'More sober tempers': Wisdom from Jeremy Taylor

In recent months, the reference to "sober life" in the General Confession at Mattins and Evensong - derived from Titus 2:12 - has attracted my attention. This extract from a Taylor sermon points to the significance and necessity of such sobriety.

And in this we must not only enquire concerning our passions, whether they be sinful and habitually prevalent, for if they be we are not in the state of grace; but whether they return upon us in violences and undecencies, in transportation, and unreasonable and imprudent expressions; for although a good man may be incident to a violent passion, and that without sin, yet a perfect man is not; a well grown Christian hath seldom such sufferings. To suffer such things sometimes may stand with the being of virtue, but not with its security; for if passions range up and down, and transport us frequently and violently, we may keep in our forts and in our dwellings, but our enemy is master of the field, and our virtues are restrained, and apt to be starved, and will not hold out long.

A good man may be spotted with a violence, but a wise man will not; and he that does not add wisdom to his virtue, the knowledge of Jesus Christ to his virtuous habits, will be a good man but till a storm. But beyond this, enquire after the state of your passions in actions of religion. Some men fast to mortify their lust, and their fasting makes them peevish; some reprove a vice, but they do it with much impatience; some charitably give excellent counsel, but they do that also with a pompous and proud spirit; and passion, being driven from open hostilities, is forced to march along in the retinue and troops of virtue. And although this be rather a deception and a cozenage than an imperfection, and supposes a state of sin rather than an imperfect grace; yet because it tacitly and secretly creeps along among the circumstances of pious actions, as it spoils a virtue in some so it lessens it in others, and therefore is considerable also in this question.

And although no man must take accounts of his being in or out of the state of grace by his being dispassionate, and free from all the assaults of passion; yet, as to the securing his being in the state of grace he must provide that he be not a slave of passion, so to declare his growth in grace he must be sure to take the measures of his affections, and see that they be lessened, more apt to be suppressed; not breaking out to inconvenience and imprudencies, not rifling our spirit and drawing us from our usual and more sober tempers.

From Taylor's sermon 'Of Growth in Grace', Part I, in The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Volume IV.

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