_Direct._ IX. Be most suspicious, fearful, and watchful about that, which your flesh doth most desire, or finds the greatest pleasure in.--Not that you should deny your bodies all delight in the mercies of God: if the body have none, the mind will have the less: mercy must be differenced from punishment; and must be valued and relished as mercy: mere natural pleasing of the senses is in itself no moral good or evil. A holy improvement of lawful pleasure, is a daily duty: inordinate pleasure is a sin: all is inordinate which tendeth more to corrupt the soul, by enticing it to sin, and turning it from God, than to fit and dispose it for God and his service, and preserve it from sinning. But still remember, it is not sorrow but delight that draweth away the soul from God, and is the flesh's interest which it sets up against him. Many have sinned in sorrows and discontents; but none ever sinned for sorrows and discontents: their discontents and sorrows are not taken up and loved for themselves; but are the effects of their love to some pleasure and content, which is denied them, or taken from them. Therefore, though all your bodily pleasures are not sin, yet, seeing nothing but the pleasures of the flesh and carnal mind is the end of sinners, and the devil's great and chiefest bait, and this only causeth men's perdition, you have great reason to be most afraid of that which is most pleasing to your flesh, and to the mind as it is corrupt and carnal: escape the delusions of fleshly pleasure, and you escape damnation. You have far more cause to be afraid of prosperity, than of adversity; of riches, than of poverty; of honour, than of obscurity and contempt; of men's praises and applause, than of their dispraises, slanders, and reproach; of preferment and greatness, than of a low and mean condition; of a delicious, than of less tempting meats and drinks; of curious, costly, than of mean, and cheap, and plain attire. Let those that have hired out their reason to the service of their fleshly lusts, and have delivered the crown and sceptre to their appetites, think otherwise. No wonder if they that have sold the birthright of their intellects to their senses, for a mess of pottage, for a whore, or a high place, or a domineering power over others, or a belly-full of pleasant meats or liquors, do deride all this, and think it but a melancholy conceit, more suitable to an eremite or anchorite, than to men of society and business in the world. As heaven is the portion of serious believers and mortified saints alone, so it shall be proper to them alone to understand the doctrine and example of their Saviour, and practically to know what it is to deny themselves, and forsake all they have, and take up their cross and follow Christ, and by the Spirit to mortify the deeds of the body, Luke xiv. 26-29, 33; Rom. viii. 5-7, 13; Col. iii. 1-4. Such know that millions part with God for pleasures, but none for griefs: and that hell will be stored with those that preferred wealth, and honour, and sports, and gluttony, drink and filthy lusts, before the holiness and happiness of believers; but none will be damned for preferring poverty, and disgrace, and abstinence, hunger and thirst, and chastity before them. It must be something that seemeth good, that must entice men from the chiefest good: apparent evil is no fit bait for the devil's hook. Men will not displease God, to be themselves displeased; nor choose present sorrows instead of everlasting joys; but for the pleasures of sin for a season many will despise the endless pleasures.
_Direct._ X. Meet every motion to disobedience with an army of holy graces; with wisdom, and fear, and hatred, and resolution, with love to God, with zeal and courage; and quench every spark that falls upon your hearts before it breaks out into a flame.--When sin is little and in its infancy, it is weak and easily resisted; it hath not then turned away the mind from God, nor quenched grace, and disabled it to do its office. But when it is grown strong, then grace grows weak, and we want its help, and want the sense of the presence, and attributes, and truths of God, to rebuke it. O stay not till your hearts are gone out of hearing, and straggled from God beyond the observance of his calls. The habit of obedience will be dangerously abated, if you resist not quickly the acts of sin.