The beatitudes

Answ. 4 4. If you would keep your heart, keep all the passages to your heart; he that would keep a City, keeps the Forts and Outworks; keep especially the two Portals of the heart fast, the eye and the ear.

1. Keep the eye; the eye oft sets the heart on fire. Job did make a Covenant with his eyes, Job 31.1.^* The Serpent sometimes creeps in through the Window or Casement into a Room; the old Serpent the Devil, creeps through the Casement of the eye into the heart; the eye is taster to the appetite. First Eve saw the Tree was good for food, then she took of the fruit, Gen. 3.6. Look to the ⟨p. 549⟩eye; some of the Heathens have pulled out their eyes, because they would not be enticed by impure objects. I say not pull out the eye, only keep the Portal shut; the Romans never did let their prisoners go abroad but their Keepers went with them; never send thine eyes abroad, but send their Keepers with them.

1. Keep the eye; the eye oft sets the heart on fire. Job did make a Covenant with his eyes, Job 31.1.^* The Serpent sometimes creeps in through the Window or Casement into a Room; the old Serpent the Divel, creeps through the Casement of the eye into the heart; the eye is taster to the appetite. First Eve saw the Tree was good for food, then she took of the fruit, Gen. 3.6. Look to the ⟨p. 549⟩