And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.
~ Matthew 28:2-5
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
~ Matthew 10:28
Wherein the Spring and Causes of Sinful Fear are Searched Out, and the Evils of Such Fears Thence Discovered, by John Flavel. The following contains Chapter Four of his work, “A Practical Treatise of Fear”.
Say ye not, A confederacy to all them to whom this people shall say a confederacy; neither fear ye (their fear) nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of Hosts himself, and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread; And he shall be for a sanctuary.— Isa. 8:12, 13, 14a
CHAPTER IV
Sect. 1. Having shewn before, the kinds and uses of fear; it remains, that next we search out the springs from which these waters of Marah are derived and fed. And,
Causes
Cause 1. First, We shall find the sinful fears of most good men to spring out of their ignorance, and the darkness of their own minds; all darkness disposes to fear, but none like intellectual darkness. You read, Cant. 3:8 how Solomon’s life-guard had every man his sword upon his thigh, because of fear in the night. The night is the frightful season, in the dark every bush is a bear; we sometimes smile by day, to see what silly things those were that scared us in the night. So it is here; were our judgments but duly informed, how soon would our hearts be quieted?
Now there is a five-fold ignorance, out of which our fears are generated:
1. Ignorance of God: Either we know not, or at least do not duly consider his Almighty Power, vigilant care, unspotted faithfulness, and how they are all engaged, by covenant, for his people. This ignorance, and inconsiderateness, lay at the root of their fears, Isa. 40:27, 28. “My way (saith Zion) is hid from the Lord, and my judgment passed over from my God:” Words importing a suspicion that God hath left her out of the account of his providence, and the catalogue of those whom we would look after, and take care for.
But were it once thoroughly understood and believed, what power there is in God’s hand to defend us, what tenderness in his bowels to commiserate us, what faithfulness in all the promises, in which they are made over to us, O how quiet and calm would our hearts be! Our courage would quickly be up, and our fears down.
2. Our ignorance of men generate our fears of men; we fear them, because we do not know them; if we understood them better, we would fear them less; we over-value them, and then fright at them. They say the lion is painted more fierce than he is; I am sure our fancy paints out man more dreadful than indeed he is; if wicked men, especially if multitudes of wicked men be confederated against us, our hearts fail, and presently apprehend inevitable ruin. “The floods of the ungodly made me afraid,” saith David, i.e. the multitudes of them which he thought, like a flood or mighty torrent of water, must needs sweep away such a straw, such a feather, as he was, before them; but, in the mean time, we know or consider not that they have no power against us, but what is given them from above, and that it is usual with God to cramp their hands, and clap on the bands of restraint upon them, when their hearts are fully set in them to do mischief: did we see and consider them as they are in the hand of our God, we should not tremble at them as we do.
3. Ignorance of ourselves, and the relation we have to God, creates slavish fears in our hearts, Isa. 51:12. for did believers but thoroughly understand how dear they are to God, what relations they sustain to him, of what account and value they are in his eyes, and how well they are secured by his faithful promises and gracious presence, they would not start and tremble at every noise and appearance of danger, as they do. God reckoned it enough to cure all Abraham’s sinful fears, when he told him how his God stood engaged for his defence. Gen. 15:1. “Fear not Abraham, I am thy shield.”
And noble Nehemiah valued himself in times of danger and fear, by his interest in God, as his words import, Neh.6:11. The conspiracy against him was strong, the danger he and the faithful with him at that time were in, was extraordinary; some, therefore advised to flee to the temple, and barricado themselves there, against the enemy: But Nehemiah understood himself better; Should such a man as I flee? And who, being as I am, should flee? saith he, q. d. A man so called of God to this service, a man under such promises, a man of such manifold and manifest experiences, should such 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 Christian! when devils are afraid of thee, as a prisoner 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 duly, according to our Christian dignities and privileges, which, if ever it be necessary to count over and value, it is in such 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 to sing at mid-night, and so have many more since 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,” Psal. 68:20. “He knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation,” 2 Pet. 2:9. He can, with every temptation, make a way to escape, 1 Cor. 10:13. the poor captive exiles reckoned upon nothing, but dying in the pit, making their graves in the land of their captivity, Isa. 51:14. for they could think upon none, but the usual methods of deliverance, power, or price, and they had neither; little did they dream of such immediate influences of God upon the king’s heart, to make him dismiss them, freely, contrary to all rules of state policy, Isa. 45:12.
