Dedication
CHAP. VI: Prescribing the rules to cure our sinful fears, and prevent these sad and woful effects of them.
CHAP. VII: Answering the most material pleas for slavish fears, and dissolving the common objections against courage and constancy of mind in times of danger.
To the Right Worshipful Sir JOHN HARTOP, Knight and Baronet SIR, AMONG all the creatures God hath made (devils only excepted) man is the most apt and able to be his own tormentor; and of all the scourges with which he lasheth and afflicteth both his mind and body, none is found so cruel and intolerable as his own fears. The worse the times are like to be, the more need the mind hath of succour and encouragement, to confirm and fortify it for hard encounters; but from the worst prospect, fear inflicts the deepest and most dangerous wounds upon the mind of man, cutting the very nerves of its passive fortitude and bearing ability.
The grief we suffer from evil felt would be light and easy, were it not incensed by fear; reason would do much, and religion more, to demulse and lenify our sorrows, did not fear betray the succours of both. And it is from things to come that this prospecting creature raiseth up to himself vast hopes and fears: if he have a fair and encouraging prospect of serene and prosperous days, from the scheme and position of second causes, hope immediately fills his
heart with cheerfulness, and displays the signals of it in his very face, answerable to that fair, benign aspect of things: but if the face of things to come be threatening and inauspicious, fear gains the ascendent over the mind; and unmanly and unchristian faintness pervades it, and, among the many other mischiefs it inflicts, this is not the least, that it brings the evil of to-morrow upon to-day, and so makes the duties of to-day wholly unserviceable to the evils of tomorrow; which is as much as if man having an intricate and difficult business cut out for the next day, which requires the utmost intention, both of his mind and body, and (haply) might be prosperously managed, if both were duly prepared, should lie all the night restless and disquieted about the event, torturing and spending himself with his own presaging fears, so that when the day is come, and the business calls for him, his strength is no way equal to the burden of it, but he faints and fails under it.
There is indeed an excellent use that God makes of our fears, to stimulate our slothful hearts to greater vigilance and preparation for evils; and there is a mischievous use Satan makes of our fears to cast us under despondency and unbecoming pusillanimity: and I reckon it one of the greatest difficulties of religion, to cut, by a thread here, and so to manage ourselves under threatening or doubtful providences, as to be touched with so much sense of those approaching evils as may prepare us to bear them; and yet to enjoy that constancy and firmness of mind, in the worst times, that may answer the excellent principles we are professedly governed by.
These last times are certainly the most perilous times; great things are yet to be acted upon the stage of this world, before it be taken down; and the scena antipenultima, latter-end, I say, not the last, will be a tragedy. There is an ultima clades adhuc metuenda a dismal slaughter of the witnesses of Christ yet to be expected: the last bite of
the cruel beast will be deadly, and if we flatter not ourselves, all things seem to be disposing themselves in the course of providence towards it.
But, Sir, if our union with Christ be sure in itself, and sure to us also; if faith give us the daily visions and prelibations of the world to come, what well-composed spectators shall we be of these tragedies!
Let things be tossed susque, deque, and the mountains cast into the midst of the sea, yet then the assured Christian may sing his song upon Alamoth*, A song composed for God's hidden ones. This so poiseth and steadies the mind, that we may enjoy the comfort and tranquillity of a resigned will, when others are at their wit's end.
With design to promote this blessed frame, in my own and others hearts in these frightful times, I meditated, and now publish this small tract, to which a dear friend (from whom I have often had the fair idea and character of your excellent spirit) hath occasioned the prefixing of your worthy name; I beg pardon for such an unusual presumption, as also your charity in censuring the faults that will appear in it, when it shall come under so exact and judicious an eye; it may be useful though it be not elegant; its seasonableness is its best commendation, and its aim better than its performance. As for you, Sir, I hope faith hath really placed your soul in that serene and happy station where Seneca fancied moral virtue to have placed a good man, Fatendum est, cacumine Olympi constitutes, supra ventos et procellas, et omnes res humanas: Above the storms and tempests of this unquiet and distracting world. But there are many gracious persons at this day labouring under their own fears, and whose hearts are ready to fail with looking for those things that are coming to try them that dwell upon the earth; and possibly somewhat of relief may be administered to many such, by this discourse; some bivious and staggering souls may be established; some discouraged