The subject of the text is a remedy prescribed by Christ for certain fears which had sprung up in the mind of his Apostle. The occasion of these fears was (as we find by the context) a sight of the glory of Christ in his state of exaltation. This is a sight which all believers behold on earth.
I am now far from you in bodily presence; but I can with truth say, that my heart is nearer to you than before, as my eye turns joyfully, from the awful contemplation of sin and ungodliness around me, in this poor town, to those favoured spots of my dear native land, on which the Holy Ghost has lately been pouring out his quickening grace. I lately sent you, in print, a letter on the all-important subject of “THE KNOWLEDGE OF SIN;” and as I have many duties pressing on me here, I must fulfill my promise of writing to you in a very hurried way, hoping that you will read the letter I have alluded to, as if sent to you in writing, and addressed to you alone. I shall, then, say a word to the following classes among you.
John Flavel was well-acquainted with the things that most men fear. His first wife died in childbirth, along with their child. He was ejected from his pulpit in Dartmouth, England, in 1662 by the Act of Uniformity. Over the following decade he ministered secretly to his parishioners, under danger of arrest, in the woods and at Salstone Rock, an island in the Salcombe Estuary that is submerged at high tide, where the people would “linger in devout assembly till the rising tide drove them to their boats.”
The carefulness against which believers are admonished in our text is that spirit of excessive anxiety—that spirit of disquieting fear and oppressive sorrow, which temporal evils or the prospect of them is so apt to excite in the mind, and which is contrary to that patience, resignation, and hope which we are called to exercise towards God. The word in the original is still more expressive of this than in our common translation. The exhortation is to be understood in a qualified or modified sense. It relates obviously to temporal interests and objects.
