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a man under such promises, a man of fuch manifold and manifelt experiences, should fuch a man flee? Let others, who have no such encouragements, flee if they will; for my part, I will not flee. I remember it was an argument used by † Tertullian, to quiet the fears, and stay the flight of Christians in those bloody times; Art thou afraid of a man, O Chriftian! when devils are afraid of thee, as a p. isoner of his judge, and whom the world ought to fear, as being one that shall 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 so prone to dejection, and sinking fears.

4. Ignorance of our dangers and troubles, causes 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 inside of it; it is a lion to the eye at a distance, but open it, and there is honey in its belly. Paul and Silas met that in a prison which made them sing at midnight, and so have many more fince their day.

And as we are not ignorant of the comforts that are sometimes found in our troubles, so of the outlets, and doors of escape, God can, and often doth, open out of trouble; "To God the "Lord, belong the issues from death," Pfal. lxviii. 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 usual 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 dismiss them, freely, contrary to all rules of state policy, Ifa. xlv. 12.

5. But especially the fears of good men arise out of their ig

† Art thou afraid of a man, O Christian! who shouldst be feared by angels, since thou art to judge angels; who shouldst be feared by devils, since thou hast got power over devils; who shouldst be feared by all the world, fince all the world is to be judged by thee, Tertul, on Fear,

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norance and inconfiderateness 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 these tormenting passions; 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 sinful fear, is guilt upon the confcience. A fervant of fin cannot but, first, or last, be a slave of fear; and they that have done evil, cannot chuse but expect evil. No sooner had Adam defiled, and wounded his confcience with guilt, but he presently trembles, and hides himself: So it is with his children; God calls to Adam, not in a threatening, but gentle dialect; not in a tempest, but in the cool of the day; yet it terrifies him, there being in himself mens confcia facti, a guilty, and condemning confcience, Gen. iii. 8. "It is * Seneca's observation, that a guilty con" science is a terrible whip, and torment to the sinner, perpe"tually lashing him with follicitous thoughts and fears, that " he knows not where to be secure, nor dare he trust to any

promises of protection, but distrusts all doubts, and is jealous " of all." Of such it is said, Job xv. 21. that a dreadful found is in their ears; noting not only the effects of real, but also of imaginary dangers: His own presaging mind, and troubled fancy, scares 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. Just as they say of theep, that they are affrighted by the clattering of their own feet, when once they are set a running; so is the guilty sinner with the noise of his own confcience, which sounds nothing in his ears but misery, wrath, and hell. We may say of all wicked men in their frights, as † Tacitus doth of tyrants, "That if it were " possible to open their inside, their mind and confcience; ma

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ny terrible stripes, and wounds, would be found there:" And it is faid, Isa. xxxiii. 14. the sinners in Sion are afraid, trembling taketh hold of the hypocrite. Fear and trembling as naturally arise out of guilt, as the sparks do out of a fiery

* 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 afpici laniatus et ittus. Annal.

charcoal. Histories abundantly furnish us with fad examples of the truth of this observation. Cataline, that monster of wickedness, would start at any fudden noise, being haunted with the furies of his own evil conscience. Charles IX. after his bloody and barbarous massacre of the Protestants, could neither sleep nor wake without music to divert his thoughts. And our Richard III. after the murder of his two innocent nephews, faw divers images or shapes like devils in his sleep, 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 design but to restore it to him, but being pursued by his own guilty confcience also, 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 sometimes couching under his table, as he was writing letters to Rome against the Protestants. Impius tantum metuit, quantum nocuit: fo much mischief as confcience tells them they have done, so 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 Auspurge 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 cast away for ever, I have grievously wounded my own confcience.

To this wounded and trembling confcience is opposed the spirit of a found mind, mentioned 2 Tim. i. 7. "God hath not

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given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a "found mind: " A found mind is, in this place, the same thing with a pure and peaceable confcience, a mind or confcience not infirm, or wounded with guilt, as we say a found or hale body, which hath no disease attending it, such a mind is opposed to the spirit of fear; it will make a man bold as a lion;

Ho. 1. 1. ep. 1.

--Nil confcire fibi, nulla pallefcere culpa,
Hic murus aheneus efto.-
By this thy brazen bulwark of defence,
Still to preserve thy conscious innocence,
Nor e'er turn pale with guilt.

An evil and guilty conscience foments fears and terrors three ways.

1. By aggravating small matters, and blowing them up to the height of the most fatal and destructive evils; so it was with Cain, Gen. iv. 14. "Every one that meets me will flay me." VOL. IV.

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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 glass.

2. It begets fears, by interpreting all doubtful cates in the worst sense that can be fastened upon them; Peffimus in dubiis augur timor. If the swallows do but chatter in the chimney, Beffus interprets it to be a discovery of his crime, that they are telling tales of him, and saying, Bessus killed a man. Nay,

3. If a guilty confcience hath nothing to aggravate and magnify, nor any doubtful matter to interpret in a frightful sense, 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 something 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 shall want it, he shall be a terror to himself, Jer. xx. 3, 4. he was his own bugbear, afraid of his own shadow; and truly this is a great plague and misery; he that is a terror to himself, can no more flee from terrors than he can flee from himself. Oh, the efficacy of conscience! how doth it arrest the stoutest sinners, and make them tremble, when there is no visible external cause of fear! Nemo se 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, whose sins are pardoned, be affrighted with his own fancies, and fscared with his own imaginations?

Solution. No doubt he may, for there is a twofold fountain of fears, one in the body, another in the soul, one in the constitution, another in the confcience; it is the affliction and infelicity of many pardoned and gracious souls, to be united and married to fuch distempered and ill habited bodies, as shall 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 such 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 distempers; and these wounds can no more be prevented or cured by their reason or religion, than any other bodily disease, suppose an ague or fever, can be so cured. Thus * physicians tell us, when adust choler or melancholy overflows and abounds in the body, as in the hypochondriacal distempers, &c. what sad effects it hath upon the mind as well as upon the body, there is not only a sad and fearful afpect or countenance without, but forrow, fear, and afflicting thoughts within; there is a fore affliction to many good men, whose consciences are sprinkled with the blood of Christ from guilt, but yet God fees good to clog them with such affliction as this for their humiliation, and for the prevention of worse evils.

Object. 2. But many bold and daring sinners 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 less fear than better men.

Sol. True, but the reason of that is from a spiritual judgment of God upon their hearts and confciences, whereby they are hardened, and feared as with a hot iron, 2 Tim. iv. 2. and so confcience is disabled for the present, to do its office, it cannot put forth its efficacy and activity now, when it might be useful to their salvation, but it will do it to purpose hereafter, when their case shall be remediless,

Cause 3. We see what a forge of fears a guilty confcience is, and no less is the fin of unbelief, the real and proper cause of most distracting and afflictive fears; so much as our fouls are empty of faith, they are, in times of trouble, filled with fear: We read of some 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, aspectus inconftans, horridus ac mæstus, in morbis animi metus et mæstitia, taciturnitas, folicitudo, innanis rerum commentatio fomnis turbulentus, horrendis infomnus fluctuans, et agitatus Spectris rerum nigrarum, Sc.

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