5. But especially the fears of good men arise out of their ignorance and inconsiderateness of the covenant of grace. If we were better acquainted with the nature, 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 conscience. A servant of sin 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 conscience 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 conscia facti, a guilty and condemning conscience, Gen. 3:8. “It is* Seneca’s observation, that a guilty conscience is a terrible whip and torment to the sinner, perpetually lashing him with solicitous 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 15:21. that a dreadful sound 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, suitable to that, Prov. 28:1. The wicked fleeth when none pursues, but the righteous is bold as a lion. Just as they say of sheep, 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 conscience, 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 conscience, many terrible stripes and wounds would be found there:” And it is said, Isa. 33:14. the sinners in Zion are afraid, trembling taketh hold of the hypocrite. Fear and trembling as naturally rise out of guilt, as the sparks do out of a fiery charcoal. Histories abundantly furnish us with sad examples of the truth of this observation. Cataline, that monster of wickedness, would start at any sudden 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, saw divers images or shapes like devils in his sleep, pulling and hauling him. Mr. Ward tells us of a Jesuit 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 conscience also, he leaped over the next hedge, and was drowned. And remarkable is that which Mr. Fox relates of cardinal Crescentius, 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: so much mischief as conscience tells them they have done, so much it bids them expect. Wolsius tells us of one John Hofmeister who fell sick with the very terrors of his own conscience in his inn, as he was travelling towards Aspurge in Germany, and was frighted by his own conscience 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 conscience.
To this wounded and trembling conscience is opposed the spirit of a sound mind, mentioned 2 Tim. 1:7. “God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind:” A sound mind is, in this place, the same thing with a pure and peaceable conscience, a mind or conscience not infirm or wounded with guilt, as we say a sound 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; —— Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa, Hic murus aheneus esto.— Hor. l. 1. cp. 1. 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. 4:14. “Every one that meets me will slay me.” Now every child was a giant in his eye, and any body he met his over-match. A guilty conscience gives a man no sight of his enemy, but through a magnifying or multiplying glass.
2. It begets fears, by interpreting all doubtful cases in the worst sense that can be fastened upon them: Pessimus in dubüs augur timor. If the swallows do but chatter in the chimney, Bessus 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 conscience 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, Psal. 53:5, 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 conscience; thus it was with Pashur, he was a very wicked man, and a bitter enemy to the prophet Jeremiah, and if there be none to fright and terrify him abroad, rather than he shall want it, he shall be a terror to himself, Jer. 20:3, 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 absolvitur: i.e. No guilty man is absolved, even when himself acts the part of the judge.
Objections
Objection 1. But may not a good man, whose sins are pardoned, be affrighted with his own fancies, and scared 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 conscience; it is the affliction and infelicity of many pardoned and gracious souls, to be united and married to such distempered and ill- habited bodies, as shall afflict 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 aspect or countenance without, but sorrow, fear, and afflicting thoughts within; this is a sore affliction to many good men, whose consciences are sprinkled with the blood of Christ from guilt, but yet God sees 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 consciences are loaded, can look danger 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 consciences, whereby they are hardened, and seared as with a hot iron, 2 Tim. 4:2. and so conscience 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 conscience is; and no less is the sin of unbelief the real and proper cause of most distracting and afflictive fears; so much as our souls 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. 8:26. 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 observable κυκλογενησις, circular generation, vapours beget showers, and showers new vapours; so it is in things moral, and therefore all the skill in the world can never cure us of the disease of fear, till God first cure us of our unbelief? Christ therefore took the right method to rid his disciples of their fear, by rebuking their unbelief. The remains of this sin in God’s own people are the cause and fountain of their fears, and more particularly to shew how fear is generated by unbelief, let a few particulars be heedfully adverted to.
