Gaiety abated

"In Sardis there grew an herb, called Appium Sardis, that would make a man lie laughing when he was deadly sick; such is the operation of sin."

That quote by Thomas Brooks reminded me of the following by Jeremy Taylor---

" But so have I known a bold trooper fight in the confusion of battle, and being warm with heat and rage, received from the swords of his enemy, wounds open like a grave; but he felt them not, and when by the streams of blood he found himself marked for pain, he refused to consider then what he was to feel to-morrow; but when his rage had cooled into the temper of a man, and a clammy moisture had checked the fiery emission of spirits, he wonders at his own boldness, and blames fate, and needs a mighty patience to bear his great calamity.
So is the bold and merry sinner; when he is warm with wine and lust, wounded and bleeding with the strokes of hell, he twists with the fatal arm that strikes him, and cares not; but yet it must abate his gaiety, because he remembers that when his wounds are cold and considered, he must roar or perish, repent or do worse, that is, be miserable or undone."

That is a sobering piece, not your Robert Schuller kind of exhortation. But when my flesh raises up like a bold and merry sinner, and longs to be warm with wine or lust, somehow reflection on a "Precious Moments" sculpture doesn't do it.