A30211:142
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.
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, Rom. 3.20.
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 shew 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, Rom. 3.20.
And he, in this his working is properly called a spirit of bondage.
1. Because, by the Law he shows us, that indeed we are in bondage to the Law, the Devil and Death, and damnation; for this is our proper state by nature, though we see it not until the Spirit of God shall come to reveal, this our state of bondage unto our own senses by revealing to us our sins by the Law.