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. liii. 5, there were tliey in great Jear 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 w ould have been found a pure creature of fancy, a chimera having xiojunda.mentum in re, no other foundation but a troubled fancy, and a guilty con- science ; thus it was with Pashur, he w^as 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. 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
• 111 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 credu- lously believed, and icore easily imagined. Cicero.
A PRACTICAL TIIT-^ATISE OF FEAR. 263
there is no visible external cause of fear ! Nevio, se Judicc, nocens. absolvitur : 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 scared with his own imagi- nations ?
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 dis- tempered 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 fear- ful 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 load- ed, 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 upcn their hearts and consciences, whereby they are harden- ed, and seared as with a hot iron, 2 Tim. iv. 2. and so conscience is disabled for the present to do its offi je ; 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 re- mediless.
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 cau^? of most distracting and afflictive ff.ars ; so much as our souls are empty (»f faith, they are, in times of trouble, filled with fear : Wt 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
* Fernel. Pati^iol. lip. 2. cap. 16. Corporis habitus siccus et macilentus, aspeclus, incon- stans, horridus ac moestus, in morbis animi metus et moestiiia, taciiurnitas, sulicitudo, in- nanis rerum commeiUatio sovinus turbulentus, horrendus^ insomnis,Jiuctucins., et agitaius S2)2clris rerum nigrarum, Sec.
264 A PRACTICAL TREATISE OF FEAlf.
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 yefcarfid^ 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 7iUK?.o'yivriffig, 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 Jbrsook Eg^ypt, not fearing the wrath of the Icing-, for he endured, as seeing him that is invisible, Heb. xi. 27^ If tliis 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 sen- sible comforts are exposed and endangered, as they often are and will be in this mutable w^orld. 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. cxHii. 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.