a man under fuch promises, a man of fuch manifold and manifelt experiences, fhould fuch a man flee? Let others, who have fuch encouragements, flee if they will; for my part, I will not flee. I remember it was an argument ufed by Tertullian, to quiet the fears, and flay the flight of Chriftians in those bloody times; Art thou afraid of a man, O Chriftian! when devils are afraid of thee, as a p:ifoner of his judge, and whom the world ought to fear, as being one that fhall judge the world. O that we could, without pride and vanity, but value ourselves duely, according to our Christian dignities and privileges, which, if ever it be neceffary to count over, and value, it is in fuch times of danger and fear, when the heart is fo prone to dejection, and finking fears. 4. Ignorance of our dangers and troubles, caufes our frights and terrors; we mistake them, and therefore are frighted at them, we are ignorant of two things in our troubles among others, viz. 1. The comforts that are in them. 2. The outlets and escapes from them. There is a vast odds betwixt the outward appearance, and face of trouble, and the infide of it; it is a lion to the eye at a diftance, but open it, and there is honey in its belly. Paul and Silas met that in a prifon which made them fing at midnight, and fo have many more fince their day. And as we are not ignorant of the comforts that are sometimes found in our troubles, fo of the outlets, and doors of escape, God can, and often doth, open out of trouble; "To God the "Lord, belong the iffues from death," Pfal. Ixviii. 20. “He "knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation," 2 Pet. ii. 9. He can, with every temptation, make a way to escape, 1 Cor. x. 13. the poor captive exile reckoned upon nothing, but dying in the pit, making their graves in the land of their captivity, Ifa. li. 14. for they could think upon none, but the ufual methods of deliverance, power, or price, and they had neither; little did they dream of fuch immediate influences of God upon the king's heart, to make him difmifs them, freely, contrary to all rules of ftate policy, Ifa. xlv. 12. 5. But especially the fears of good men arife out of their ig Art thou afraid of a man, O Chriftian! who fhouldst be feared by angels, fince thou art to judge angels; who shouldst be feared by devils, fince thou haft got power over devils; who fhouldst be feared by all the world, fince all the world is to be judged by thee, Tertul, on Fear, norance and inconfideratenefs of the covenant of grace. If we were better acquainted with the nautre, extent, and stability of the covenant, our hearts would be much freed thereby, from thefe tormenting paffions; this covenant would be a panacea, an universal remedy against all our fears, upon spiritual, or temporal accounts, as will be made evident hereafter in this discourse. Cause 2. Another cause, and fountain of finful fear, is guilt upon the confcience. A fervant of fin cannot but, first, or laft, be a flave of fear; and they that have done evil, cannot chufe but expect evil. No fooner had Adam defiled, and wounded his confcience with guilt, but he prefently trembles, and hides himself: So it is with his children; God calls to Adam, not in a threatening, but gentle dialect; not in a tempeft, but in the cool of the day; yet it terrifies him, there being in himfelf mens confcia facti, a guilty, and condemning confcience, Gen. iii. 8. "It is Seneca's obfervation, that a guilty con"fcience is a terrible whip, and torment to the finner, perpe"tually lafhing him with follicitous thoughts and fears, that "he knows not where to be fecure, nor dare he trust to any "promises of protection, but diftrufts all doubts, and is jealous "of all." Of fuch it is faid, Job xv. 21. that a dreadful found is in their ears; noting not only the effects of real, but alfo of imaginary dangers: His own prefaging mind, and troubled fancy, fcares him, where no real danger is, fuitable to that, Prov. xxviii. 1. The wicked fleeth when none pursues, but the righteous is bold as a lion. Juft as they fay of theep, that they are affrighted by the clattering of their own feet, when once they are fet a running; fo is the guilty finner with the noise of his own conscience, which founds nothing in his ears but mifery, wrath, and hell. We may fay of all wicked men in their frights, as † Tacitus doth of tyrants, "That if it were "poffible to open their infide, their mind and confcience; many terrible ftripes, and wounds, would be found there: " And it is faid, Ifa. xxxiii. 14. the finners in Sion are afraid, trembling taketh hold of the hypocrite. Fear and trembling as naturally arife out of guilt, as the fparks do out of a fiery 66 * Male facinorum confcientia flagellari, et plurimum illi tormentorum effe, eo quod perpetuo illam folicitudo urget, ae verberat quod fponforibus fecuritatis fuae non poteft credere. Senec. Epift. 97. + Si recludantur mentes tyrannorum poffe aspici laniatus et ictus. Annal. charcoal. Hiftories abundantly furnish us with fad examples of the truth of this obfervation. Cataline, that monfter of wickedness, would start at any fudden noife, being haunted with the furies of his own evil confcience. Charles IX. after his bloody and barbarous maffacre of the Proteftants, could neither fleep nor wake without mufic to divert his thoughts. And our Richard III. after the murder of his two innocent nephews, faw divers images or fhapes like devils in his fleep, pulling and hauling him. Mr. Ward tells of a Jefuit in Lancashire, who being followed by one that had found his glove, out of no other defign but to reftore it to him, but being pursued by his own guilty confcience alfo, he leaped over the next hedge, and was drowned. And remarkable is that which Mr. Fox relates of cardinal Crefcentius, who fancied the devil was walking in his chamber, and fometimes couching under his table, as he was writing letters to Rome against the Proteftants. Impius tantum metuit, quantum nocuit : fo much mischief as confcience tells them they have done, fo much it bids them expect. Wolfius tells us of one John Hofmeister who fell fick with the very terrors of his own confcience in his inn, as he was travelling towards Aufpurge in Germany, and was frighted by his own confcience to that degree, that they were fain to bind him in his bed with chains; and all that they could get from him was, I am caft away for ever, I have grievously wounded my own confcience. To this wounded and trembling confcience is opposed the fpirit of a found mind, mentioned 2 Tim. i. 7. "God hath not "given us the fpirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a "found mind: "A found mind is, in this place, the fame thing with a pure and peaceable confcience, a mind or confcience not infirm, or wounded with guilt, as we fay a found or hale body, which hath no difeafe attending it, fuch a mind is opposed to the spirit of fear; it will make a man bold as a lion; 11 — Nil confcire fibi, nulla pallefcere culpa, By this thy brazen bulwark of defence, Ho. 1. 