1. Unbelief weakens and stumbles the assenting act of faith, and thereby cuts off from the soul, in a great measure, its principal relief against danger and troubles. It is the use and office of faith to realize to the soul the invisible things of the world to come, and thereby encourage it against the fears and dangers of the present world: Thus Moses forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured, as seeing him that is invisible, Heb. 11:27. If this assenting act of faith be weakened or staggered in the soul, if once invisibles seem uncertainties, and visibles the only realities, no wonder we are so scared and frighted when these visible and sensible comforts are exposed and endangered, as they often are and will be in this mutable world. That man must needs be afraid to stand his ground that is not thoroughly persuaded the ground he stands on is firm and good; it is not to be wondered that men should tremble, who seem to feel the ground shake and reel under them.
2. Unbelief shuts up the refuges of the soul in the divine promises,* and by leaving it without those refuges, must needs leave it in the hand of fears and terrors. That which fortifies and emboldens a Christian in evil times, is his dependence upon God for a protection, Psal. 143:9. I fly unto thee to hide me. The cutting off this retreat (which nothing but unbelief can do) deprives the soul of all those succours and supports which the promises afford, and consequently fills the heart with anxiety and fear.
3. Unbelief makes men negligent and careless in providing for troubles before they come, and so brings them by way of surprise upon them: and the more surprising any evil is, the more frightful it is always found to be: we cannot think that Noah was so affrighted at the flood, when it began to swell above all the hills and mountains, as all the rest of the world were; nor was there any reason that he should, having foreseen it by faith, and made provision for it, Heb. 11:7. By faith Noah, being warned of God, prepared an ark.* Augustine relates a very pertinent and memorable story of Paulinus, bishop of Nola, who was a very rich man both in goods and grace: he had much of the world in his hands, but little of it in his heart; and it was well there was not, for the Goths, a barbarous people, breaking into that city, like so many devils, fell upon the prey; those that trusted to the treasures which they had, were deceived and ruined by them, for the rich were put to tortures to confess where they had hid their monies: This good bishop fell into their hands, and lost all he had, but was scarce moved at the loss, as appears by his prayer, which my author relates thus: Lord, let me not be troubled for my gold and silver: thou knowest it is not my treasure; that I have laid up in heaven, according to thy command. I was warned of this judgment before it came, and provided for it; and where all my interest lies, Lord, thou knowest.
Thus Mr. Bradford, when the keeper’s wife came running into his chamber suddenly, with words able to have put the most men in the world into a trembling posture: Oh, Mr. Bradford! I bring you heavy tidings; to-morrow you must be burned, and your chain is now buying: He put off his hat, and said, Lord, I thank thee; I have looked for this a great while, it is not terrible to me; God make me worthy of such a mercy. See the benefit of a prospect of, and preparation for sufferings!
