Lust of the flesh

“ How does it concern us whose conversation is in heaven? who, as well as Pythagoras and Empedocles and all lovers of wisdom, are not bound to the circumstances of our birth, but of our new birth: who by abstinence subjugate our refractory flesh, eager to follow the allurements of lust? The eating of flesh, and drinking of wine, and fulness of stomach, is the seed-plot of lust. ”

“ Thus, under the spell of that indomitable will, she remained transfixed and motionless. Fie, thereupon, whispered to her: my flesh is lusting after thine; for, as the earth now pants for rain, and flowers for dew, so do I pine for love of thee. My pulses beat with wild delight and love and lust. Awake then from they languid sleep, and let thy flesh with eager heat, melt into mine! ”

“ And, if you give heed, you will find that those who have set their hearts and affections upon seeking after the perfection of the sciences, have forgotten not only the lust of the flesh, but even the most needful matters, such as food and drink; for so long as the soul is stirred within the body, so long does the flesh continue as though insensible. ”

“ There is great affinity and alliance between this world and the flesh, and this world intrudes and encroaches upon the flesh, and thereby makes a party against God. The things of the world therefore are distinguished into three classes, according to the three predominant inclinations of depraved nature; as, (1.) There is the lust of the flesh. The flesh here, being distinguished from the eyes and the life, imports the body. The lust of the flesh is, subjectively, the humour and appetite of indulging fleshly pleasures ”

“ We had once more but one body between us, juggling with one another, ever seeking new caresses, new sensations, a sharper and more inebriating kind of lewdness, in our anxiety not only to enjoy ourselves but to make the other one feel. We were, therefore, very soon the prey of a blasting lust, and only some inarticulate sounds expressed the climax of our voluptuous state, until, more dead than alive, we fell upon each other—a mingled mass of shivering flesh. ”

“ Chapter XXXI.—About to Speak of the Temptations of the Lust of the Flesh, He First Complains of the Lust of Eating and Drinking.
43. There is another evil of the day that I would were “sufficient” unto it. [1] For by eating and drinking we repair the daily decays of the body, until Thou destroyest both food and stomach, when Thou shall destroy my want with an amazing satiety, and shalt clothe this corruptible with an eternal incorruption. ”

“ For the flesh lusts after nothing save through the soul, but the flesh is said to lust against the spirit, when the soul with fleshly lust wrestles against the spirit. This whole are we: and the flesh itself, which on the departure of the soul dies, the lowest part of us is not put away as what we are to flee from, but is laid aside as what we are to receive again, and, after having received it, never again to leave. ”

“ But the struggle between the Spirit and the flesh is not ended there. When you got excited, there would probably come over you the lust of fighting; you would get angry, get mad and lose your self-possession.
There is the flesh waking up again, and saying, Be cruel; kill every one you meet. And to that the Spirit answers, No; be reasonable and merciful. Do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh, and turn yourself into a raging wild beast. Your business is not to butcher human beings, but to win a battle. ”

“ When pleasing the flesh doth too much pamper it, and cherish filthy lusts, or any other sin, and is not necessary on some other account, as doing greater good, it is a sin. But if life require it, lust must be subdued by other means. [277]
7. When pleasing the flesh doth hurt it, by impairing health, and so making the body less fit for duty, it is a sin. And so almost all intemperance tendeth to breed diseases; and God commandeth temperance even for the body's good. ”

“ And do not for thy fleshly ease remit thy labours and indulge thy flesh. Rise early and go late to bed, and put thyself upon a necessity of diligence all the day: undertake and engage thyself in as much business as thou art able to go through, that if thou wouldst, thou mayst not be able to give any indulgence to the flesh; for if thou be not still pressed by necessity, lust will serve itself by idleness, and the flesh will lie down if it feel not the spur: therefore are the rich and idle more lustful and filthy than the poor labouring people. The same bed is the place of sloth and lust. ”

