An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

1. That a natural fear of death may be in some more, and in some less, from the very constitution and temperament of their body. Some are very fearful by their very natural complexion, and to such death is more dreadful than to others, who are of a more bold and stout constitution: Even as some are more prone to anger than others; so some are more prone to fear than others; and this being a natural passion, they cannot conquer it, no more than grace can change the temperament of the body. Only to the godly, such a natural fear is sanctified: They go out of themselves, they depend much upon God. And therefore some who have been assaulted exceedingly with fears in the times of persecution, suspecting their own selves, that they should prove perfidious to Christ, and Apostates, have found unexpected courage and boldness, because they have gone out of themselves, and trusted in God only. These Lambs have proved Lions. Hence the Scripture, antidotes and comfortable promises against this fear, Isa. 53. 4. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not. Yea we have a precious promise to the godly, that under Christs government and protection over them, Jer. 23. 4. They shall fear no more, nor be dismayed. If then the godly find himself of a fearful disposition, that it is a natural passion tyrannizing over him, let him pray for the sanctification of it, that God would turn it to his good; and many times such are preserved from those wounds of conscience, and those sad falls, which those that are more presumptuous and self-confident do fall into. As there is thus a natural passion of fear about death in some more than in others, so also sometimes (by Gods permission) ⟨p. 289⟩the children of God have been assaulted by it as a peculiar temptation, and that improved by Satan. So that whereas there are several kinds of temptations, whereby the Devil doth molest and disquiet the godly, sometimes by blasphemous thoughts, sometimes by fear of committing that unpardonable sin against the holy Ghost, &c. So sometimes it is by a daily and constant fear of death, such a persuasion of death doth fall upon them, and that accompanied with much distracting fear and trembling, that it takes away the comfortable enjoyment of all those mercies God bestoweth upon them.