p. 149 | Fear by Jeremy Taylor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 7, 1862

Fear.

By Jeremy Taylor

FEAR is the great bridle of intemperance, the modesty of the spirit, and the restraint of gayeties and dissolutions; it is the girdle to the soul, and the handmaid to repentance, the arrest of sin, and the cure or antidote to the spirit of reprobation; it preserves our apprehensions of the divine majesty, and hinders our single actions from combining to sinful habits; it is the mother of consideration, and the nurse of sober counsels, and it puts the soul to fermentation and activity, making it pass from trembling to caution, and from caution to carefulness, from carefulness to watchfulness, from thence to prudence; and by the gates and progresses of repentance, it leads the soul on to love, and to felicity, and to joys in God that shall never cease again. Fear is the guard of a man in the

days of prosperity, and it stands upon the watch-towers and spies the approaching danger, and gives warning to them that laugh loud, and feast in the chambers of rejoicing, where a man cannot consider by reason of the noises of wine, and jest, and music; and if prudence takes it by the hand, and leads it on to duty, it is a state of grace, and an universal instrument to infant religion, and the only security of the less perfect persons; and in all senses is that homage we owe to God, who sends often to demand it, even then, when he speaks in thunder, or smites by a plague, or awakens us by threateningness, or discomposes our easiness by sad thoughts, and tender eyes, and fearful hearts, and trembling considerations.—Jeremy Taylor.