Two treatises the first of fear, from Isa. 8, v. 12, 13, and part…

Ward tells of a Jesuit in Lancashire who being followed by one that had found his Glove, out of no other design but to restore it to him, but being pursued by his own guilty Conscience also, he leaped over the next hedge and was drowned. And remarkable is that which Mr. Fox relates of Cardinal Cresentius who fancied the devil walking in his chamber, and sometimes couching under his Table as he was writing Letters to Rome against the Protestants. Impius tantum metuit, quantum nocuit, so much mischief as Conscience tells them they have done, so much it bids them expect. Wolfius tells us of one John Hofmeister who fell sick with the very terrors of his own Conscience in his Inn, as he was travelling towards Augsburg in Germany, and was frighted by his own Conscience to that degree that they were fain to bind him in his bed with chains, and all that they could get from him was, I am cast away for ever, I have grievously wounded my own Conscience.

Ward tells of a Iesuit in Lancashire who being followed by one that had found his Glove, out of no other design but to restore it to him, but being pursued by his own guilty Conscience also, he leaped over the next hedge and was drowned. And remarkable is that which Mr. Fox relates of Cardinal Cresentius who fancied the devil walking in his chamber, and sometimes couching under his Table as he was writing Letters to Rome against the Protestants. Impius tantum metuit, quantum nocuit, so much mischief as Conscience tells them they have done, so much it bids them expect. Wolfius tells us of one Iohn Hofmeister who fell sick with the very terrours of his own Conscience in his Inn, as he was travelling towards Auspurge in Germany, and was frighted by his own Conscience to that degree that they were fain to bind him in his bed with chains, and all that they could get from him was, I am cast away for ever, I have grievously wounded my own Conscience.

To this wounded and trembling conscience is opposed the spirit of a sound mind, mentioned 2 Tim. 1. 7. God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind; A sound mind, is in this place the same thing with a pure and peaceable Conscience, a mind or Conscience not infirmed or wounded with guilt, as we say a sound or heal body which hath no disease to infirm it, such a mind is opposed to the spirit of fear; it will make a man bold as a Lion; Nil conscire tibi, nullâ Pallescere culpâ, hic mu aheneus esto—