_Direct._ VII. Sense must not only be kept out of the throne, but from any participation in the government; and we must take heed of receiving it into our counsels, or treating with it, or hearing it plead its cause; and we must see that it get nothing by striving, importunity, or violence, but that it be governed despotically and absolutely, as the horse is governed by the rider. For if the government once be halved between sense and reason, your lives will be half bestial: and when reason ruleth not, faith and grace ruleth not; for faith is to reason as sight to the eye. There are no such beasts in human shape, who lay by all the use of reason, and are governed by sense alone (unless it be idiots or mad-men). But sense should have no part of the government at all. And where it is chief in power, the devil is there the unseen governor. You cannot here excuse yourselves by any plea of necessity or constraint: for though the sense be violent as well as enticing, yet God hath made the reason and will the absolute governors under him; and by all its rebellion and violence, sense cannot depose them, nor force them to one sin, but doth all the mischief by procuring their consent. Which is done sometimes by affecting the fantasy and passions too deeply with the pleasure and alluring sweetness of their objects, that so the higher faculties may be drawn into consent; and sometimes by wearying out the resisting mind and will, and causing them to remit their opposition, and relax the reins, and by a sinful privation of restraint to permit the sense to take its course. A headstrong horse is not so easily ruled, as one of a tender mouth that hath been well ridden; and, therefore, though it be in the power of the rider to rule him, yet sometimes for his own ease he will loose the reins: and a horse that is used thus by a slothful or unskilful rider, to have his will whenever he striveth, will strive whenever he is crossed of his will, and so will be the master. As ill-bred children that are used to have every thing given them which they cry for, will be sure to cry before they will be crossed of their desire. So it is with our sensitive appetite: if you use to satisfy it when it is eager or importunate, you shall be mastered by its eagerness and importunity; and if you use but to regard it overmuch, and delay your commands till sense is heard and taken into counsel, it is two to one but it will prevail, or at least will be very troublesome to you, and prove a traitor in your bosom, and its temptations keep you in continual danger. Therefore be sure that you never loose the reins; but keep sense under a constant government, if you love either your safety or your ease.
_Direct._ VIII. You may know whether sense, or faith and reason, be the chief in government, by knowing which of their objects is made your chiefest end, and accounted your best, and loved, and delighted in, and sought accordingly. If the objects of sense be thus taken for your best and end, then certainly sense is the chief in government; but if the objects of faith and reason, even God and life eternal, be taken for your best and end, then faith and reason are the ruling power. Though you should use never so great understanding and policy for sensual things, (as riches, and honour, and worldly greatness, or fleshly delights,) this doth not prove that reason is the ruling power; but proveth the more strongly that sense is the conqueror, and that reason is depraved and captivated by it, and truckleth under it, and serveth it as a voluntary slave. And the greater is your learning, wit, and parts, and the nobler your education, the greater is the victory and dominion of sense, that can subdue, and rule, and serve itself by parts so noble.
[Sidenote: Deny not sense with the papists.]