The heads of some sermons preached at Finnick, the 17 of August. 1662 By…

The next Doctrine is this: That the People of God are very subject to slavish fear, when new difficulties appear to them. It's said, when Israel fled before the men of Ai, their hearts melted, and became like water. O! but they were ⟨p. 17⟩afraid! I grant the People of God take sooner with their sin than any other People. I shall speak First what this slavish fear is. 2. Why his People are so subject to it. 3. What is the prejudice they have by it. 4. What may be the cure of it.

The next Doctrin is this: That the People of God are very subject to slavish fear, when new difficultys appear to them. It's said, when Israel fled before the men of Ai, their hearts melted, and became like water. O! but they were ⟨p. 17⟩afraid! I grant the People of God take sooner with their sin than any other People. I shall speak First what this slavish fear is. 2. Why his People are so subject to it. 3. What is the prejudice they have by it. 4. What may be the cure of it.

As to the First then, What this slavish fear is that his People are troubled with. It arises from the misbelief of what God hath said, and forgetting what he has said concerning them. 2. It flows from their fixing on his Providence, and puts the worst construction on it. 3. It flows from despondency of spirit and heartlessness, and that weakens their hands in the use of lawful means for bearing their own trial and working for their own out-gate; they think they will do no more good than dip their singer in water, and their faith and hope and all goes to wrack: and upon this there follows an inclination to follow some unlawful mean for their out-gate, and if they follow not that, then the heart is kindly laid out for such a temptation; for ordinarily complaints are the fruits of slavish fear. Slavish fear then stands in this, viz. in an atheistical putting of the creature in a channel of independency on God, as if the creature could come and go of its own accord without commission from him,