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.

The law and the gospel.

Thou must have salvation either at the door of the law or at the door of grace.  “But,” sayest thou, “I am for having it at the hands of both.  I will trust solely to neither.  I love to have two strings to my bow.  If one of them, as you think, can help me by itself, my reason tells me that both can help me better; therefore will I be righteous and good, and will seek by my goodness to be commended to the mercy of God; for surely he that hath something of his own to ingratiate himself into the favor of his prince withal, shall sooner obtain his mercy and favor than one that comes to him stripped of all good.”

I answer, “But there are not two ways to heaven:  there is but one ’new and living way which Christ hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;’ and besides that one, there is no more.  Heb. 10:  19-24.  Why then dost thou talk of two strings to thy bow?”