A Christian Directory Volume I Part 68

And when they tend to evil effects, as to unseemly speeches or actions, or to wrong another.

Pa.s.sions are holy when they are devoted to G.o.d, and exercised upon him or for him. They are good when, 1. They have right objects; 2. And are guided by reason; 3. And are obedient to the well-guided will; 4. And quicken and awake the reason and the will to do their duty; 5. And tend to good effects, exciting all the other powers to their office; 6. And exceed not in degree, so as to disturb the brain or body.

_t.i.t._ 1. _Directions against all sinful pa.s.sions in general._

_Direct._ 1. Trust not to any present actual resistance, without any due, habitual mortification of pa.s.sions, and fortification of the soul against them. Look most to the holy const.i.tution of your mind and life, and then sinful pa.s.sions will fall off, like scabs from a healthful body when the blood is purified.

No wonder if an unholy soul be a slave to pa.s.sion, when the body is inclined to it: for such a one is under the power of selfishness, carnality, and worldliness; and from under the government of Christ and his Spirit; and wanteth that life of grace by which he should cure and subdue the corruptions of nature. The way for such a one to master pa.s.sion, is not to strive by natural, selfish principles and reasons, which are partial, poor, and weak; but to look first to the main, and to seek with speed and earnestness for a new and sanctified heart, and get G.o.d's image, and his Spirit, and renewing, quickening grace: this is the only effectual conqueror of nature. A dull and gentle disposition may seem without this to conquer that which never much a.s.saulted it: (the trial of such persons being some other way); but none conquereth Satan indeed but the Spirit of Christ. And if you should be free from pa.s.sion, and not be free from an unholy, carnal, worldly heart, you must perish at last, if you seemed the calmest persons upon earth. Begin therefore at the foundation, and see that the body of sin be mortified, and that the whole tree be rooted up which beareth these evil, bitter fruits; and that the holy, victorious new nature be within you; and then you will resist sin with light and life, which others still resist but as in their sleep.

_Direct._ II. More particularly, let your souls be still possessed with the fear of G.o.d, and live as in his family, under his eye and government, that his authority may be more powerful than temptations, and your holy converse with him may make him still more regarded by you than men or any creatures. And then this sun will put out the lesser lights, and the thunder of his voice will drown the whisperers that would provoke you, and the humming of those wasps which make you so impatient. G.o.d would make the creature nothing, and then it would do nothing to disturb you, or carry you into sin.

_Direct._ III. Dwell in the delightful love of G.o.d, and in the sweet contemplation of his love in Christ, and roll over his tender mercies in your thoughts, and let your conversation be with the holy ones in heaven, and your work be thanksgivings and praise to G.o.d: and this will habituate your souls to such a sweetness, and mellowness, and stability, as will resist sinful pa.s.sion even as heat resisteth cold.

_Direct._ IV. Keep your consciences continually tender, and then they will check the first appearance of sinful pa.s.sions, and will smart more with the sin than your pa.s.sionate natures do with the provocation. A seared conscience, and a hardened, senseless heart, are to every sin, as a man that is fast asleep is to thieves; they may come in and do what they will, so they do not waken him. But a tender conscience is always awake.

_Direct._ V. Labour after wisdom, strength of reason, and a solid judgment; for pa.s.sion is cherished by folly. Children are easily overthrown, and leaves are easily shaken with every little wind; when men keep their way, and rocks and mountains are not shaken. Women and children, and old, and weak, and sick people are usually most pa.s.sionate. If a wise man should have a pa.s.sionate nature, he hath that which can do much to control it: when folly is a weather-c.o.c.k at the wind's command.

_Direct._ VI. See that the will be confirmed and resolute, and then it will soon command down pa.s.sion. Men can do much against pa.s.sion if they will. Nature hath set the will in the throne of the soul; it is the sinful connivance and negligence of the will, which is the guilty cause of all the rebellion; as the connivance of the commanders is the common cause of mutinies in an army.[323] The will either consenteth, or is remiss in its office, and in forbidding and repressing the rage of pa.s.sion. When I say, you can do it if you will, you think this is not true, because you are willing, and yet pa.s.sion yieldeth not to your will's command; but I mean not that every kind of willingness will serve; it is not a sluggish wish that will do it; but if the will were resolute without any compliance, or connivance, or negligence in its proper office, no sinful pa.s.sion could remain; for it is no further sin, than it is voluntary, either by the will's compliance, or omission and neglect. Therefore let most of your labour be to waken and confirm the will; and then it will command down pa.s.sion.

_Direct._ VII. Labour after holy fort.i.tude, courage, and magnanimity.

Great minds are above all troubles, desires, or commotions about little things. A poor, base, low, and childish mind, is never quiet longer than it is rocked asleep or flattered.

