A30211:138
A treatise of the fear of God showing what it is, and how distinguished…A treatise of the fear of God shewing what it is, and how distinguished…
A treatise of the fear of God showing what it is, and how distinguished from that what is not so : also whence it comes, who has it, what are the effects, and what the privileges of those that have it in their hearts / by John Bunyan.A treatise of the fear of God shewing what it is, and how distinguished from that what is not so : also whence it comes, who has it, what are the effects, and what the priviledges of those that have it in their hearts / by John Bunyan.
London: printed for N. Ponder, 1679
Of several sorts of fear of God in the heart of the Children of men.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
The fear therefore that now I call godly, it is that fear which is properly called the fear of eternal damnation for sin, and this fear at first awakening, is good, and godly, because it ariseth in the soul from a true sense of its very state. Its state by nature is damnable, because it is sinful, and because he is not one that as yet, believeth in Christ for remission of sins. He that believeth not shall be damned. He that believeth not, is condemned already, and the wrath of God abideth on him, Mark 16, 16. Joh. 3.18, 36.
The which, when the sinner at first begins to see, he justly fears it, I say, he fears it justly, and therefore godly, because by this fear he subscribes to the sentence that is gone out against him for sin.
Secondly, By who, or by what is this fear wrought in the heart?
To this I shall answer in brief. It is wrought in the heart by the Spirit of God, working there at first as a Spirit of bondage on purpose to put us in fear. This Paul insinuateth in