2. The outlets and escapes from them.
There is a vast odd? 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. 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 exiles reckoned upon nothing, but dying in the pit, making their graves in the land of their captivity, Isa. 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 such immediate influences of God upon the king's heart, to make him dismiss them, freely, contrary to all rules of state policy, Isa. xlv. 12,
5. But especially the fears of good men arise out of their igno- rance and inconsiderateness of the covenant of gi'ace. If we were better acquainted with the nature, extent, and stability of the co- venant^ our hearts would be much freed thereby from these tor- menting passions ; this covenant would be a panacea, an universal remedy against all our fears, u}X)n 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 ex- pect evil. No sooner had Adam defiled and wounded his consci- ence 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, con scia Jucti, a guilty and condemning conscience. Gen. iii. 8. " It is * Seneca's '* observation, that a guilty conscience is a terrible whip and tor- " ment to the sinner, perpetually lashing him with solicitous
* Male facinoru?n conscientia Jlagellari, et plurijnum illi tormentorum esse, eo quo per^ petuo illam solicitudo urgety ac verberat ([uod sponsoribus seeuritatis suae non potest credere^ Senec. Epist 57.
A rhACTlCAL TREATISE OF FEAR. 2G1
*• 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 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. xxviii. 1. TJic xoickedjleeth when none pursues^ but the righteous is hold 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. xxxiii. 14*. the sinners in Zion are afraid, trembling taketh hold of the hypo- crite. 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 I J I. after the murder of his two innocent nephews, savv 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 de- sign but to restore it to him, but being pursued by his own guilty conscience also, he leaped over the next hedge, and was drownc(i And remarkable is that which Mr. Fox relates of cardinal Crcscen- tius, who fancied the devil v/as walking in his chamber, and some- times couching under his table, as he was writing letters to Rome against the Protestants, hnpius tantum metnit, quantum iiocuit : 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 Aspurgc 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, / am cast away for ever, I have grievously wounded my oun conscience.
To this wounded and trembling conscience is opposed the spirit of a sound mind, mentioned 2 Tim. i. 7. " God hath not given • ...
* Sirecludanlur mcn'es d/rnnnorum, posse afinci linHatus et ictu^, Annal.
262 A PRACTICAL TREATISE OF FEAK.
" 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^
Hie mw'us alieneus esto. — Hor. 1. 1. ep. 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. iv. 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 duhiis augur fimor. If the swallovrs do but chatter in the chimney, Bessus in- terprets it to be a discovery of his crime, that they are telling tales of him, and saying, Bessus killed a man. Nay,