A30211:340
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
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.
6. This godly fear, it also flows from a sense of the love and kindness of God to the soul. Where there is no sense or hope of the kindness, and mercy of God by Jesus Christ, there can be none of this fear, but rather wrath and despair, which produceth that fear that is either devilish, or else that which is only wrought in us by the spirit, as a spirit of bondage, (but these we do not discourse of now) wherefore the godly fear that now I treat of, it floweth from some sense or hope of mercy from God by Jesus Christ. If thou Lord, says David, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who should stand, but there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared, Psal. 130.3, 4.
6. This godly fear, it also flowes from a sense of the love and kindness of God to the soul. Where there is no sense or hope of the kindness, and mercy of God by Jesus Christ, there can be none of this fear, but rather wrath and despair, which produceth that fear that is either devilish, or else that which is only wrought in us by the spirit, as a spirit of bondage, (but these we do not discourse of now) wherefore the godly fear that now I treat of, it floweth from some sense or hope of mercy from God by Jesus Christ. If thou Lord, saies David, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who should stand, but there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared, Psal. 130.3, 4.
There is mercy with thee. This the soul has sense of an hope in, and therefore feareth ⟨p. 103⟩God. Indeed, nothing can lay a stronger obligation upon the heart to fear God, than sense of, or hope in mercy. See Jer. 33.8, 9.