Owen on the role of the affections in the mortification of sin

"Fix your affections upon heavenly things; this will enable you to mortify sin; fill them with the things that are above, let them be exercised with them, and so enjoy the chief place in them. They are above, blessed and suitable objects, meet for and answering unto our affections - God himself, in his beauty and glory; the Lord Jesus Christ, who is 'altogether lovely,' the 'chief of ten thousand' [Song 5:16, 10]; grace and glory; the mysteries revealed in the gospel; the blessedness promised thereby.

Were our affections filled, taken up, and possessed with these things, as it is our duty that they should be - it is our happiness when they are - what access could sin, with its painted pleasures, with its sugared poisons, with its envenomed [poisonous] baits, have unto our souls? How should we loathe all its proposals, and say unto them, 'Get you hence as an abominable thing!' For what are the vain, transitory pleasures of sin in comparison to the exceeding recompense of reward which is proposed unto us?"

John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006) 331-332. (Italics mine).