FAITHFUL. "I did not know him at first, but as he went by I
perceived the holes in his hands and his side; then I concluded that
he was our Lord. So I went up the hill."
CHRISTIAN. "The man that overtook you was Moses. He spareth none,
neither knoweth he how to show mercy to those that transgress his
law."
FAITHFUL. "I know it very well; it was not the first time that he
has met with me. It was he that came to me when I dwelt securely at
home, and that told me he would burn my house over my head if I
staid there."
This ungodly fear of God, is that which will put men upon adding to
the revealed will of God their own inventions and their own
performances of them, as a means to pacify the anger of God. For the
truth is, where this ungodly fear reigneth, there is no end of law
and duty. When those that you read of in the hook of Kings, 2 Kings,
17: 26, were destroyed by the lions because they had set up idolatry
in the land of Israel, they sent for a priest from Babylon that
might teach them the manner of the God of the land; but behold, when
they knew it, being taught it by the priest, yet their fear would
not suffer them to be content with that worship only. "They feared
the Lord," saith the text, "and served their own gods." And again,
"So these nations feared the Lord, and served their graven images."
It was this fear also that put the Pharisees upon inventing so many
traditions; as the washing of cups, and beds, and tables, and
basins, with abundance of such other gear. Mark 7: 4. None knows the
many dangers that an ungodly fear of God will drive a man into.
How has it racked and tortured the papists for hundreds of years
together! for what else is the cause but this ungodly fear, at least
in the most simple and harmless of them, of their penances--as
creeping to the cross, going barefoot on pilgrimage, whipping
themselves, wearing of sackcloth, saying so many pater-nosters, so
many Ave-Marias, making so many confessions to the priest, giving so
much money for pardons, and abundance of other the like---but this
ungodly fear of God? For could they be brought to believe this
doctrine, that Christ was delivered for our offences and raised
again for our justification, and to apply it by faith with godly
boldness to their own souls, this fear Would vanish, and so
consequently all those things with which they so needlessly and
unprofitably afflict themselves, offend God, and grieve his people.