Holy living in which are described the means and instruments of obtaining every virute, 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 occasians [sic], and furnished for all necessities / by Jer. Taylor.

Degrees of Sobriety.

Against this voluptuousness, sobriety is opposed in three degrees:

1. A despite or disaffection to pleasures, or a resolving against all entertainment of the instances 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 sight and actual warre against all the temptations and offers of sensual pleasure in all evil instances and degrees: and it con∣sists in prayer, in fasting, in cheap diet, and hard lodging, and laborious exercises, and a∣voiding occasions, and using all arts and in∣dustry of fortifying the Spirit, and making it severe, manly and Christian.

3. Spiritual pleasure is the highest degree of Sobriety, and in the same degree in which we relish and are in love with spiritual de∣lights, the hidden Manna,* 1.1 with the sweet∣nesses of devotion, with the joyes of thanks∣giving, with rejoicings in the Lord with the comforts of hope, with the deliciousness of charity, and alms-deeds, with the sweetness of a good conscience, with the peace of meek∣ness and the felicities of a contented ••pirit: in the same degree we disrelish and loath the husks of swinish lusts, and the parings of the

apples of Sodom: and the tast of sinful plea∣sures is unsavoury as the Drunkards vomit.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Apoc. 2.17.