4. Unbelief leaves our dearest interests and concerns in our own hands, it commits nothing to God, and consequently must needs fill the heart with distracting fears when imminent dangers threaten us. Reader, if this be thy case, thou wilt be a Magor Missabib, surrounded with terrors, whensoever thou shalt be surrounded with dangers and troubles. Believers in this, as well as in many other things, have the advantage of thee, that they have committed all that is precious and valuable to them into the hands of God by faith, to him they have committed the keeping of their souls, 1 Pet. 4:19. and all their eternal concernments, 2 Tim. 1:16. And these being put into safe hands, they are not distracted with fears about other matter of less value, but can trust them where they have entrusted the greater, and enjoy the quietness and peace of a resigned soul to God, Prov. 16:3. But as for thee, thy life, thy liberty, yea, which is infinitely more than all these things, thy soul will lie upon thy hands in the day of trouble, and thou wilt not know what to do with them, nor which way to dispose of them. Oh! these be the dreadful straits and frights that unbelief leaves men in; it is a fountain of fears and distractions. And indeed it cannot but distract and confound carnal men, in whom it reigns, and is in its full strength, when sad experience shews us what fears and tremblings the very remains and reliques of this sin beget in the best men, who are not fully freed from it. If the unpurged reliques of unbelief in them can thus darken and cloud their evidences, thus greaten and multiply their dangers; if it can draw such sad and frightful conclusions in their hearts, notwithstanding all the contrary experience of their lives, as we see in that sad instance, 1 Sam. 27:1. what panic fears and unrelieved terrors must it put those men under, where it is in its full strength and dominion?
Cause 4. Moreover, we shall find many of our fears raised and provoked in us by the promiscuous administrations of providence in this world, when we read in scripture, “that there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked, and all things come alike to all,” Eccl. 9:2. that when the sword is drawn, God suffers it to cut off the righteous and the wicked, Ezek. 21:3. The sword makes no difference where God hath made so great a difference by grace; it neither distinguishes faces nor breasts, but is as soon sheathed in the bowels of the best as the worst of men. When we read how the same fire of God’s indignation devours the green tree and the dry tree, Ezek. 20:47. how the baskets of good figs (the emblem of the best men of those times) were carried into Babylon as well as the bad, Jer. 24:5. how the flesh of God’s saints hath been given for meat to the fowls of heaven, and to the beasts of the field, Psal. 97:12. and how the wicked have devoured the man that is more righteous than himself, as it is Hab. 1:13. I say, when we observe such things in scripture, and find our observations confirmed by the accounts and histories of former and later ages; when we reflect upon the unspeakable miseries and butcheries of those plain hearted and precious servants of Christ, the Albigenses and Waldenses, how they fell as a prey to their cruel adversaries, notwithstanding the convincing simplicity and holiness of their lives, and all their fervent cries and appeals to God; how the very flower of the reformed Protestant interest in France was cut off with more than barbarous inhumanity, so that the streets were washed, and the canals of Paris ran with their precious blood; what horrid and unparalleled torture the servants of God felt in that cruel massacre in Ireland, a history too tragical for a tender-hearted reader to stay long upon; and how, in our own land, the most eminent ministers and Christians were sent to heaven in a fiery chariot in those dreadful Marian days: I say, when we read and consider such things as these, it rouses our fears, and puts us into frights, when we see ourselves threatened with the same enemies and danger; when the feet of them that carried out the dear servants of God in bloody winding-sheets to their graves, stand at the door to carry us forth next, if providence loose their chain, and give them a permission so to do; and our fears, on this account, are heightened, by considering and involving these four things in our thoughts, which we are always more inclined to do, than the things that should fortify our faith, and heighten our Christian courage. As,
1. We are apt to consider, that as the same race and kind of men that committed these outrages upon our brethren, are still in being, and that their rage and malice is not abated in the least degree, but is as fierce and cruel as ever it was. Gal. 4:29. “As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.” So it was then, and just so it is still: the old enmity is entailed upon all wicked men, from generation to generation. Multi adhuc qui clavum sanguine Abelis rubentem adhuc circumferunt, Cain’s club is to this day carried up and down the world, stained with the blood of Abel, as Bucholtzer speaks. It is a rooted antipathy, and it runs in a blood, and will run as long as there are wicked men, from whom, and to whom it shall be propagated, and a devil in hell, by whom it will not fail to be exasperated and irritated.
2. We know also that nothing hinders the execution of their wicked purposes against us but the restraints of Providence. Should God loose the chain, and give them leave to act forth the malice and rage that is in their hearts, no pity would be shewn by them, or could be rationally expected from them, Psal. 124:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. We live among lions, and them that are set on fire of hell, Psal. 57:4. The only reason of our safety is this, that he who is the keeper of the lions, is also the shepherd of the sheep.
