of charity to
its neighbor. It was not then only another and more cleanly name
for lust. It had none of those impure heats that both represent and
deserve hell. It was a vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much
from that which usually passes by this name nowadays as the vital heat
from the burning of a fever.

Then for the contrary passion of hatred. This we know is the passion
of defiance, and there is a kind of aversation and hostility included
in its very essence and being. But then (if there could have been
hatred in the world when there was scarce anything odious) it would
have acted within the compass of its proper object; like aloes, bitter
indeed, but wholesome. There would have been no rancor, no hatred of
our brother: an innocent nature could hate nothing that was innocent.
In a word, so great is the commutation that the soul then hated only
that which now only it loves, that is, sin.

And if we may bring anger under this head, as being, according to
some, a transient hatred, or at least very like it, this also, as
unruly as now it is, yet then it vented itself by the measures of
reason. There was no such thing as the transports of malice or the
violences of revenge, no rendering evil for evil, when evil was truly
a nonentity and nowhere to be found. Anger, then, was like the sword
of justice, keen, but innocent and righteous: it did not act like
fury, then call itself zeal. It always espoused God's honor, and never
kindled upon anything but in order to a sacrifice. It sparkled like
the coal upon the altar with the fervors of piety, the heats of
devotion, the sallies and vibrations of a harmless activity.

In the next place, for the lightsome passion of joy. It was not that
which now often usurps this name; that trivial, vanishing, superficial
thing, that only gilds the apprehension and plays upon the surface of
the soul. It was not the mere crackling of thorns or sudden blaze of
the spirits, the exultation of a tickled fancy or a pleased appetite.
Joy was then a masculine and a severe thing; the recreation of the
judgment, the jubilee of reason. It was the result of a real good,
suitably applied. It commenced upon the solidity of truth and the
substance of fruition. It did not run out in voice or indecent
eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the universe, silently and
without noise. It was refreshing, but composed, like the pleasantness
of youth tempered with the gravity of age; or the mirth o