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…

thou darest not be valiant for the truth, nor plead for righteousness, this fear is excessive. Love to God, love to his glory should cast out the fear of death. Observe then thy self in dangers or temptations, how thou findest thy fear to put thee upon sinful compliances or omissions, and presently, as Jehoshaphat in the midst of a battle being in great danger, cried out unto God for help, so do thou to be delivered from this sinful fear, that is a deadly enemy encompassing thee about.

thou darest not be valiant for the truth, nor plead for righteousness, this fear is excessive. Love to God, love to his glory should cast out the fear of death. Observe then thy self in dangers or temptations, how thou findest thy fear to put thee upon sinfull compliances or omissions, and presently, as Jehoshaphat in the midst of a battel being in great danger, cried out unto God for help, so do thou to be delivered from this sinfull fear, that is a deadly enemy encompassing thee about.

Secondly, Thy fear about death is sinful, when it is immoderate and disquieting ¹of thee, so that thou doest not walk with a cheerful quiet and calm spirit. So that although it may not put thee upon any sinful or unlawful enterprise, yet if it fill thee with anxieties, with trepidations, so that it depriveth thee of that Evangelical joy and peace; in this excess it is a sin. All that are truly godly, Being justified by faith they are to have peace in their hearts; yea they are to rejoice always in the Lord; but the inordinate fear of death causeth this Sun to be in an eclipse: and as men subject to swooning fits, or convulsions, cannot go with that courage and confidence up and down, as those who are freed from such distempers; Thus also the slavish and immoderate fear of death putteth millstones about our neck, is a continual Ephialtes upon the soul, filleth the spirit with heaviness, whereby that Evangelical life and Gospel-conversation that we are called unto, is seldom or never exercised. Observe then thy self, doth such fears of death make thy soul full of tumults and distractions? Doth it oppose any Evangelical grace, or retard the Spirit of Adoption upon thy soul? Then humble thy self, know thou sinnest against God, and pray for the mortification of it; and this thou art to do, though it doth not make thee put out thy hand to any evil way; though it doth not make thee omit any known duty. For as worldly and distrustful cares, though lodging only in the heart, are greatly displeasing to God, though we do not thereby fall into covetous and unjust ways, yet the very cares and distractions of the heart are forbidden, as appeareth by that reproof given to Martha, by our Saviour himself,