A30211:139
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 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 Rom. 8.15. Saying, Ye have not received the Spirit of Bondage again to fear. He doth not say, ye have not received the Spirit of Bondage, for that they had received, and that to put them in fear, which was at first conversion, as by the instances made mention of before, is manifest; all ⟨p. 51⟩that he says, is, that they had not received it again, that is, after the spirit, as a spirit of adoption is come; for then, as a spirit of bondage it cometh no more.
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 Rom. 8.15. Saying, Ye have not received the Spirit of Bondage again to fear. He doth not say, ye have not received the Spirit of Bondage, for that they had received, and that to put them in fear, which was at first conversion, as by the instances made mention of before, is manifest; all ⟨p. 51⟩that he saies, is, that they had not received it again, that is, after the spirit, as a spirit of adoption is come; for then, as a spirit of bondage it cometh no more.