_Direct._ VIII. Especially see that you want not self-denial, and that worldliness and fleshly-mindedness be thoroughly mortified; for sinful pa.s.sion is the very breath and pulse of a selfish, fleshly, worldly mind. It is not more natural for dogs to fight about a bone, than for such to snarl and quarrel, or be in some distempered pa.s.sion, about their selfish, carnal interest. Covetousness will not let the mind be quiet. It is as natural for a selfish man to be under the power of sinful pa.s.sions, as for a man to shake that hath an ague, or to fear that is melancholy. Fleshly men have a canine appet.i.te and feverish thirst continually upon them, after some flesh-pleasing toy or other.

_Direct._ IX. Keep a court of justice in your souls, and call yourselves daily to account, and let no pa.s.sion escape without such a censure as is due. If reason and conscience thus exercise and maintain their authority, and pa.s.sion be every day soundly rebuked, it will wither like a plant that is cropped as fast as it springeth.

_Direct._ X. Deliberate and foresee the end; examine whether pa.s.sion tend to that which will be approvable when it is past. Looking to the end doth shame all sinful pa.s.sions: they are blind, and moved only by things present; they cannot endure the sight of the time to come, nor to be examined whither they go, or where is their home.

_Direct._ XI. Keep a continual apprehension of the danger and odiousness of sinful pa.s.sions, by knowing how full they are of the sp.a.w.n of many other sins. See the evil of them in the effects. Mark what pa.s.sion doth in others and yourselves; what abundance of evil thoughts, and words, and deeds do come from sinful pa.s.sions!

_Direct._ XII. Observe the immediate troublesome effects, and the disorders of your soul, and so turn the fruit of pa.s.sions against themselves. Mark how they discompose you, and disturb your reason, and make your minds like muddied waters, and breed a diseased unquietness in you, unfitting you for your works, and breaking your peace; so that you can neither know, nor use, nor enjoy yourselves.

_Direct._ XIII. Let death look your pa.s.sions frequently in the face.

It hath a mortifying virtue; and as it showeth us the vanity of the creature, so it taketh down those pa.s.sions, which creature interest and deceit have caused. It exciteth reason, and restoreth it to its dominion, and silenceth the rebellion of the senses. A man that is to die to-morrow, and knoweth it, would easilier repel to-day a temptation to l.u.s.t, or covetousness, or drunkenness, or revenge, than at another time he could have done. One look into eternity will powerfully rebuke all carnal pa.s.sions.

_Direct._ XIV. Remember still that G.o.d is present. Will you behave yourselves pa.s.sionately before him, when the presence of your prince would calm you? Shall G.o.d and his holy angels see thee like a bedlam lay by thy reason and misbehave thyself?

_Direct._ XV. Have still some pertinent scripture ready to rebuke thy pa.s.sions; that thou mayst say as Christ to Satan, "Thus it is written." Speak to it in the name and word of G.o.d; though the bare words will not charm these evil spirits, yet the authority will curb them. For this "word is quick and powerful, a discerner of the thoughts," Heb. iv. 12. "Mighty through G.o.d, to the pulling down of strong holds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of G.o.d, and bringeth into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ," 2 Cor. x. 4, 5.

_Direct._ XVI. Set Christ continually before you as your pattern, who calleth you to learn of him to be meek and lowly, Matt. xi. 29: who desired not the wealth or glory of the world; who loved his own that were in the world, but loved not the things of the world; who never was lifted up, or sinfully cast down; who never despised or envied man, nor ever feared man; who never was over merry or over sad; who being reviled, reviled not again; but was dumb as a lamb before the shearers.[324]

_Direct._ XVII. Keep as far from all occasions of your pa.s.sions as other duties will allow you; and contrive your affairs and occasions into as great an opposition as may be to the temptation. Run not into temptation, if you would be delivered from evil. Much might be done by a willing, prudent man, by the very ordering of his affairs. G.o.d and Satan work by means; let the means then be regarded.

_Direct._ XVIII. Have a due care of your bodies, that no distemper be cherished in them which causeth the distemper of the soul. Pa.s.sions have a very dependence on the temperament of the body; and much of the cure of them lieth (when it is possible) in the body's emendation.

_Direct._ XIX. Turn all your pa.s.sions into the right channel, and make them all holy, using them for G.o.d upon the greatest thing. This is the true cure; the bare restraint of them is but a palliate cure, like the easing of pain by a dose of opium. Cure the fear of man by the fear of G.o.d; and the love of the creature, by the love of G.o.d; and the cares for the body, by caring for the soul; and earthly, fleshly desires and delights, by spiritual desires and delights; and worldly sorrow, by profitable, G.o.dly sorrow.