3. We find, that God hath many times let loose these lions upon his people, and given them leave to tear his lambs in pieces, and suck the blood of his saints: how well soever he loves them, yet hath he often delivered them into the hands of their enemies, and suffered them to perpetrate and act the greatest cruelties upon them; the best men have suffered the worst things, and the histories of all ages have delivered down unto us the most tragical relations of their barbarous usage.
4. We are conscious to ourselves how far short we come in holiness, innocency, and spiritual excellency of those excellent persons who have suffered these things; and therefore have no ground to expect more favour from providence than they found: we know also there is no promise in the scriptures to which they had not as good a claim and title as ourselves. With us are found as great, yea, greater sins than in them; and therefore have no reason to please ourselves with the fond imaginations of extraordinary exemptions. If we think these evils shall not come in our days, it is like many of them thought so too; and yet they did, and we may find it quite otherwise. Lam. 4:12. “Who would have thought that the enemy should have entered in at the gates of Jerusalem?” The revolving of these, and such like considerations in our thoughts, and mixing our own unbelief with them, creates a world of fears, even in good men, till, by resignation of all to God, and acting faith upon the promises that assure us of the sanctification of all our troubles, as that Rom. 8:28. God’s presence with us in our troubles, as that Psal. 91:15. his moderation of our troubles to that measure and degree, in which they are supportable, Isa. 27:8. and the safe and comfortable outlet and final deliverance from them all at last; according to that in Rev. 7:17. we do, at last, recover our hearts out of the hands of our fears again, and compose them to a quiet and sweet satisfaction in the wise and holy pleasure of our God.
Cause 5. Our immoderate love of life, and the comforts and conveniences thereof, may be assigned as a proper, and real ground, and cause of our sinful fears, when the dangers of the times threaten the one or the other: did we love our lives less, we should fear and tremble less than we do. It is said of those renowned saints, Rev. 12:11. “They overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death.”
They overcame not only the fury of their enemies without them, but their sinful fears within them; and this victory was atchieved by their mortification to the inordinate and immoderate love of life. Certainly their own fears had overcome them, if they had not first overcome the love of life: it was not, therefore, without very great reason, that our Lord enjoined it upon all his disciples and followers, to hate their own lives, Luke 14:26. not absolutely, but in comparison and competition with him, i.e. to love it in so remiss a degree as to slight and undervalue it, as a poor low thing in such a comparison: he foresaw what sharp trials and sufferings were coming upon them, and he knew if the fond and immoderate love of life were not overcome and mortified in them, it would make them warp and bend under such temptations.
This was it that freed Paul from slavish fears, and made him so magnanimous and undaunted; indeed he had less fear upon his spirits, though he was to suffer those hard and sharp things in his own person, than his friends had, who only sympathized with him, and were not farther concerned, than by their own love and pity: he spake like a man who was rather a spectator than a sufferer. Acts 20:24, 25. “None of these things move me,” saith he. Great soul! not moved with bonds and afflictions! how did he attain so great courage and constancy of mind, in such deep and dreadful sufferings! It was enough to have moved the stoutest man in the world, yea, and to have removed the resolutions of any that had not loved Christ better than his own life: but life was a trifle to him, in comparison with Jesus Christ, for so he tells us in the next words, “I count not my life dear unto me,” q. d. It is a low-prized commodity in my eyes, not worth the saving, or regarding on such sinful
terms. Oh! how many have parted with Christ, peace, and eternal life, for fear of losing that which Paul regarded not. And if we bring our thoughts closer to the matter, we shall soon find that this is a fountain of fears in times of danger, and that from this excessive love of life we are racked and tortured with ten thousand terrors. For,
1. Life is the greatest and nearest interest men naturally have in this world, and that which wraps up all other inferior interests in itself, Job 2:4. “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath, will he give for his life.” It is a real truth, though it came from the mouth of the father of lies; afflictions never touch the quick, till they touch the life; liberty, estates, and other accommodations in this world receive their value and estimation from hence; if life be cut off, these accidents perish, and are of no account, Gen. 25:32. “Behold, I am at the point to die, (said Esau) and what profit shall this birth-right do to me?”
