Tit. 1. Directions against all sinful passions in general

Direct. 1. Trust not to any present actual resistance, without any due, habitual mortification of passions, and fortification of the soul against them. Look most to the holy constitution of your mind and life, and then sinful passions will fall off, like scabs from a healthful body when the blood is purified.

No wonder if an unholy soul be a slave to passion, 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 passion, 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 God’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 assaulted 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 passion, 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 God, 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. God 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 God, 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 God: and this will habituate your souls to such a sweetness, and mellowness, and stability, as will resist sinful passion even as heat resisteth cold.

Direct. IV. Keep your consciences continually tender, and then they will check the first appearance of sinful passions, and will smart more with the sin than your passionate 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 passion 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 passionate. If a wise man should have a passionate nature, he hath that which can do much to control it: when folly is a weather-cock at the wind’s command.

Direct. VI. See that the will be confirmed and resolute, and then it will soon command down passion. Men can do much against passion 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. The will either consenteth, or is remiss in its office, and in forbidding and repressing the rage of passion. When I say, you can do it if you will, you think this is not true, because you are willing, and yet passion 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 passion 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 passion.

Direct. VII. Labour after holy fortitude, 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 passion 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 passion, 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 passions, as for a man to shake that hath an ague, or to fear that is melancholy. Fleshly men have a canine appetite 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 passion escape without such a censure as is due. If reason and conscience thus exercise and maintain their authority, and passion 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 passion tend to that which will be approvable when it is past. Looking to the end doth shame all sinful passions: 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 passions, by knowing how full they are of the spawn of many other sins. See the evil of 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. XIII. Let death look your passions frequently in the face. It hath a mortifying virtue; and as it showeth 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 to-morrow, and knoweth it, would easilier 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,” Heb. iv. 12. “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,” 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.

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 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 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.)