XII.] OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE REFUTED. 47l
minations under consideration may principally belong to some kind of professors, who, notwithstanding all the gifts and common graces which they have received, yet in a large sense may be termed hypo- crites, as they are opposed to them who have received the Spirit with true and savins o-race.
Secondly, He says, " It is evident that they belong unto true be- lievers from Heb. vi. 4-6, 9, x. 26, 27, 29;" but if there were no better evidence of the concernment of true believers in the threaten- ings made to apostasy than what can be drawn from the places mentioned, I dare undertake that Mr Goodwin shall never prove any such concernment of theirs therein whilst his eyes are open. But about this I shall not at present contend.
Thirdly, He tells us " That the end and aim of God in these threatenings is the good of believers : " of which, as far as they are concerned in them, I much less doubt than I do of the clearness of the proof of this assertion from Ps. Ixxxv. 8, " I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn 'again to folly;" — a place that I presume was hooked in here violently for want of a fitter opportunity to wrest it with a by-interpretation, because it looks so hardly on the doctrine which our author hath undertaken to defend. But let this pass also.
His fourth assertion, which he pursues at large, or rather with many words, is, " That these threatenings have no tendency to the good of believers, but only by begetting in them a fear of hell and destruction; which that they ought to do is strongly proved from Luke xii. 4, 5, where we are bid to fear Him who can cast both body and soul into hell-fire." Now, though the logic of this argument doth scarce appear to me, nor the strength of the inference from the text, — there being a gi'eat difference between fearing Him who can cast both body and soul into hell-fire and fearing of hell-fire, be- tween fearing God for his severity and power, in opposition to the weakness and limitedness of persecutors (even whilst we " fear not their fear, but sanctify the Lord of hosts himself in our hearts, making him our fear and our dread"), and such a fear of punishment as is inconsistent with the promises of God that we shall be preserved in obedience, and so be free from it, — yet I shall consider the follow- ing discourse that is built thereon. Supposing all that Mr Goodwin observes from this text, and that the reason of the fear here enjoined is taken from the power of God to cast into hell, yet the whole of the argument thence amounts but thus far: " Because such who are threatened to be persecuted by men, who can only kill their bodies, ought rather to fear God, who can extend his power of punishing to the destruction of body and soul of those that offend him; there- fore there is such a fear ingenerated in the saints by the threaten-
472 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
ings of the word as is inconsistent with the truth of God's steadfast- ness in his covenant with them to keep them up to obedience unto the end.
Sect, the 14th, he farther pleads from Heb. xi. 7, 2 Kings xxii. 19, 20, " That the eminentest, holiest men that live may do many things from a principle of fear, or of being afraid of the judgments of God, that they should come upon them ; and upon that account have been put upon ways that were acceptable to God."
Ans. We know that the "fear of the Lord is the beginninfj of wis- dom," and the "fear of the Lord and his goodness" is a great mercy of the covenant of grace. This is not the thing here pleaded for. It is a thing quite of another nature, even that ascribed to the strange nations that were transplanted into Samaria by the king of Assyria, upon the captivity and removal of the ten tribes, and frightened by lions, that destroyed some of them, who did yet continue to worship their own idols, under the dread of God which was upon them, •which is called " The fear of the Lord." To complete this fear, it is required that a man have such an apprehension of the coming of hell and wrath upon him as that he be not relieved against it by any interposal of promise, or aught else, from God, that he should be preserved in the way and path whereby he shall assuredly find deliverance from that which he fears. How far this kind of fear, the fear of hell, — not as declarative of the terror of the Lord, but as pro- bable to betide and befall the person so fearing it, and that solely considered as an evil to himself, — may be a principle of any act of acceptable gospel obedience, is not cleared by Mr Goodwin, nor easily will be so; for, —
1. That it is not the intendment of any divine threatenings to be- get such a fear, in reference to them that believe, hath been declared.