmi.) as if it were an evil substance made from some evil principle, hence it is written of Plotinus the great Platonist, that he was ashamed his soul was in a body, and therefore would by no means yield to have the picture of it drawn, neither would he regard parents, or kindred, or country, because his body was from them; but we proceed not upon these mens account we follow the Scripture-light, and by that we see the body consociated with the soul in evil, whereof this of the passions is not the least. The passions they are seated in the sensitive and material part of a man, and therefore have an immediate operation upon the body, being therefore called passions, because they make the body to suffer, they work a corporal alteration: Hence anger is defined from its effect, an ebullition or bubbling forth of blood about the heart; and thus grief, because it is so immediately seated in the body, is therefore said to be rottenness to the bones, and it is said to work death, 2 Cor. 7. 10. But it was not thus with the body from the beginning, Adam indeed had such passions as do suppose good in the object, such as love and delight, though they were bounded and did not transgress their limits, but then he was not capable of those passions which do suppose evil and hurt, as anger, fear and grief, for these would have repugned the blessed estate he was created in; but since original sin hath made this violent breach upon the whole man, the body is become the foaming and unquiet sea, while tempests and storms blow upon it, How quickly do these passions of love, anger, fear and grief put the whole body out of all order? So that it is not fit to hear, to pray, to do any service for God; when we are to pray, we are to life up our hands without wrath,