_Direct._ XX. Control the effects, and frustrate your pa.s.sions of what they would have; and that will ere long destroy the cause. Cross yourselves of the things which carnal love and desire would have; forbear the things which carnal mirth or anger would provoke you to, and the fire will go out for want of fuel. (Of which more in the particulars.)

_t.i.t._ 2. _Directions against sinful Love of Creatures._

Love is the master pa.s.sion of the soul, because it hath the chiefest object, even goodness which is the object of the will; and simple love is nothing but complacency, which is nothing but the simple volition of good; and it is a pa.s.sionate volition or complacency which we call the pa.s.sion of love.[325] When this is good and when it is sinful I showed before; but yet because the one half of the cure here lieth in the conviction, and it is so hard a thing to make any lover perceive a sinfulness in his love, I shall first help you in the trial of your love, to show the sinfulness of it; when I have first named the objects of it.

Any creature which seemeth good to us, may possibly be the object of sinful love; as honour, greatness, authority, praises, money, houses, lands, cattle, meat, drink, sleep, apparel, sports, friends, relations, and life itself. As for l.u.s.tful love, I shall speak of it anon.

_Helps for discovering of sinful Love._

_Direct._ I. Make G.o.d's interest and his word the standard to judge of all affections by. That which is against the love of G.o.d, and would abate or hinder it, yea, which doth not directly or indirectly tend to further it, is certainly a sinful love; and so is all that is against his word. For the love of G.o.d is our final act upon our ultimate end, and therefore all that tends not to it, is a sin against our very end, and so against our nature and the use of our faculties.

_Direct._ II. Therefore whatever creature is loved ultimately for itself, and not for a higher end, even for G.o.d, his service, his honour, his relation to it, or his excellency appearing in it, is sinfully loved. For it is made our G.o.d when it is loved ultimately for itself.

_Direct._ III. Suspect all love to creatures which is very strong and violent, and easily kindled, and hardly moderated or quieted. Though you might think it is for some spiritual end or excellency, that you love any person or any thing, yet suspect it if it be so easy and strong; because that which is truly and purely spiritual is against corrupted nature, and comes from grace which is but weak: we find no such easiness to love G.o.d, and Scripture, and prayer, and holiness; nor are our affections so violent to these. It is well if all the fuel and blowing we can use will keep them alive. It is two to one that the flesh and the devil have put in some of their fuel or gunpowder, if it be fierce.

_Direct._ IV. Suspect all that love which selfishness and fleshly interest have a hand in. Is it some bodily pleasure and delight that you love so much? Or is it a good book or other help for your soul? We are so much apter to exceed and sin in carnal, fleshly-mindedness, than in loving what is good for our souls, that there we should be much more suspicious. If it be violent and for the body, it is ten to one there is sin in it.

_Direct._ V. Suspect all that love to creatures which your reason can give no good account of, nor show you a justifiable cause. If you love one place or person much more than others, and know not why, but love them because you cannot choose, this is much to be suspected: though G.o.d may sometimes kindle a secret love between friends, from an unexpressible unity or similitude of minds, beyond what reason will undertake to justify, yet this is rare, and commonly fancy, or folly, or carnality is the cause: however, it is more to be suspected and tried, than rational love.

_Direct._ VI. Suspect all that fervent love to any creature which is hasty before sufficient trial; for commonly both persons and things have the best side outward, and seem better at the first appearance than they prove. Not but that a moderate love may be taken up upon the first appearance of any excellency, especially spiritual; but so as to allow for a possibility of being deceived, and finding more faultiness upon a fuller trial than we at first perceive. Have you dwelt in the house with the persons whom you so much admire? and have you tried them in their conversations? and seen them tried by crosses, losses, injuries, adversity, prosperity, or the offers of preferment or plenty in the world? you would little think what lurketh undiscovered in the hearts of many, that have excellent parts, till trial manifest it!

_Direct._ VII. Try your affections in prayer before G.o.d, whether they be such as you dare boldly pray G.o.d either to increase or continue and bless; and whether they be such as conscience hath no quarrel against.

If they endure not this trial, be the more suspicious, and search more narrowly: the name and presence of G.o.d in prayer, doth much dispel the frauds of carnal reasonings. Yet persons who by melancholy are cast into diseased fears and scrupulosities, are uncapable of this way of trial.

_Direct._ VIII. Consult with wise, impartial persons; and open your case to them without deceit, before affections have gone so far as to blind you, or leave you uncapable of help. In this case, if in any case, the judgment of a stander-by that is faithful and impartial is usually to be preferred before your own. For we are too near ourselves; and judgment will be bribed and bia.s.sed even in the best and wisest persons.