“ Afterwards gluttony draws near, which seduces the person driven out, because it attracts the soul desiring this vice by outer things in the first place, as if tempting to excess from a neighbour – through natural desire itself. Finally comes lust, which violently subjects the seduced to slavery, because after the flesh is set on fire through gluttony, the weakened and feebly determined soul cannot conquer the oncoming flame of passion. ”

“ And to make this clearer not only by a short discussion to the best of my ability, but by Scripture proof as well, gluttony and fornication, though they exist in us naturally (for sometimes they spring up without any incitement from the mind, and simply at the motion and allurement of the flesh) yet if they are to be consummated, must find an external object, and thus take effect only through bodily acts. For “every man is tempted of his own lust. Then lust when it has conceived beareth sin, and sin when it is consummated begets death.” ”

“ Then began the flesh to lust against the Spirit, [1] in which strife we are born, deriving from the first transgression a seed of death, and bearing in our members, and in our vitiated nature, the contest or even victory of the flesh. ”

“ They prescribe or forbid acts of sin—thoughts, words or deeds; lust is a passion, a vice or inclination, a concupiscence. It is not an act. It does not become a sin while it remains in this state of pure inclination. It is inbred in our nature as children of Adam. Lust is an appetite like any other appetite, conformable to our human nature, and can be satisfied lawfully within the order established by God and nature. But it is vitiated by the corruption of fallen flesh. ”

“ The chiefe lust of the flesh, whereby men are wont to be seduced, is the love of carnall liberty.
This is gathered from the beginning of verse 19. So Psalme 2.3.
Reason 1. Because the flesh alwayes seeketh its peace and quietnesse, which it cannot enjoy, but by giving it selfe over unto the lusts thereof; and hence it is that carnall men account the command of God and his Word, a yoke, ♦and strong cords, and bands, &c.
♦ “aud” replaced with “and”
2. ”

“ Accordingly the flesh is blamed in the Scriptures, because nothing is done by the soul without the flesh in operations of concupiscence, appetite, drunkenness, cruelty, idolatry, and other works of the flesh,—operations, I mean, which are not confined to sensations, but result in effects. The emotions of sin, indeed, when not resulting in effects, are usually imputed to the soul: “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after, hath already in his heart committed adultery with her.” ”

“ When we hear of him rolling naked in a rose bush to drive away the temptations of sex, or having himself dragged through the streets and beaten, as penance for having eaten a morsel of chicken in Lent, we are as much puzzled as repelled. We may even lend an ear to doctors who tell us that there is a perversion of the lusts of the flesh called Masochism, in which the subject derives pleasure from pain. ”

“ It is not true that there has been no time to test it. For thousands of years we have been proving and proving it, over and over. We have tried the experiment of fierceness; and blood answered blood. We have tried the experiment of lust; and lust has left in the mouth the odor of corruption and a fiercer fever. We have forced the body into the most refined and perverse pleasures and found ourselves worn out and heavy-hearted, lying upon filth. ”

“ The lusts of the flesh are the vices of sensuality, as intemperance, uncleanness, debauchery, and excess of riot. The desires of the fleshly mind are the lusts which arise from the corruption of the mind in its connection with flesh, as pride, malice, envy, wrath, hatred, ambition, and covetousness. Though no man indulges every vice, yet every unregenerate man obeys the carnal mind. ”

“ A simple dependent of the soul ought to follow wherever she goes." The mystics are never behindhand, in this matter, in their insults to the body and the flesh. The flesh is the brute animal, says one, which we must cudgel. ”

“ Every sense of the flesh is tortured and every faculty of the soul therewith: the eyes with impenetrable utter darkness, the nose with noisome odours, the ears with yells and howls and execrations, the taste with foul matter, leprous corruption, nameless suffocating filth, the touch with redhot goads and spikes, with cruel tongues of flame. ”

