Inward flames

Meaning

Flames intestines are inward flames, not flames located specifically in the intestines. They express the pernicious internal vigour that moves the senses and inflames the blood toward corruption.

II.3.15 places sobriety, avoidance of gluttony and drunkenness, and fasting within the author's moral and religious account of regeneration. The imagery joins bodily heat with desires rather than offering a modern psychological account of emotion. Its purpose is to explain why intemperance must be mortified before the passage introduces heavenly and earthly man. The historical disciplines and physiological claims remain attributed to the author, not converted into a dietary regimen for the reader.

The new English's “inward flames” preserves the adjectival meaning of intestines, as note 151 explains. This is a consequential false-friend correction, not an omitted anatomical detail.