2. Life being naturally the dearest interest of men in this world, the richest treasure, and most beloved thing on earth, to a natural man; that which strikes at, and endangers life, must, in his eyes, be the greatest evil that can befal him; on this account death becomes terrible to men; yea, as Job calls it, the king of terrors, Job 18:14. The black prince, or the prince of clouds and darkness, as some translate those words: Yea, so terrible is death upon this account, that the very fear of it hath sometimes precipitated men into the hands of it, as we sometimes observe in times of pestilence, the excessive fear of the plague hath induced it*.
3. Though death be terrible in any shape, in the mildest form it can appear in; yet a violent and bloody death, by the hands of cruel and merciless men, is the most terrible form that death can appear in; it is now the king of terrors indeed, in the most ghastly representation and frightful form, in its scarlet robes, and terrifying formalities; in a violent death, all the barbarous cruelty that the wit of our enemies can invent, or their malice inflict, is mingled together; in a violent death are many deaths converted into one, and it oftentimes approaches men by such slow and deliberate paces, that they feel every tread of its foot, as it advanceth towards them. Moriatur, ut sentiat se mori; Let him so die, (said the tyrant) that he may feel himself to die; yea, and how he dies by inch-meal, or slow, lingering degrees, and this is exceeding frightful, especially to those that are of most soft and tender nature and temper, who must needs be struck through with the terrors of death, except the Lord arm them against it with the assurance of a better life, and sweeten these bitter apprehensions by the foretastes of it. This is enough to put even sanctified nature into consternation, and make a very gracious heart to sink, unless it be so upheld by divine strength and comfort: And hence come many, very many of our fears and terrors, especially when the same enemies that have been accustomed to this bloody work, shall be found confederating and designing again to break in upon us, and act over again as much cruelty, as ever they have done upon our brethren in times past.
Cause 6. To conclude: many of our sinful fears and consternations flow from the influences of Satan upon our phantasies. They say winds and storms are oft-times raised by Satan, both by sea and land; and I never doubted, but the prince of the power of the air, by God’s permission, can, and often doth put the world into great frights and disturbances by such tempests, Job 1:19. He can raise the loftiest winds, pour down roaring showers, rattle in the air with fearful claps of thunder, and scare the lower world with terrible flashes of lightning. And I doubt not but he hath, by the same permission, a great deal of influence and power upon the fancies and passions of men; and can raise more terrible storms and tempests within us, than ever we heard or felt without us: he can, by leave from God, approach our phantasies, disturb and trouble them exceedingly by forming frightful ideas there; for Satan not only works upon men mediately, by the ministry of their external senses, but by reason of his spiritual, angelical nature, he can have immediate access to the internal sense also, as appears by diabolical dreams; and by practising upon that power of the soul, he influences the passions of it, and puts it under very dreadful apprehensions and consternations. Now if Satan can provoke and exasperate the fury and rage of wicked men, as it is evident he can do, as well as he can go to the magazines and store-houses of thunder, lightnings, and storms: O, what inward storms of fear can he shake our hearts withal! and if God give him but a permission, how ready will he be to do it, seeing it is so conducible to his design; for by putting men into such frights, he at once weakens their hands in duty, as is plain from his attempt this way upon Nehemiah, chap. 6:13. and if he prevail there, he drives them into the snares and traps of his temptations, as the fisherman and fowler do the birds and fishes in their nets, when once they have flushed and frighted them out of their coverts. And thus you have some account of the principal and true causes of our sinful fears.
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