“ Desire awoke in his flesh with inconceivable violence. A warm puff of air, a waft of perfume, the rustle of a skirt, mere trifles, sufficed to modify his entire being, to make him languorous, to light up his face with a flame, to accelerate the pulsations of his arteries, to throw him into an agitation bordering on delirium.
At the profoundest depths of his substance he bore the germs inherited from his father. He, the creature of thought and sentiment, had in his flesh the fatal heredity of that brutish being. ”

“ And so, after being carted, and jolted, and unloaded, you will be thrown into a hole, and your body, ice-cold, and as yielding as meat to the touch—oh, that awful icy softness!—your flesh will begin to rot, to be such that not your nearest friend would touch you. ”

“ We have little understanding about that here, even though there can be a distinction in it because some things pertain to the flesh and other things to blood. Anger, sexual sin, and pride are mostly born from the blood of desire, but the rough flesh of the earth, with its plight and nature, is inclined towards the earth and towards idleness. ”

“ All this is specially true, as the words of the Apostle teach us, of the sins of the flesh, such as drunken-ness and impurity. The body will hang on to sin after the soul has given it up, and will drag the soul again down with it. Oh! that those who are addicted to these horrible sensual habits would realize their danger, and feel the net which the flesh has been weaving round their spirit. ”

“ Poor suffering one, this flesh is only the petal fallen from a perfected bloom! Whether her tender body, or this racked and twitching frame upon your bed, all flesh is illusion. Think of your soul and its immortal lives! ”

“ Could this burning, unquenchable fire that consumed our bodies be called lust? We clung as hungrily to one another as the famished animal does when it fastens on the food it devours; and as we kissed each other with ever-increasing greed, my fingers were feeling his curly hair, or paddling the soft skin of his neck. Our legs being clasped together, his phallus, in strong erection, was rubbing against mine no less stiff and stark. We were, however, always shifting our position, so as to get every part of our bodies in as close a contact as possible ”

“ Your Gingers and your James Maskills, your doctors, your parsons, your schoolmasters, your Jevons, and your Steggisons have sought you in the flesh, but this lover has found you through the spirit. Now that the spirit is surrendered the flesh lies prone enough. ”

“ You know nothing of the subject you are discussing, therefore anything I might say would sound incomprehensible. The grossness of the flesh stifles and kills the subtle workings of the spirit. To you life is only a pleasure ground, and the more your own personal satisfaction is obtainable, the more you cling to its spurious enjoyments. ”

“ And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another."
"We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. ”

“ For hence wild impulses and burning lusts and fiery habits are kindled; and young men inflamed from within become prone to the indulgence of vicious propensities; so that signs of injury appear in their body, the members of lust coming to maturity sooner than they ought. The breasts and organs of generation, inflamed with wine, expand and swell in a shameful way, already exhibiting beforehand the image of fornication; and the body compels the wound of the soul to inflame, and shameless pulsations follow abundance, inciting the man of correct behaviour to transgression ”

“ The body itself is kept religiously covered, smothered away from the rush of the great purifying life of Nature, infected with dirt and disease, and a subject for prurient thought and exaggerated lust such as in its naked state it would never provoke. ”

“ The “lusts of the flesh” are in the one aspect kindled by outward temptations which come with terrible force and carry men captive, acting almost irresistibly on the animal nature. In the other aspect they are excited by the voluntary action of the man himself. In the one the evil comes into the heart; in the other the heart goes out to the evil. ”

“ When the stomach can no longer get food, the body begins to consume and feed upon itself; first it absorbs the fat, and we grow lean; then it attacks the muscles, and we become skeletons; next the liver goes, and we become cadaverous: their the mucous surfaces are called upon; and at last the serous plates are attacked, and the grave closes over a bunch of bones only. In the case of the sexual pederastic, Dentonian debauchee, when his lust alone drives him to either excess or sexive horrors, there is no return, and his passion consumes his body. ”