[3.] That it is an ill frame of spirit tt> be cherished or rested in. For while men are under the sole and predominant influence of it, they are never converted to God ; fear doth begin the work of conversion, but love maketh it sincere. The Spirit by fear doth awaken men to make them see their condition, terrifying them by the belief of God's threat- ening, and the sense of his indignation, that they may flee from wrath to come. Mat. iii. 7 ; or cry out, ' What shall I do to be saved ? ' Acts ii. 37. But yet, though they have a sensible work, they have not a saving work. Some by the-se fears are but troubled and restrained a little, and so settle again in their sensual course, but to their great loss ; for God may never give them like advantages again. Others betake themselves to a kind of religiousness, and forsake the ])ractice of those grosser sins which breed their fears ; and so resting here, continue in a state of hyjiocrisy and self-deceiving religiousness.
Use 1. Is information and instruction, to teach _us how to carry it as to the spirit of bondage.
[1.] It is not to be slighted ; partly, from the matter which breedeth the fear and bondage, which is the law of God, the supreme rule and reason of our duty, by which all debates of conscience are to be decided; partly, from the author; this sense of sin and misery, is stirred up in us, and made more active by the operation of the Spirit of God ; partly, from the faculty wherein it is seated, — the conscience of a reasonable creature, the most lively and sensible power of man's soul, which cannot be pacified, but upon solid grounds and reasons ; partly, from the efiect, the fear of eternal death, the greatest misery that can befall us ; for surely ' it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,' Heb. x. 31. To smother and stifle checks of conscience doth increase our misery, not remove it ; and produceth hardness of heart, and contempt of God ; therefore when our souls are at this pass, that we see we are in bondage to sin, and know not how to help it ; in bondage to wrath, and know not how to quench these fears which are awakened in us by the Spirit ; surely we should look
VeR. 15.] SEU3I0NS UPON ROMANS VIK. 107
after solid satisfactiou and peace of soul, settled on us upoa gospel ■ terms; run to the blood of sprinkling, Heb. x. 22.
[2.] Yet it is not a tiling to be chosen, prayed for, or rested in. Partly, because it is a judiciary impression, a spark of hell kindled in the conscience. A tender conscience we may and must pray for, but not a stormy conscience ; when we ask legal terrors, we know not what we ask ; a belief of the threatenings belongs to our duty, as well as a belief of the promises ; but we must not so reflect upon terrors, as to exclude the comfort and hope of the gospel. When under a spirit of bondage, we are in a most servile condition, far from all solid comfort, courage, and boldness. But is it not an help to conversion ? Answer, Let God take his own way ; we are not to look after the deepness of the wound, but the soundness of the cure ; not terrible representations of sin and wrath, but sucii an anxiousness as will make us serious and solicitous. Partly, because the law-covenant is an antiquated dispen- sation, the law of nature bindeth not as a covenant ; for the promise of life ceased upon the incapacity of the subjects, when under a natural impossibility of keeping it ; the threatening and penalty lieth upon us indeed, till we flee to another court and covenant. The Jewish cove- nant was abolished when Christ repealed the law of Moses ; that cove- nant dealt with us as servants, the gospel dealetli with us as sons, in a more ingenuous way, and inviting us to God upon nobler motives. And partly, from the nature of that fear that doth accompany it ; it driveth us from God, not to God, Gen. iii. 8. Adam hid himself among the bushes ; and he gives us this reason, because he was afraid ; and still we all fly from a condemning God ; but to a pardoning God we are encouraged to come nigh : Ps. cxxx. 4,' There is forgiveness with thee, that tliou mayest be feared.' In the wicked, the fear of God's wrath once begun, it increaseth daily, till it come to the desperate fear of the damned ; and the fault is not in the law, or in the Spirit, but in man, who runneth from his own happiness, and maketh an ill use of God's warnings.
Use 2. Is to put us upon trial, and self-reflection. All that attend upon ordinances, receive some spirit or other — a spirit of bondage, or a spirit of adoption ; now what kind of spirit are we actuated withal ? God's children, who are adopted into his family, may have some degree of the spirit of bondage, great mixtures of fears and discouragements ; for only ' perfect love casteth out fear,' 1 John iv. 18; but these fears are overbalanced by the spirit of adoption ; they have some filial bold- ness, a better spirit than a slave ; do not wholly sin away the love of ii father, tliough the delight and comfort be much obstructed. It was a sad word for a child of God to speak : Ps. Ixxvii. 3, ' I thought of God, and I was troubled.' The remembrance of God may augment their grief, when conscience representeth his abused favours as the cause of his present wrath and displeasure with them ; but this is not their con- stant temper, but only in great desertions. For a constancy, while sin remaineth, somewhat of bondage remaineth ; but there is a partial and a predominant legality. The partial may be found iu the regenerate, who do by degrees overcome the servile fear of condemnation, and grow up more and more into a gospel spirit; certainly where that prevaileth, there will be liberty : 2 Cor. iii. 17. Tliough for a while