For GOD is too Kind and Bountiful to deny us any Pleasure befitting our Nature; he does not require us to relinquish Pleasure, but only to exchange the Gross and Insipid for the Pure and Relishing, the Pleasures of a Brute for those of a Man. He wou’d not have us enslav’d to any Appetite, or so taken up with any Created Good whatever, as not to be able to maintain the Empire of our Reason and Freedom of our Will and to quit it when we see occasion. And this is all that the Rules of Self-Denial and Mortification tend to so far as they are Rational, they mean no more than the procuring us a Power and Disposition to do that which we come now in the last place to recommend, which is, To sanctifie our very Infirmities, to make even the disorderly Commotions of our Spirits an occasion of producing Holy Passions. It were better indeed if they were rais’d upon a right Principle; that the Passions did not move the Mind, but the Mind the Passions; and that the Motives to Religion were not Sensitive but Rational. However in the Infancy of our Vertue, it may not be amiss to make some use of our Vices, and what we advise if it serve no other end, ’twill help at least to break Ill-Habits and that’s a considerable benefit. Agreeable to which did an excellent Author bespeak the Ladies sometime ago: _Let her that is Amorous, place her Love upon him who is the Chiefest among ten thousand; she that is Angry turn her edg against her Sins; she that is haughty disdain the Devils Drudgery; she that is Fearful dread him who can destroy, both Body and Soul in Hell; and she that is sad reserve her Tears for her Penitential Offices._ Which, with the rest of that Authors Ingeniuous and Kind Advice, I heartily wish were not only to be seen in their Closets, but transcrib’d in their Hearts and Legible in their Lives and Actions. Now in order to this, if our guard has been surpriz’d, and some sensible Impression has strongly broke in upon us, so that we find our selves all in a ferment, let us manage the Opportunity discreetly, change the Object and hallow the Passion. Which is no very difficult thing, for when a Passion is boyling it will spend it self on any Object that we please to fix it on. And the Proper Objects of our Passions, being most considerable in ’emselves, and naturally most apt to move us if we’ll but give them fair play, that is allow ’em a place in our Thoughts, they’ll work out the other, and make our Passions what they shou’d be: We have a plain Instance of this in Afflictions, in which our _Grief_ is at first excited by some outward Cause, and when that has softned us, the Spirit of GOD who is never wanting unless we Neglect or Quench him, improves this Worldly into a _Godly Sorrow_ that worketh Repentance not to be Repented of.