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.[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 lustful love, I shall speak of it anon.
Helps for discovering of sinful Love.
Direct. I. 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. II. 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. 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 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 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.