A30211:141
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.
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.
It is then the Spirit of God, even the Holy Ghost that convinceth us of sin, and so of our damnable state, because of sin, Joh. 16.8, 9. For it cannot be that the Spirit of God should convince us of sin, but it must also show us our state to be damnable because of it, especially if it so convinceth us, before we believe, and that is the intent of our Lord in that place, of sin, (and so of their damnable state by sin) because they believe not on me. Therefore the Spirit of God when he worketh in the heart, as a spirit of bondage, he doth it by working in us by the Law, for by the Law is the knowledge of sin,