work be done and their peace
made. For tho it can be of no use for them to know the former, and
therefore they have no means appointed them by which to know it, 'tis
of great use to apprehend the latter; and they have sufficient ground
for the apprehension. All the cautions and warnings wherewith the Holy
Spirit abounds, of the kind with those already mentioned, have that
manifest design. And nothing can be more important, or opposite to
this purpose, than that solemn charge of the great apostle: "Work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling"; considered together with
the subjoined ground of it; "For it is God that worketh in you to will
and to do of his own good pleasure." How correspondent is the one with
the other; work for He works: there were no working at all to any
purpose, or with any hope, if He did not work. And work with fear and
trembling, for He works of His own good pleasure, q.d., "'Twere the
greatest folly imaginable to trifle with One that works at so perfect
liberty, under no obligation, that may desist when He will; to impose
upon so absolutely sovereign and arbitrary an Agent, that owes you
nothing; and from whose former gracious operations not complied with
you can draw no argument, unto any following ones, that because He
doth, therefore He will. As there is no certain connection between
present time and future, but all time is made up of undepending, not
strictly coherent, moments, so as no man can be sure, because one
now exists, another shall; there is also no more certain connection
between the arbitrary acts of a free agent within such time; so that
I can not be sure, because He now darts in light upon me, is now
convincing me, now awakening me, therefore He will still do so, again
and again." Upon this ground then, what exhortation could be more
proper than this? "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling."
What could be more awfully monitory and enforcing of it than that He
works only of mere good will and pleasured How should I tremble to
think, if I should be negligent, or undutiful, He may give out the
next moment, may let the work fall, and me perish? And there is more
especial cause for such an apprehension upon the concurrence of such
things as these:

1. If the workings of God's Spirit upon the soul of a man have been
more than ordinarily strong and urgent, and do not now cease: if
there have been more powerful convictions, deeper humiliations, more
awakened fears, more