" hath he made with me an everlasting covenant, well ordered " in all things and sure; this is all my salvation, and all my "defire, though he make it not to grow." He could fetch all reliefs, all comforts, and salvation out of it, and why cannot we? He defired no more for the support of his heart; this is all my defire; and sure if we understood and believed it as he did, we could defire no more to quiet and comfort our hearts than what this covenant affords us. For,

1. Are we afraid what our enemies will do? We know we are in the midst of potent, politic, and enraged enemies; we have heard what they have done, and fee what they are preparing to do again. We tremble to think what bloody tragedies are like to be acted over again in the world by their cruel hands: But O what heroic and noble acts of faith should the covenant of God enable thee to exert amidst all these fears? If God be thy God, then thou hast an Almighty God on thy fide, and that is enough to extinguish all these fears, Pfal. cxviii. 6. "The Lord is " on my fide, I will not fear what man can do unto me." Your fears come in the name of man, but your help in the name of the Lord: Let them plot, threaten, yea, and smite too; God is a shield to all that fear him, and if God be for us, who can be against us ?

2. Are we afraid what God will do? fear it not, your God will do nothing against your good; think not that he may forget you, it cannot be; sooner may a tender mother forget her fucking child, Ifa. xlix. 15. no, no, "He withdraweth not his "eye from the righteous, Job. xxxvi. 7. His eyes are continually upon all the dangers and wants of your fouls and bodies, there is not a danger or an enemy stirring against you, but his eye is upon it, 2 Chron. xvi. 9.

Are you afraid he will forsake and cast you off? It is true, your fins have deserved he should do so, but he hath secured you fully against that fear in his covenant, Jer. xxxii. 40. " I will " not turn away from them, to do them good." All your fears of God's forgetting or forsaking you, spring out of your ignorance of the covenant.

3. Are you afraid what you shall do? It is usual for the people of God to propose difficult cases to themselves, and put startling questions to their own hearts; and there may be an excellent use of them to rouze them out of security, put them upon the search and trial of their conditions and estates, and make preparation for the worst; but Satan usually improves it to a quite contrary end, to deject, affright, and discourage them. O if fiery trials should come, if my liberty and life

come once to be touched in earnest, I fear I shall never have strength to go on a step farther in the way of religion : I am afraid I shall faint in the first encounter, I shall deny the words of the holy One, make shipwreck of faith and a good confcience in the first gust of temptation. I can hear, and pray, and profess; but I doubt I cannot burn, or bleed, or lie in a dungeon for Christ. If I can scarce run with footmen in the land of peace, how do I think to contend with horses in these fwellings of Jordan?

But yet all these are but groundless fears, either forged in thy own misgiving heart, or secretly shuffled by Satan into it; for God hath abundantly secured thee against fear in this very particular, by that most sweet, supporting, and blessed promisfe, annexed to the former, in the same text, Jer. xxxii. 40. " I will

put my fear into their hearts, that they shall not depart from "me." Here is another kind of fear, than that which so startles thee, promised to be put into thy heart, not a fear to shake and undermine thy assurance, as this doth, but to guard and maintain it. And this is the fear that shall be enabled to vanquish and expel all thy other fears.

4. Or are you afraid what the church shall do? And what will become of the ark of God? Do you fee a storm gathering, winds begin to roar, the waves to swell; and are you afraid what will become of that vessel the church, in which you have so great an interest?

It is an argument of the publicness and excellency of thy spirit, to be thus touched with the feeling sense of the church's fufferings, and dangers. Most men seek their own things, and not the things that are Christ's, Phil. ii. 21. But yet. it is your sin so to fear, as to sink and faint under a spirit of despondency, and discouragement, which yet many good men are but too apt to do. I remember an excellent passage in a letter of * Luther's to Melancthon upon this very account. ' In private troubles, * faith he, I am weaker, and thou art stronger; thou despisest ⚫thy own life, but fearest the public cause : but for the 'public I am at rest, being assured that the cause is just and

true, yea, that it is Christ's and God's cause. I am well nigh ' a secure spectator of things, and esteem not any thing these * fierce and threatning Papists can do. I beseech thee by Chrift,

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neglect not so divine promiss and confolations, where the scripture faith, Cast thy care upon the Lord, wait upon the VOL. IV.

G

* Epift. ad Melanct. Anno 1549,

• Lord, be strong, and he shall comfort thy heart." + And in another epistle! I much diflike those anxious cares, which as ⚫ thou writeft do almost confume thee. It is not the greatness ' of the danger, but the greatness of thy unbelief. John Huss

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and others were under greater danger than we; and if it * be great, he is great that orders it. Why do you afflict your* felf? if the cause be bad, let us renounce it; if it be good, why do we make him a liar who bids us be still? as if you were able to do any good by such unprofitable cares. I be• seech thee, thou that in other things art valiant, fight a'gainst thyself, thine own greatest enemy, that puts weapons into Satan's hand.'

