an account: that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.

5. Seeing this is not the world in which we are always to live together, let us labour to improve our present day, that we may have a happy meeting in that day we are looking for. Whenever I speak in the name of Chrift, O that I may do it in the view and expectation of his appearing again, travelling in birth till Christ be formed in you: and may you, under the fame apprehenfion, hear as for your lives and eternity : and as you are our hope now, may you be our joy in the presence of our Lord Jesus Chrift at his coming.

SER

SERMON ΧΧ.

PHILIP. II. 12, 13.

---Work out your own falvation with fear and trembling. For it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

TH

HESE words are an exhortation to that which is our main business in this present world; The working out of our falvation; and to this as attended with a direction as to the manner of doing it, viz. with fear and trembling: both the one and the other is pressed with the most encouraging motive, For it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

There is no ground for despondency on one hand, nor for presumption on the other. The work is great and difficult; yet to carry you on in it, you may expect a power above your own : God worketh in you to will and to do. But herein he is a free Agent, and may cease when he pleafeth: wherefore work with fear and trembling; for he worketh of, or according to his good pleafure.

Doct.

Doct. The working out of our falvation is the main business we have to do in this world : in which the confideration of God's free concurrence, should engage us to labour with the most ferious diligence.

In speaking to this, I shall endeavour to shew, I. What is supposed in the command to work out our falvation?

II. What is included in the falvation we are to work out.

III. What is implied in our working out this, and doing it with fear and trembling.

IV. That it is God that worketh in all that are saved, both to will and to do, and this of his good pleasure.

V. The force of the reason from fuch a representation of the divine influence to quicken and engage us to fet about our part with the utmost diligence.

Lastly, The application.

I. What is supposed in the command to work out our falvation? And here three things are obvious, viz.

1. That we, while in our natural state, are loft creatures, liable to perish for ever.

Our being enjoined to work out our falvation, speaks us antecedently to this, in a lapsed miferable state; at present so, and in danger of one inconceivably worse, and that it is not with us now, as it was when men came first out of the hand of God. Man was then adorned with his Maker's image, happy in his love; and had he preferved himself innocent, he had remained always fo. But Man being in Honour did not long abide so: he foon finned and forfeited his hopes of heaven, loft the happiness he enjoyed upon earth, and laid himself open to an everlasting hell: intailing the same on all his offspring, who, as born in fin, are by nature children of wrath, doomed to it, and prepared for it.

Salvation, as now become needful, speaks the primitive law broken, grace and heaven loft, the foul and body defiled, and both under the sentence of death, the wages of fin. Our being bid to work out our falvation, supposes this to be our antecedent condition, which may well keep us humble as long as we live. It is supposed,

2. That there is a way open, by which we may be delivered from all that evil present and future, which sin deserves, and may be made partakers of the glory and blessedness revealed in the gospel, as purchased by the death of Chrift, and promised for his fake to all that believe: for we had never been enjoined to work out our falvation, had we been left under an inevitable neceffity of perishing.

This command of working out our salvation is given us after we have had an account of the Redeemer's fufferings, by which our salvation is obtained, and after his exaltation to the right-hand of God, in order to its being applied. This was the end of his being fent, God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life, John iii. 16.

Apostate angels are utterly lost. No Saviour is provided for them, no falvation is obtainable

I

by

by them: they have no ground to expect it, or encouragement to labour after it. It would be all in vain for them to feek it: but the Son of man is come into our world, to feek and to fave that which was lost, Luke xix. 10. He was wounded for our tranfgreffions: he was bruised for our iniquities, had the chastisement of our peace upon him, and therein laid the ground of our eternal redemption. By his fufferings and death, justice is fatisfied, reconciliation made, death abolished, and so a way is opened to escape the wrath threatened; and life and immortality is brought to light through the gospel, which we are not only to view, but to lay hold on. It is our Jefus, who has delivered us from the wrath to come, by procuring the pardon of fin that exposed us to it, through his dying on the cross a facrifice that we might never fall under ît; and who now ever lives to make interceffion at God's right-hand, that he may fave to the uttermost all that come unto God by him.

3. This farther is supposed, that God is very defirous of their salvation, to whom this command is sent, and that nothing pleaseth him more than our compliance with it, and setting about it. And in proof of what is here supposed, it is elfewhere pathetically expressed, as 2 Pet. iii. 9. Not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, Ezek. xxxiii. 11. As I live, faith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he may turn from his way, and live. Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die, O house of Ifrael? i. e. Do not destroy your fouls, after I have done so much for VOL. II.

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