o reduce those
pampered and arrogant ports to the safe and peaceful rank of ordinary
English cities. The Revolution of 1688 did something, and the Reform
Bill of 1832 did more to make Dover and her insolent sisters like the
other free and equal cities of England; but to this day there are
remnants of public shows and pageantries left in those old towns
sufficient to witness to the former privileges, power, and pride of the
famous Cinque Ports. Now, Mansoul, in like manner, has her cinque ports.
And the whole of the _Holy War_ is one long and detailed history of how
the five senses are clothed with such power as they possess; how they
abuse and misuse their power; what disloyalty and despite they show to
their sovereign; what conspiracies and depredations they enter into; what
untold miseries they let in upon themselves and upon the land that lies
behind them; what years and years of siege, legislation, and rule it
takes to reduce our bodily senses, those proud and licentious gates, to
their true and proper allegiance, and to make their possessors a people
loyal and contented, law-abiding and happy.

The Apostle has a terrible passage to the Corinthians, in which he treats
of the soul and the senses with tremendous and overwhelming power. 'Your
bodies and your bodily members,' he argues, with crushing indignation,
'are not your own to do with them as you like. Your bodies and your
souls are both Christ's. He has bought your body and your soul at an
incalculable cost. What! know ye not that your body is nothing less than
the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, and ye are not any more
your own? know ye not that your bodies are the very members of Christ?'
And then he says a thing so terrible that I tremble to transcribe it. For
a more terrible thing was never written. 'Shall I then,' filled with
shame he demands, 'take the members of Christ and make them the members
of an harlot?' O God, have mercy on me! I knew all the time that I was
abusing and polluting myself, but I did not know, I did not think, I was
never told that I was abusing and polluting Thy Son, Jesus Christ. Oh,
too awful thought. And yet, stupid sinner that I am, I had often read
that if any man defile the temple of God and the members of Christ, him
shall God destroy. O God, destroy me not as I see now that I deserve.
Spare me that I may cleanse and sanctify myself and the members of Christ
in me, which I have so often embruted and defile