Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/89

Rh table, and no taste so gratifying as that of the palate. But, behold the danger of doing violence to the order of and heaven, by suffering bodily appetites, and especially the taste for bodily food, to exalt themselves above heavenly affections, and that taste for heavenly food which the, in His mercy and wisdom, hath been pleased to implant in every human mind! For, lo! bodily distemper and pain at length usurp the place of order and its joys, and Epicurus becomes a miserable example and proof of the terrible mischief of becoming a slave to bodily gratification, instead of asserting the noble liberty, which he possessed in common with all his fellow creatures, of binding its chains, by rising to the perception and enjoyment of those higher degrees of taste, of which bodily taste is merely the basis, the figure, and ultimate manifestation.

But I am persuaded you will turn your eyes with disgust from the contemplation of this portrait of Epicurus, to relieve them by its counterpart in the beautiful form and angelic countenance of Eusebius.

For Eusebius, like Epicurus, is a young man of good natural talents, and has had the advantage also of a liberal education; yet of an education, which, though liberal, may not perhaps generally be thought fashionable, since its basis was science, but its superstructure was religion,. [sic] A competent knowledge, therefore, of