In the south of England, in the time of Edward the Confessor and after
the battle of Hastings, there were five cities which had special
immunities and peculiar privileges bestowed upon them, in recognition of
the special dangers to which they were exposed and the eminent services
they performed as facing the hostile shores of France. Owing to their
privileges and their position, the 'Cinque Ports' came to be cities of
great strength, till, as time went on, they became a positive weakness
rather than a strength to the land that lay behind them. Privilege bred
pride, and in their pride the Cinque Ports proclaimed wars and formed
alliances on their own account: piracies by sea and robberies by land
were hatched within their walls; and it took centuries to 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