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overcome the devil: holy prayer procures the ministry and service of angels, it rescinds the decrees of God, it cures sicknesses and obtains pardon, it arrests the sun in its course, and stays the wheels of the chariot of the moon; it rules over all God's creatures, and opens and shuts the storehouses of rain; it unlocks the cabinet of the womb, and quenches the violence of fire; it stops the mouths of lions, and reconciles our sufferance and weak faculties, with the violence of torment and sharpness of persecution; it pleases God and supplies all our needs. But prayer that can do thus much for us, can do nothing at all without holiness; for "God heareth not sinners, but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doth his will, him he heareth."

SERMON VII.

OF GODLY FEAR, &c.

PART I.

Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.— Heb. xii. part of the 28th and 29th verses.

ΕΧΩΜΕΝ τὴν χάριν, so our Testaments usually read it, from the authority of Theophylact; "Let us have grace," but some copies read in the indicative mood Exoμev, "We have grace, by which we do serve;" and it is something better consonant to the discourse of the Apostle. For having enumerated the great advantages, which the Gospel hath above those of the law, he makes an argument "a majori ;" and answers a tacit objection. The law was delivered by angels, but the Gospel by the Son of God: the law was delivered from Mount Sinai, the Gospel from Mount Sion, from "the heavenly Jerusalem:" the law was given with terrors and noises, with amazements of the standers-by, and Moses himself, "the minister, did exceedingly quake and fear," and gave demonstration how infinitely dangerous it was by

breaking that law to provoke so mighty a God, who with his voice did shake the earth; but the Gospel was given by a meek Prince, a gentle Saviour, with a still voice, scarce heard in the streets. But that this may be no objection, he proceeds and declares the terror of the Lord: Deceive not yourselves, our Lawgiver appeared so upon earth, and was so truly, but now he is ascended into heaven, and from thence he speaks to us.' "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh; for if they escaped not, who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven;" for as God once shook the earth, and that was full of terror, so our Lawgiver shall do, and much more, and be far more terrible, Ἔτι ἅπαξ ἐγὼ σείσω τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γὴν καὶ τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ Tǹv Enpáv, said the prophet Haggai, which the Apostle quotes here, he once shook the earth. But "once more I shake;" Glow, it is in the prophecy, "I will shake, not the earth only, but also heaven"," with a greater terror than was upon Mount Sinai, with the voice of an archangel, with the trump of God, with a concussion so great, that heaven and earth shall be shaken in pieces, and new ones come in their room. This is an unspeakable and an unimaginable terror: Mount Sinai was shaken, but it stands to this day; but when that shaking shall be, "the things that are shaken, shall be no more; that those things that cannot be shaken, may remain:" that is, not only that the celestial Jerusalem may remain for ever, but that you, who do not turn away from the faith and obedience of the Lord Jesus, you, who cannot be shaken nor removed from your duty, you may remain for ever; that when the rocks rend, and the mountains fly in pieces like the drops of a broken cloud, and the heavens shall melt, and the sun shall be a globe of consuming fire, and the moon shall be dark like an extinguished candle, then you poor men, who could be made to tremble with an ague, or shake by the violence of a northern wind, or be removed from your dwellings by the unjust decree of a persecutor, or be thrown from your estates by the violence of an unjust man, yet could not be removed from your duty, and though you went trembling, yet would go to death for the testimony of a holy cause, and you that would die for your faith, would also live

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according to it; you shall be established by the power of God, and supported by the arm of your Lord, and shall in all this great shaking be unmovable; as the corner-stone of the gates of the New Jerusalem, you shall remain and abide for ever. This is your case. And, to sum up the whole force of the argument, the Apostle adds the words of Moses: as it was then, so it is true now, "Our God is a consuming fire he was so to them that brake the law, but he will be much more to them that disobey his Son; he made great changes then, but those which remain are far greater, and his terrors are infinitely more intolerable; and therefore, although he came not in the spirit of Elias, but with meekness and gentle insinuations, soft as the breath of heaven, not willing to disturb the softest stalk of a violet, yet his second coming shall be with terrors such as shall amaze all the world, and dissolve it into ruin and a chaos. This truth is of so great efficacy to make us do our duty, that now we are sufficiently enabled with this consideration. This is the grace which we have to enable us, this terror will produce fear, and fear will produce obedience, and "we therefore have grace," that is, we have such a motive to make us reverence God and fear to offend him, that he that dares continue in sin, and refuses to hear him that speaks to us from heaven, and from thence shall come with terrors, this man despises the grace of God, he is a graceless, fearless, impudent man, and he shall find that true in hypothesi,' and in his own ruin, which the Apostle declares in 'thesi,' and by way of caution, and provisionary terror, "Our God is a consuming fire;" this is the sense and design of the text.