You see how good men may be even overwhelmed with public fears; but certainly if we did well confider the bond of the covenant that is betwixt God and his people, we should be more quiet and composed. For by reafon thereof it is, 1. That God is in the midst of them, Pial. xlvi. 1, 2, 3, 4. When any great danger threatened the reformed church in its tender beginning, in Luther's time, he would fay, Come let us fing the xlvi. Pfalm; and indeed it is a lovely fong for fuch times; it bears the title of A Song upon Alamoth, or a fong for the hidden ones, God is with them to cover them under his wings. 2. And it is plain matter of fact, evident to all the world, that no people under the heavens have been so long and so wonderfully preserved as the church hath been; it hath over-lived many bloody massacres, terrible perfecutions, fubtle and cruel enemies; still God hath preferved and delivered it, for his promifes oblige him to do it, amongst which those two are signal and eminent ones, Jer. xxx. 11. Ifa. xxvii. 3. And it is obvious to all that will confider things, that there are the felf-fame motives in God, and the felf tame grounds and reasons before him, to take care of his church and people, that ever were in him, or did ever lie before him from the beginning of the world. For (1.) The relation is still the fame. What though Abraham, Ifaac, and Jacob, those renowned believers, be in their graves, and those that fucceed be far inferior to them in grace and spiritual excellency; yet faith the church, doubtless thou art our Father. There is the fame tie and bond betwixt the Father and the youngest weakest child in the family, as the eldest and strongest. (2.) His pity and mercy is still the fame, for that endures for ever: his bowels yearn as tenderly over his people in their present, as ever they did in any past afflictions, or straits. (3.) The rage

† Anno 1530.

and malice of his and his peoples enemies is still the same, they will reflect as blafphemously and dishonourably upon God now, should he give up his people, as ever they did. Moses's argu. ment is as good now as ever it was, What will the Egyptians fay? and so is Joshua's too, What wilt thou do unto thy great name? Oh! if these things were more throughly studied and believed, they would appease many fears.

2. Rule. Work upon your hearts the confideration of the many mischiefs and miseries men draw upon themselves and others, both in this world and that to come, by their own finful fears.

1. The miseries and calamities that sinful fear brings upon men in this world are unspeakable: this is it that hath plunged the confciences of so many poor wretches into such deep diftreffes; this it is that hath put them upon the rack, and made them roar like men in hell among the damned. Some have been recovered, and others have perished in these deeps of korror and despair. "* In the year 1550 there was at Ferrara in Italy one Faminus, who by reading good books was by the grace of God converted to the knowledge of the truth, where" in he found such sweetness, that by conftant reading, meditation, and prayer, he grew so expert in the scriptures, that he " was able to instruct others; and though he durst not go out " of the bounds of his calling to preach openly, yet by confe"rence and private exhortations he did good to many. This "coming to the knowledge of the pope's clients, they appre" hended and committed him to prison, where he renounced "the truth, and was thereupon released: but it was not long "before the Lord met with him for it; fo as falling into hor"rible torments of confcience, he was near unto utter de"spair; nor could he be freed fron those terrors, before he " had fully resolved to venture his life more faithfully in the "service of Christ."

Dreadful was that voice which poor Spira seemed to hear in his own confcience, as soon as ever his finful fears had prevailed upon him to renounce the truth. "Thou wicked wretch, "thou hast denied me, thou hast renounced the covenant of "thine obedience, thou hast broken thy vow; hence, apostate, "bear with thee the sentence of thine eternal damnation." Presently he falls into a swoon, quaking and trembling, and still affirmed to his death, "That from that time he never found

any ease or peace in his mind;" but professed, "that he was

* Clark's Examp. p. 27.

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"captivated under the revenging hand of the Almighty God; " and that he continually heard the sentence of Christ, the just " judge against him; and that he knew he was utterly undone, " and could neither hope for grace, or that Christ should inter" cede for him to the Father."

In our dreadful Marian days, Sir John Cheek, who had been tutor to King Edward VI. was cast into the Tower, and kept close prisoner, and there put to this miferable choice, either to forego bis life, or that which was more precious, his liberty of confcience, neither could his liberty be procured by his great friends at any lower rate than to recant his religion: This he was very unwilling to accept of, 'till his hard imprisonment, joined with threats of much worse in case of his refusal, at laft wrought so upon him, whilft he consulted with flesh and blood, as drew from him an abrenunciation of that truth which he had so long professed, and still believed: Upon this he was restored to his liberty, but never to his comfort; for the sense of his own apoftacy, and the daily fight of the cruel butcheries exercised upon others for their constant adherence to the truth, made fuch deep impressions upon his broken spirit, as brought him to a speedy end of his life, yet not without some comfortable hopes at last.

Our own histories abound with multitudes of such doleful examples.

Some have been in such horror of conscience, that they have chosen strangling rather than life; they have felt that anguish of confcience that hath put them upon desperate resolutions, and attempts, against their own lives to rid themselves of it. This was the cafe of Peter Moon, who being driven by his own fears to deny the truth, presently fell into fuch horror of confcience, that feeing a sword hanging in his parlour, would have sheathed it in his own bowels. So Francis Spira, before-mentioned, when he was near his end, faw a knife on the table, and running to it, would have mischiefed himself, had not his friends provented him; thereupon he faid, Oh! that I were above God, for I know that he will have no mercy on me. He lay about eight weeks (faith the historian) in a continual burning, neither defiring, or receiving any thing but by force, and that without digestion, till he became as an anatomy; vehemently raging for drink, yet fearful to live long; dreadful of bell, yet coveting death; in a continual torment, yet his own tormentor; and thus corfuming himself with grief and horror, impatience and despair, like a living man in hell, he represented an extraordinary example of God's ju ftice and power, and so ended his miferable life.