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.[324]
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.