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

There are two special assistances given us against fear by experience. 1. It abates the terror of Sufferings. 2. It assists Faith in the promises.

1. Experience greatly abates the terror of sufferings, and makes them less formidable and scaring than otherwise they would be; fear saith, they are deep waters, and will drown us; experience saith, they are much shallower than we think, and are safely fordable: Others have, and we may pass through that Red sea, and not be overwhelmed. Fear saith the pains of death are unconceivable sharp and bitter, the living little know what the dying feel; and to lie in a stinking Prison in continual expectations of a cruel death is an insupportable evil: Experience contradicts all these false reports which make our hearts faint, as the second Spies did the daunting ⟨p. 107⟩stories of the first; and assures us, Prisons and Death are not when we come home to them for Christ, what •hey seem and appear to be at a distance. O what a good report have those faithful men given who have searched and tried these things! Who have gone down themselves into the valley of the shadow of death, and seen what there is in a Prison, and in death it self, so long as they were in sight and hearing able by words or signs to contradict our false Notions of it. O what a sweet account did Pomponius Algerius give of his stinking Prison at Lions in France! Dating all his Letters whilst he was there, From the delectable Orchard of the Leonine Prison: And when carried to Venice, in a Letter from the Prison there he writes thus to his Christian friends; I shall utter that which scarce any will believe, I have found a nest of honey in the entrails of a Lyon, a Paradise of pleasure in a deep dark Dungeon, in the place of sorrow and death, tranquillity of hope and life. O here it is, that the Spirit of God, and of glory rests upon us.

1. Experience greatly abates the terror of sufferings, and makes them less formidable and scaring than otherwise they would be; fear saith, they are deep waters, and will drown us; experience saith, they are much shallower than we think, and are safely fordable: Others have, and we may pass through that Red sea, and not be overwhelmed. Fear saith the pains of death are unconceivable sharp and bitter, the living little know what the dying feel; and to lie in a stinking Prison in continual expectations of a cruel death is an insupportable evil: Experience contradicts all these false reports which make our hearts faint, as the second Spies did the daunting