488 DOCTRINE OF THE PASSIONS. 6. Set up the loveof God supreme in your heart, and keep it so. This principle of divine love will grow jealous, if any meaner love rise too high, and become its rival, or maketoo near approaches to its seat and throne. A sovereign love to God will limit and moderate all inferior love. 7. Consider that immoderate love to any creature fills the heart with endless anxieties andvexations, with restless jealousies and disquietudes about it, while the soul is perpetually tost, as it were, on an ocean of hopes and fears, rising and sinking with every blast of wind. And then the sorrow of parting with it is like tearing our flesh from the bones, or the rending asunder of the heart strings. What dreadful preparations hath excessive love made for killing heart -aches, and overwhelming agonies of sorrow ? 8. Remember that excessive love to the creatures hath often provoked a jealous God to imbitter them to us terriblyby re- markable providences, or to cut them off suddenly in his anger. Our God is a jealous God, and he will destroy his rivals. The way to keep our comforts, is to love them with moderation. 9. Consider that the fewer strong affections, and the less engagements of heart you have to mortal creatures, the easier will it be to leave this world, and enter into the world of spirits. Death is far more painful and terrible to such a soul which must not only leave the body behind it, but a multitude of other things, to which it is too fondly attached. We must all endure this parting stroke : Let us endeavour then to make it as easy as possible, by keeping our affections loose to all things beneath God and heaven. SECT. XXIRules to overcome Unreasonable Fears. Fear is a powerful and useful passion, to guard us from mischief and misery, to hasten our avoidance of every danger, to drive us to our refuge, andto restrain us from every thing which has a tendency tobring the evil or mischief upon us. Theanger of God is the most proper object of our fear, as we are sinful creatures : Nor can sinners fear the anger of God too much, till they have complied with the appointed methods of his grace. There is also a reverence and holy fear due to the majesty of God, even when we have obtained the most solid hopes of his mercy : We must always fear to sin against God, and keep up a holy jealousy of all temptations to sin. All this is called religious fear. There are several things also, in the natural life, that we have just reason to fear in some degree, such as lions, bears, and , other hurtfulanimals, men of violence, diseases, and death. And there are many things, in the moral and civil life which become proper objects for the passionoffear, such as the anger ofour pa
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