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 formed purposes of a new life, more fervent
desires that are now vanished, and the sinner returns to his dead and
dull temper.

2. If there be no disposition to reflect and consider the difference,
no sense of his loss, but he apprehends such workings of spirit in him
unnecessary troubles to him, and thinks it well he is delivered and
eased of them.

3. If in the time when he was under such workings of the Spirit he
had made known his case to his minister, or any godly friend, whose