1. ep. I. An evil and guilty confcience foments fears and terrors three ways. 1. By aggravating fmall matters, and blowing them up to the height of the most fatal and deftructive evils; fo it was with Cain, Gen. iv. 14. "Every one that meets me will flay me." Now every child was a giant in his eye, and any body he met his over-match. A guilty confcience gives a man no fight of his enemy, but through a magnifying or multiplying glafs. 2. It begets fears, by interpreting all doubtful cales in the worst sense that can be faftened upon them; Peffimus in dubiis augur timor. If the fwallows do but chatter in the chimney, Beffus interprets it to be a difcovery of his crime, that they are telling tales of him, and faying, Beffus killed a man. Nay, 3. If a guilty confcience hath nothing to aggravate and magnify, nor any doubtful matter to interpret in a frightful fenfe, it can, and often doth create fears and terrors out of nothing at all: the rules of fear are not like the rules in arithmetic, where many nothings make nothing, but fear can make fomething out of nothing, yea, many things, and great things out of nothing at all, Pfal. liii, 5. there were they in great fear where no fear was; here was a great fear raised or created out of nothing at all; had their fear been examined and hunted home to its original*, it would have been found a pure creature of fancy, a chimera having no fundamentum in re, no other foundation but a troubled fancy, and a guilty confcience; thus it was with Pashur, he was a very wicked man, and a bitter enemy to the prophet Jeremy, and if there be none to fright and terrify from abroad, rather than he fhall want it, he shall be a terror to himself, Jer. xx. 3, 4. he was his own bugbear, afraid of his own fhadow; and truly this is a great plague and mifery; he that is a terror to himself, can no more flee from terrors than he can flee from himself. Oh, the efficacy of confcience! how doth it arreft the ftouteft finners, and make them tremble, when there is no visible external caufe of fear! Nemo fe judice, nocens abfolvitur ; i. e. No guilty man is absolved, even when himself acts the part of the judge. Objection 1. But may not a good man, whofe fins are pardoned, be affrighted with his own fancies, and fcared with his own imaginations? Solution. No doubt he may, for there is a twofold fountain of fears, one in the body, another in the foul, one in the conftitution, another in the confcience; it is the affliction and infelicity of many pardoned and gracious fouls, to be united and married to fuch diftempered and ill habited bodies, as fhall af * In time of fear and danger, objects of terror appear to those who are terrified more numerous and greater than they are in reality; as fuch things are then more credulously believed, and more easily imagined. Cicero. * Bict them without any real cause from within, and wound them by their own diseases and diftempers; and these wounds can no more be prevented or cured by their reafon or religion, than any other bodily difeafe, fuppofe an ague or fever, can be fo cured. Thus phyficians tell us, when aduft choler or melancholy overflows and abounds in the body, as in the hypochondriacal diftempers, &c. what fad effects it hath upon the mind as well as upon the body, there is not only a fad and fearful afpect or countenance without, but forrow, fear, and afflicting thoughts within; there is a fore affliction to many good men, whose confciences are sprinkled with the blood of Chrift from guilt, but yet God fees good to clog them with fuch affliction as this for their humiliation, and for the prevention of worfe evils. Object. 2. But many bold and daring finners are found, who, notwithstanding all the guilt with which their confciences are loaded, can look dangers in the face without trembling, yea, they can look death itself, the king of terrors, in the face, with lefs fear than better men. Sol. True, but the reafon of that is from a fpiritual judgment of God upon their hearts and confciences, whereby they are hardened, and feared as with a hot iron, 2 Tim. iv. 2. and fo confcience is difabled for the prefent, to do its office, it cannot put forth its efficacy and activity now, when it might be useful to their falvation, but it will do it to purpose hereafter, when their cafe fhall be remedilefs, Caufe 3. We fee what a forge of fears a guilty confcience is, and no lefs is the fin of unbelief, the real and proper cause of most distracting and afflictive fears; fo much as our fouls are empty of faith, they are, in times of trouble, filled with fear: We read of fome that have died by no other hand but their own fears; but we never read of any that died by fear, who were once brought to live by faith; if men would but dig to the root of their fears, they would certainly find unbelief there, Matth. viii. 26. Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith! The less faith, still the more fear: Fear is generated by unbelief, and unbelief strengthened by fear, as in nature there is an ob * Fernel. Pathiol. lib. 2. cap. 16. Corporis habitus ficcus et macilentus, afpectus inconftans, horridus ac meftus, in morbis animi metus et mæftitia, taciturnitas, folicitudo, innanis rerum commentatio fomnis turbulentus, horrendis infomnus fluctuans, et agitatus Spectris rerum nigrarum, &c. |
