The vanity of this mortal life, or, Of man, considered only in his present…

2. I next add: A further congruity, if we pretend to this expectation, is, That we be not over-much taken up in minding the body. For this looks like a design (or that inconsistent wish) to have our present state perpetuated; And that the thoughts are remote from us of a change for a better. As if notwithstanding all ⟨p. 117⟩that the Divine Goodness hath promised concerning the future inheritance of the free and heaven-born Seed, This did still lye nearest our hearts, O that Ishmael might live in thy sight! And that the belief did miserably languish with us of any better portion than what our eyes do already behold: Together with the apprehension of a spiritual being in us, to be ripened into a complete and actual capacity of enjoying what is better. It is true, that all the exorbitant workings of those meaner and ignoble passions that are moved by objects and occasions without, and foreign to us, have the body for their first and last, their spring and source, their centre and end. But thence it becomes the more proper, and requisite, that we draw nearer this their seat and centre, and strike at the root; and, in killing that inordinate love and solicitude for the body, mortify them all at once.

2. I next add: A further congruity, if we pretend to this expectation, is, That we be not over-much taken up in minding the body. For this looks like a design (or that inconsistent wish) to have our present state perpetuated; And that the thoughts are remote from us of a change for a better. As if notwithstanding all ⟨p. 117⟩that the Divine Goodness hath promised concerning the future inheritance of the free and heavenborn Seed, This did still lye nearest our hearts, O that Ishmael might live in thy sight! And that the belief did miserably languish with us of any better portion than what our eyes do already behold: Together with the apprehension of a spiritual being in us, to be ripened into a compleat and actual capacity of enjoying what is better. It is true, that all the exorbitant workings of those meaner and ignoble passions that are moved by objects aud occasions without, and forreign to us, have the body for their first and last, their spring and source, their center and end. But thence it becomes the more proper, and requisite, that we draw nearer this their seat and center, and strike at the root; and, in killing that inordinate love and solicitude for the body, mortifie them all at once.