All victories imaginable are summed up in this one victory—the conquest of the heart.
By spirit we are here to understand, the passions or affections; the spirit of man is, as the Apostle says, Jam. iii, the tongue of man is, an unruly evil; impatient of subjection, and pressing for dominion.
God hath placed our affections under government, under the government of our reason, and those principles of heavenly wisdom, faith, righteousness, and holiness, which we are endowed with, but these (like an unbroken horse, that will not go whither the rider, but whither itself listeth) do rise up and rebel against reason, and will be the leaders and not followers: and this unruliness of the passions is the root of the distempers and disorders of the life: when men surrender up themselves to be led by affection, whither doth it carry them? Reason leads us up to God: it is the candle of the Lord, that lights us our way to him: our affections are blind guides; love is blind, desires are blind, and whither will the blind lead us? If we could live by faith, nay, if we could but live more by reason (by right reason) we should get us up out of this earthly country; even reason will tell us, that God is better than creatures, and that the inordinate following of creatures is the forsaking of God.
Set a strict watch upon your senses: by these it is that Satan with all his temptations hath such an easy passage to our hearts: our senses are the doors of our hearts; the out-lets of corruption, and the in-lets of temptation.
Make a covenant with your eyes and ears, set a watch upon them: put a bridle upon your appetite, and keep the door of your lips: shut the world out, be deaf to its flattery, be blind to its glory, wink it into darkness, shut the doors and keep the world out, and then Christ will be the better accepted.
Live above the pleasures of sense. What, have you no higher pleasures, no nobler delights? have you not a God to delight in? have you no soul-delights? or are these they, wherein the brutes have as great a share as you? are meat, and drink, and clothes, and sports the food of souls, your heart-delights? must your immortal part live at the trough, and feed on swill and husks? where is peace with God? where is the fellowship of the Spirit? where is the joy of the Holy Ghost, and the hope of glory? where is the sweetness of sincerity, and the peace of conscience? are there no such things, or is there no pleasure in them? are you content to take up with this mud, whilst those pure streams run by? or must you have both? Is it not enough that your souls may rejoice, that your hearts may feast and sing, unless your flesh also may frisk and frolic it out in its brutish mirth and pleasure? go taste and see how good the Lord is, drink of his rivers, acquaint yourselves with his pleasures, and then see if an heaven-satiated soul can envy the brutes the pleasures of sense.
Richard Alleine. The World Conquered.
