A discourse concerning old-age tending to the instruction, caution and comfort of aged persons…

Nevertheless, Old-age may support it self very well under this Inconvenience: Inasmuch, as the Pleasures they are deprived of, are in themselves and to their experience, dangerous Enjoyments: For nothing is more apt to disorder and fully the Soul, than carnal Pleasure. Those very Recreations which may be harmless in themselves, yet too commonly lead to Intemperance, to Lasciviousness, to Quarrels, and other mischiefs. Now if a Dish be never so palatable, yet if there be but danger of Poison in it, no wise man will meddle with it: Therefore Tully brings in Cato congratulating with himself, that he was delivered from the slavery of Pleasure, and concludes, that it is a singular Privilege of Old-age, that it frees us from that which is most pernicious in youth^o. And whatever regard weak men may have to these Vanities, the wisest among the very Heathens have concluded, that there is no plague so deadly to man as the pleasures of the body^p. And that comes to pass through the depravation of our Natures, whereby we can hardly enjoy them, but we run mad upon them; we exceed the limits, and miss the ends which should be observed in the using of them. Wherefore ⟨p. 136⟩Cicero tells of Sophocles, who being asked, whether he did still converse with Womankind, answered, The Gods have done better for me, I have willingly left that furious Master^q. Indeed the greatest part of the Pleasures aforesaid, do belong only to the brutal part of man, and consequently the defect of them little concerns the Rational Creature. For, as a late worthy Author ^rsaith, None can think God so unkind to his own Image in humane nature, as in dispensing Felicity to assign the larger share to the Beast. No, all these sensual Pleasures are so distracting, or so fulsome, or so transient, that the utmost fruition of them, cannot make a man happy, nor the want of them miserable. And this is the more Evident, in that the wisest men have found the greatest Pleasure, in refusing those pleasures; and as an Epicure hath eaten for his pleasure, so many an Abstemious man hath profest, that he hath forborne for his pleasure also.