The true successors to the fathers are not the preachers of party
politics, but they who aim to supply the lack of all parties, in that
they fail to make liberty a means, valuable only as affording
facilities to improvement.
We are exceedingly contracted in our notions of the Christian
preacher's just province. If we confine it to administering directly
to the soul's spiritual wants and everlasting interests, we stray wide
from the example, which God himself sets, when he writes a revelation
for man. The Bible is full of histories, maxims, laws, just as might
be expected in a book, which ignored any other life, than that which
now is. One half of it (within bounds) might remain as it is, on the
supposition, that men have neither hopes nor duties, but such as
pertain to them as joint tenants of this earthly life.
If we would keep people superior to the impulses of appetite, and the
solicitations of sensual pleasure, we must attempt _servitute corporis
uti_ by _imperio animi_* [In Sallust's well known sentence _servitute_
may be the object of _utimur_, _imperio_ the ablative of the means; or,
reversing the construction, the sense may be, by keeping the body in
subjection, we better maintain the mind's supremacy.
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