_Direct._ IX. Yet cast not away all because you discover much excess or carnality in your affections; for frequently there is mixture both in the cause of love, and in the love itself of good and evil. And when you have but taken out all that was selfish, and carnal, and erroneous in the cause, the carnal, violent love will cease; but not all love: for still there will and must remain the moderate, rational, and holy love, which is proportioned to the creature's worth and merit, and is terminated ultimately on G.o.d: the separation being made, this part must be preserved.

_Direct._ X. Mere natural appet.i.te in itself is neither morally good nor evil; but as it is well placed and ordered it is good, and as unruled or ill-ruled it is evil.

_Helps to mortify sinful Love._

_Direct._ I. The greatest of all means to cast out all sinful love, is to keep the soul in the love of G.o.d, Jude 21, wholly taken up in admiring him, serving him, praising him, and rejoicing in him: of which see chap. iii. direct. xi. We see that they that are taken up in the love and service of one person, are not apt to be taken much with any other.[326] But it is not only by diversion, nor only by prepossessing and employing all our love, that the love of G.o.d doth cure sinful love; but besides these there is also a majesty in his objective presence which aweth the soul, and commandeth all things else to keep their distance; and there is an unspeakable splendour and excellency in him, which obscureth and annihilateth all things else (though they are more near, and clearly seen and known). And there is a celestial kind of sweetness in his love, which puts the soul that hath tasted it out of relish with transitory, inferior good. As he that hath conversed with wise and learned men, will no more admire the wit of fools. And as he that hath been employed in the government of a kingdom or the sublimest studies, will be no more in love with children's games, and paddling in the dirt.

_Direct._ II. The next help is to see that the creature deceived you not; and therefore that you be not rash and hasty; but stay while you come nearer it, and see it unclothed of borrowed or affected ornaments: and see it not only in the dress in which it appeareth abroad, which often covereth great deformities, but in its homely habit and night attire. Bring it to the light; and, if it may be, also see it when it hath endured the fire, which hath taken off the paint and removed the dress.[327] Most of your inordinate love to creatures is by mistake and rashness. The devil tricks them up and paints them, that you may fall in love with them; or else he showeth you only the outside of some common good, and hideth the emptiness or rottenness within. Come nearer therefore, and stay longer, and prevent your shame and disappointments.

Is it not a shame to see you dote on that place, or office, or thing this year, which you are weary of before the next? Or to see two persons impatiently fond of each other till they are married, and then to live in strife as weary of each other? How few persons or things have been too violently loved, that were but sufficiently first tried!

_Direct._ III. The next great help is to destroy self-love (as carnal and inordinate); for this is the parent, life, and root of all other sinful love whatever. Why doth the worldling over-love his wealth, and the proud man his greatness and repute, and the sensualist his pleasures, but because they first over-love that flesh and self which all these are but the provision for. Why doth a dividing sectary overvalue and over-love all the party or sect that are of his own opinion, but because he first over-valueth and over-loveth himself?[328] Why do you love those above their worth who think highly of you, and are on your side, and use to praise you behind your back, or that do you a good turn, but because you first over-love yourselves? Why doth l.u.s.tful love inflame you, or the love of meat, and drink, and sport, and bravery, carry you into such a gulf of sin, but that first you over-love your fleshly pleasure? What insnareth you in fondness to any person, but that you think they love you, or are suitable to your carnal end. See therefore that you mortify the flesh.

_Direct._ IV. Still remember how jealous G.o.d is of your love, and how much he is wronged when any creature encroacheth upon his right. 1.

You are his own by creation; and did he give you love to lay out on others, and deny it to himself? 2. He daily and hourly maintaineth you; he giveth you every breath, and bit, and mercy that you live upon; and will you love the creature with his part of your love? 3.

How dearly hath he bought your love in your redemption! 4. He hath adopted you, and brought you into the nearest relation to him, that you may love him. 5. He hath pardoned all your sins, and saved you from h.e.l.l, (if you are his own,) that you may love him. 6. He hath promised you eternal glory with himself that you may love him. 7. His excellency best deserveth your love. 8. His creatures have nothing but from him, and were purposely sent to bespeak your love for him rather than for themselves. And yet after all this shall they encroach upon his part? If you say, it is not G.o.d's part that you give them, but their own; I tell you, all that love which you give the creature above its due, you take from G.o.d. But if it be such a love to the creature as exceedeth not its worth, and is intended ultimately for G.o.d, and maketh you not love him the less but the more, it is not it that I am speaking against, or persuading you to mortify.

_Direct._ V. Look on the worst of the creature with the best, and foresee what it will be when it withereth, and what it will appear to you at the last. I have applied this against worldliness before, chap.

iv. part vi. and I shall afterwards apply it to the l.u.s.tful love.

Bring your beloved creature to the grave, and see it as it will appear at last, and much of the folly of your love will vanish.