There is another evil of the day, and I wish the day may be sufficient for it. We refresh the continual ruins of the body by food, till this corruptible shall put on incorruption. Thou hast taught me to use aliment as medicine. But while I am passing from the uneasiness of hunger to the rest of satiety; in the very passage the snare of concupiscence is laid for me; and the bounds of innocence are not easily defined, and a pretence for indulgence is made on that very account. These temptations I daily endeavour to resist, and I call on Thy right hand for my salvation, and make known to Thee my agitations of soul, because I am not yet clear on the subject. I hear my God, “let not your heart be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness.” The latter is far from me, let it not approach me; the former sometimes steals upon me, keep it at a distance from me. Who is there, Lord, that is perfectly temperate? Whoever he be, let him magnify Thy name. But I am not he, I am a sinful man. However, I magnify Thy name, and He who overcame the world, and numbers me among the weak members of His body intercedes for my sins.
The pleasures of the ear have deeper hold on me. I find, even when I am charmed with sacred melody, I am led astray at times by the luxury of sensations, and offend, not knowing at the time, but afterwards I discover it. Sometimes guarding against this fallacy, I err in the other extreme, and could wish all the melody of David’s Psalms were removed from my ears and those of the Church, and think it safer to imitate the plan of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who directed a method of repeating the psalms more resembling pronunciation than music. But when I remember my tears of affection at my conversion under the melody of Thy Church, with which I am still affected, I again acknowledge the utility of the custom. Thus do I fluctuate between the danger of pleasure, and the experience of utility and am more induced, though with a wavering assent, to own that the infirmity of nature may be assisted in devotion by psalmody. Yet when the tune has moved me more than the subject, I feel guilty and am ready to wish I had not heard the music. See where I am and mourn with me, ye who are conscious of any inward feeling of godliness. I cannot expect the sympathy of those who are not. Thou, Lord my God, hear and pity and heal me.
The pleasures of the eye I find to entangle me from time to time. But Thou deliverest me, sometimes without pain, because I fall into them gently; at other times with pain, because I stick in them.