A30211:198
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.
3. It also appears by the effects of such fears. For there is a great deal of difference betwixt the natural effects of these fears which are wrought indeed by the spirit of bondage and those which are wrought by this spirit of the Devil afterwards.
The one, to wit, the fears that are wrought by the spirit of bondage causeth us to confess the truth, to wit, that we are Christless, graceless, faithless, and so at present, that is, while he is so working in a sinful and damnable case; but the other, to wit, the spirit of the Devil when he comes, which is after the spirit of adoption is come, he causeth us to make a lye, that is to say, we are christless, graceless, and faithless. Now this I say is wholly, and in all the parts of it a lye, and HE is the Father of it.
Besides, the direct tendency of the fear that the Spirit of God, as a spirit of bondage worketh in the soul, is to cause us to come repenting home to God by Jesus Christ, but these latter fears tend directly to make a man, (he having first denied the work of God, as he will, if he falleth in with them) to run quite away from God, and from h•s grave to him in Christ as will evidently appear ⟨p. 65⟩if thou givest but a plain and honest answer to these questions following.
Besides, the direct tendency of the fear that the Spirit of God, as a spirit of bondage worketh in the soul, is to cause us to come repenting home to God by Jesus Christ, but these latter fears tend directly to make a man, (he having first denyed the work of God, as he will, if he falleth in with them) to run quite away from God, and from h•s grave to him in Christ as will evidently appear