#35 Why denying our appetites is so hard

 [Pryr-1.2-35] Secondly, in quiet you make your Soul he true Ground of that universal Mortification and Self-denial as you are ignoring your Senses, Appetites, Tempers, Passions and Judgments.

That is necessary for your whole Nature, has fallen from the Life of God, and is currently in a State of Contrariness to the True Order and End of our Creation; it is a continual Source of disorderly Appetites, of corrupt Tempers, and false Judgments. It is feasting on an earthly banquet blind to all else.

So, every Motion must be mortified, changed and purified from its natural & current State, so we can enter into the Kingdom of God. "Except a Man hated his Father and Mother, yea, and his own Life, he cannot be my Disciple", so our Lord and Savior told us, and this was the best of advice, because while our Tempers are carnal, and full of the Imperfections of our fallen Nature, we are cut off from him and cannot Hear him.

The Doctrine is just and good; not hated; but in the unregenerate Person, or natural Man, all good is hated, because anything outside of the Self is external and not of himself.  That is the lot the fallen Man loves, honors, esteems, as he cleaves to himself in Weakness and Stubborn Pride.

This false Love, born from corrupt Flesh and Blood, and polluted with Self, is to be hated and parted with, like filthy rags, so that we grow to love everything with a Love born of God, with a Love, such as Christ has loved us. Then and only then we will be able to be a Disciple of Christ, as we realize that His love far exceeds all others, because it is born as in the Love of Parents.

And with that, our own current Life is to be hated; because there is nothing lovely in it. It is a Legion of Evil, a monstrous Birth of the Serpent, the World, and the Flesh; it is an Apostasy from the Life and Power of God in the Soul, a Life that is Death to Heaven, that is pure unmixed Idolatry, that lives wholly to Self, and not to God;

It is a Self that has to be denied and mortified, if the Nature, Spirit, Tempers and Inclinations of Christ are to be brought to Life in us. For it is as impossible to live to both these Lives at once, as for a Body to move two contrary Ways at the same Time. And therefore all these Mortifications and Self-denials have an absolute Necessity in the Nature of the Thing itself.