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

1. Object. But may not a good man whose sins are pardoned be affrighted with his own fancies, and scared with his own imaginations?

Sol. No doubt he may, for there is a twofold fountain of fears, one in the body, another in the soul, one in the constitution▪ another in the conscience; it is the affliction and infelicity of many pardoned and gracious souls to be united and married to such distempered and ill habited bodies as shall afflict them without any real cause from within, and wound them by their own diseases and distempers, and these wounds can no more be prevented or cured by their reason or Religion, than any other bodily disease suppose an Ague or a Fever can be so cured. Thus Physicians tell us when adust choler and melancholy overflows and abounds in the body,¹ as in the Hypochondriacal distemper, &c. what sad effects it hath upon the mind as well as upon the body, there is not only a sad and fearful aspect or countenance without, but sorrow, fear and afflicting thoughts within; this is a sore affliction to many good men whose Consciences are sprinkled with the blood of Christ from guilt, but yet God ⟨p. 36⟩sees good to clog them with such afflictions as this for their humiliation, and for the prevention of worse evils.

Sol. No doubt he may, for there is a twofold fountain of fears, one in the body, another in the soul, one in the constitution▪ another in the conscience; it is the affliction and infelicity of many pardoned and gracious souls to be united and married to such distempered and ill habited bodies as shall afflict them without any real cause from within, and wound them by their own diseases and distempers, and these wounds can no more be prevented or cured by their reason or Religion, than any other bodily disease suppose an Ague or a Feaver can be so cured. Thus Physicians tell us when adust choler and melancholy overflows and abounds in the body,