The divine life in three treatises

Having told you what it is to Walk with God, as to the Matter of it, I shall more briefly tell you as to the Manner: The nature of God, of man, and of the work, will tell it you.

1. That our walk with God must be with the greatest reverence: were we never so much assured of his special love to us, and never so full of faith and joy, our reverence must be never the less for this. Though Love cast out that guilty fear which discourageth the sinner from hoping and seeking for the mercy which would save him, and which disposeth him to hate and fly from God, yet doth it not cast out that Reverence of God, which we owe him as his creatures so infinitely below him as we are. It cannot be that God should be known and remembered as God, without some admiring and awful apprehensions of him. Infiniteness, Omnipotency and inaccessible Majesty and Glory, must needs affect the soul that knoweth them, with reverence and self-abasement. Though we receive a Kingdom that cannot be moved, yet if we will serve God acceptably, we must serve him with reverence and godly fear, as knowing that as he is our God, so he is also a consuming fire, Heb. 12. 28, 29. We must so worship him as those that remember that we are worms and guilty sinners, and that he is most High and Holy, and will be sanctified in them that come nigh him, and before all the people he will be glorified, Lev. 10. 3. Unreverence showeth a kind of Atheistical contempt of God, or else a sleepiness and inconsiderateness of the soul. The sense of the Goodness and Love of God, must consist with the sense of his Holiness and Omnipotency. It is presumption, pride or blockish stupidity, which excludeth Reverence; which Faith doth cause, and not oppose.

1. That our walk with God must be with the greatest reverence: were we never so much assured of his special love to us, and never so full of faith and joy, our reverence must be never the less for this. Though Love cast out that guilty fear which discourageth the sinner from hoping and seeking for the mercy which would save him, and which disposeth him to hate and fly from God, yet doth it not cast out that Reverence of God, which we owe him as his creatures so infinitely below him as we are. It cannot be that God should be known and remembred as God, without some admiring and awful apprehensions of him. Infiniteness, Omnipotency and inaccessible Majesty and Glory, must needs affect the soul that knoweth them, with reverence and selfe-abasement. Though we receive a Kingdome that cannot be moved, yet if we will serve God acceptably, we must serve him with reverence and godly fear, as knowing that as he is our God, so he is also a consuming fire,