The rule and exercises of holy living. In which are described the means and instruments of obtaining every vertue, and the remedies against every vice, and considerations serving to the resisting all temptations. Together with prayers containing the whole duty of a Christian, and the parts of devotion fitted to all occasions, and furnish'd for all necessities.

Degrees of sobriety.

Against this voluptuousnesse, sobriety is op∣posed in three degrees.

1. A despite or disaffection to pleasures, or a re∣solving against all entertainment of the in∣stances and temptations of sensuality, and it consists in the internal faculties of will and understanding, decreeing and declaring a∣gainst them, disapproving and disliking them upon good reason, and strong resolution.

2. A fight and actual war against all the temptations and offers of sensual pleasure in all evil instances and degrees; and it consists in prayer, in fasting, in cheap diet, and hard lodging, and laborious exercises, and avoiding occasions, and using all arts & industry of forti∣fying the Spirit, and making it ••evere, manly, and Christian.

* 1.13. Spiritual pleasure is the highest degree of Sobriety, and in the same degree in which we relish and are in love with spiritual delights, the hidden Manna, with the sweetnesses of de∣votion, with the joyes of thanksgiving, with rejoycings in the Lord, with the comsorts of hope, with the delitiousnesse of charity and almes-deeds, with the sweetnesse of a good conscience, with the peace of meeknesse, and the felicities of a contented spirit: in the same degree we disrelish and loath the husks of swi∣nish lusts, and the parings of the apples of So∣dom: and the taste of sinful pleasures is unsa∣voury as the Drunkards vomit.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Apoc. 2.17.