Reverence and godly fear, they are the effects of this consideration, they are the duties of every Christian, they are the graces of God. I shall not press them only to purposes of awfulness and modesty of opinion, and prayers, against those strange doctrines, which some have introduced into religion, to the destruction of all manners and prudent apprehensions of the distances of God and man; such as are the doctrine of necessity of familiarity with God, and a civil friendship, and a parity of estate, and an evenness of adoption; from whence proceed rudeness in prayer, flat and

a Deut. iv. 24.

indecent expressions, affected rudeness, superstitious sitting at the holy sacrament, making it to be a part of religion to be without fear and reverence; the stating of the question is a sufficient reproof of this folly; whatsoever actions are brought into religion without "reverence and godly fear," are therefore to be avoided, because they are condemned in this advice of the Apostle, and are destructive of those effects which are to be imprinted upon our spirits by the terrors of the day of judgment. But this fear and reverence, the Apostle intends, should be a deletery to all sin whatsoever: φοβερὸν, δηλητήριον φόβος, φυγή says the Etymologicum : "Whatsoever is terrible, is destructive of that thing for which it is so ;" and if we fear the evil effects of sin, let us fly from it, we ought to fear its alluring face too; let us be so afraid, that we may not dare to refuse to hear him whose throne is heaven, whose voice is thunder, whose tribunal is clouds, whose seat is the right hand of God, whose word is with power; whose law is given with mighty demonstration of the Spirit, who shall reward with heaven and joys eternal, and who punishes his rebels, that will not have him to reign over them, with brimstone and fire, with a worm that never dies, and a fire that never is quenched; let us fear him who is terrible in his judgments, just in his dispensation, secret in his providence, severe in his demands, gracious in his assistances, bountiful in his gifts, and is never wanting to us in what we need; and if all this be not argument strong enough to produce fear, and that fear great enough to secure obedience, all arguments are useless, all discourses are vain, the grace of God is ineffective, and we are dull as the dead sea; inactive as a rock, and we shall never dwell with God in any sense, but as "he is a consuming fire," that is, dwell in everlasting burnings.

Aidas nai Evλábela, Reverence and caution, modesty and fear, μετὰ εὐλαβείας καὶ δέους, so it is in some copies, with caution and fear; or if we render shaba to be fear of punishment,' as it is generally understood by interpreters of this place, and is in Hesychius εὐλαβεῖσθαι, φυλάττεσθαι, φοβείσθαι, then the expression is the same in both words, and it is all one with the other places of Scripture, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling," degrees of the same duty; and they signify all those actions and graces, which are the

"but the Spirit of adoption" and filial fear we must have'; God treats us like sons, he keeps us under discipline, but designs us to the inheritance: and his government is paternal, his disciplines are merciful, his conduct gentle, his Son is our Brother, and our Brother is our Lord, and our Judge is our Advocate, and our Priest hath felt our infirmities, and therefore knows how to pity them, and he is our Lord, and therefore he can relieve them and from hence we have affections of sons; so that a fear we must not have, and yet a fear we must have; and by these proportions we understand the difference: "Malo vereri quàm timeri me à meis," said one in the comedy, "I had rather be reverenced than feared by my children." The English doth not well express the difference, but the Apostle doth it rarely well. For that which he calls veuμa dovλeías in Rom. viii. 15. he calls πvεvμα deinías, 2 Tim. i. 7. The spirit of bondage is the spirit of timorousness, or fearfulness, rather than fear; when we are fearful that God will use us harshly: or when we think of the accidents that happen, worse than the things are, when they are proportioned by measures of eternity: and from this opinion conceive forced resolutions and unwilling obedience. Χείρους δὲ ὅσοι οὐ δὶ αἰδῶ, ἀλλὰ διὰ φόβον αυτὸ δρῶσι, καὶ φεύγοντες οὐ τὸ αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ τὸ λυπηρόν, said Aristotle; "Good men are guided by reverence, not by fear, and they avoid not that which is afflictive, but that which is dishonest;" they are not so good whose rule is otherwise. But that we may take more exact measures, I shall describe the proportions of Christian or godly fear by the following propositions.

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1. Godly fear is ever without despair;-because Christian fear is an instrument of duty, and that duty without hope can never go forward. For what should that man do, who, like Nausiclides, οὔτε ἔας, οὔτε φίλους ἔχει, hath neither spring nor harvest,' friends nor children, rewards nor hopes? A man will very hardly be brought to deny his own pleasing appetite, when for so doing he cannot hope to have recompense; when the mind of a man is between hope and fear, it is intent upon its work; "At postquam adempta spes est, lassus, curâ confectus, stupet," "If you take away the hope,

1 Rom. viii. 15,

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