them in the effects. Mark what passion doth in others and yourselves: what abundance of evil thoughts, and words, and deeds do come from sinful passions?

Direct. XII. Observe the immediate troublesome effects, and the disorders of your soul, and so turn the fruit of passions 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. x111. Let death look your passions frequently in the face.' It hath a mortifying virtue; and as it sheweth us the vanity of the creature, so it taketh down those passions, 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 tomorrow, and knoweth it, would more easily repel to-day a temptation to lust, or covetousness, or drunkenness, or revenge, than at another time he could have done. One look into eternity will powerfully rebuke all carnal passions.

Direct. XIV. Remember still that God is present.' Will you behave yourselves passionately before him; when the presence of your prince would calm you? Shall God 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 passions:' that thou mayst say as Christ to satan, "Thus it is written." Speak to it in the name and Word of God: 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"."

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Mighty through God, to the pulling down of strong holds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringeth into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ'." Direct. XVI. Set Christ continually before you as your pattern, who calleth you to learn of him to be meek and lowly' 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

q Heb. iv. 12.

r2 Cor. x. 4, 5.

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.

Direct. XVII. Keep as far from all occasions of your passions 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. God 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.' Passions have a very great dependance 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 passions into the right channel, and make them all holy, using them for God 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 God, and the love of the creature, by the love of God, 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, godly sorrow..

Direct. xx. Control the effects, and frustrate your passions 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.)

Tit. 2. Directions against sinful Love of Creatures.

Love is the master passion 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 passionate volition or complacency which we call the passion

of love. When this is good and when it is sinful I shewed 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 shew 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 lustful love I shall speak of it anon.

Helps for discovering of sinful Love.

Direct. 1. Make God's interest and his Word the standard to judge of all affections by. That which is against the love of God, 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 God 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. 11. Therefore whatever creature is loved ultimately for itself, and not for a higher end, even for God, his service, his honour, his relation to it, or his excellency appearing in it, is sinfully loved.' For it is made our God when it is loved ultimately for itself.

Direct. 111. 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 God, 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 • Solus Amor facit hominem bonum vel malum. Paul Scaliger. Thes. p.721.

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 shew 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 God 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, injury, 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 God, whether they be such as you dare boldly pray God 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 God 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 biassed even in the best and wisest persons.

Direct. 1x. 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 God: the separation being made, this part must be preserved.

Direct. x. Mere natural appetite in itself is neither morally good or 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. 1. The greatest of all means to cast out all sinful love, is to keep the soul in the love of God', wholly taken up in admiring him, serving him, praising him, and rejoicing in him' of which see Chap. iii. Direct. 11. We see that they are taken up in the love and service of one person, are not apt to be taken much with any other". But it is not only by diversion, nor only by prepossessing and employing all our love, that the love of God 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

t Jude xxi.

Nuptial love maketh mankind: friendly love perfecteth it (much more divine love): but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it. Lord Bacon, Essay 10.