honour to be employed in higher and more cleanly work, when others are busied about baser employments. Christians, your work is the highest and most noble service imaginable: you are not at all to set your hands to any foul office: you have nothing to do with that inire and sink, in which wicked men are raking; yea, and it is their work to do it: no; but your work is all spiritual, consisting of the same pure employment that the angels in heaven spend their eternity about. Holy thoughts, divine affections, heavenly meditations, spiritual duties, in these lies your work; which, because of its purity, is therefore very honourable.

2. Your work is honourable, because it is the Service of a most Honourable Master.

We account it a great credit, to tend immediately upon the person of some prince or potentate: but what is this, to their honour, who are called always to attend upon the person of God himself, who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords; to be continual waiters about his throne? God hath but two thrones: his throne of glory in the highest heavens, about which angels and glorified saints are the attendants; and his throne of grace, to which you are called. Angels and saints are but your fellowattendants: and, if they see his glory in the highest exaltation, you are admitted to see it in the next degree. Yea, and herein is your honour so great, that you are capable but of one preferment more; and that is, of being removed from one throne to the other, from attending upon the throne of grace to attend upon the throne of glory: so great is your honour.

3. Your work is such, as makes you, not so much Servants, as Friends unto God.

It is an honour to be servant unto a king; but, much more, of a servant, to become a favourite. Thus it is in the service of God. You are not only servants, but friends and favourites. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you: a strange speech! one would think the doing of what is commanded, is the office of a servant, rather than of a friend: no, says Christ: Henceforth I call you not servants.....but.....friends: Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. And, certainly, no title so glorious, as that, which God put upon Abraham, to be the friend of God. Well, then, let wicked men go on scoffing and mocking at obedience in the people of God, let them look on them as poor and low spirited persons; yet can there be no honour like unto theirs, to be attendants upon, yea the friends

of, the Great God of Heaven: and there can be no discredit só base as theirs, who are slaves to the Devil, who is God's slave; to be a slave unto the Devil, whom the people of God have in part subdued and overcome, and over whom they shall shortly at once perfectly triumph.

IV. Having thus, by several arguments, pressed, this great duty of working out our own salvation, I should now proceed to some other things that are necessary to be spoken unto from this doctrine. But because this is a duty of so vast importance, and of so universal concernment; and the slothfulness and backwardness of many so great, and, if persisted in, will be so ruinous and destructive, I SHALL FURTHER URGE THE PRACTICE OF THIS DUTY upon the consciences of sinners, by these following CONSIDERATIONS.

i. THIS WORKING FOR SALVATION IS THE MOST DELIGHTFUL WORK AND EMPLOYMENT THAT A CHRISTIAN CAN BE ENGAGED IN. What is it, that makes the whole world so busy in the service of Sin and Satan, but only pleasure, which they either find or imagine? The Devil baits all his temptations, with this enticing witchcraft, which the world calls pleasure; and this is that, which makes them so successful. But, hath the Devil engrossed all pleasure unto his service? Can the ways of God promise no delight? Are they only rough and rugged ways? David certainly thought otherwise, when, speaking of the commandments of God, he tells us, they were sweeter than the honey and the honey-comb: Ps. xix. 10: he could squeeze honey out of them: it is an expression, that sets forth the exceeding pleasantness and delight, that are to be found in the ways of obedience. And, truly, the whole Book of Psalms is abundantly copious, in setting forth that delight, that is to be found in the ways of God. Ask, therefore, the children of God, who are the only sufficient judges in this matter, and they will tell you with one consent, that they know no delight on earth comparable to that delight that is to be found in obedience. Indeed, if you are only taken with a soft, luxurious, washy pleasure; this is not to be found in the ways of holiness: but, if a severe delight can affect you, a delight that shall not effeminate but ennoble you; if you desire a masculine, rational, vigorous pleasure and delight; you need not seek any further for it, than in the ways of obedience.

There are Two things, that make this working for salvation to be so pleasant: the suitableness of this work to the agent or worker, and the visible success and progress of the work itself: and both these make the working out of salvation exceedingly pleasant and delightful to the people of God.

1. It is a work Suited to their Natures; and that makes it pleasant.

As Jesus Christ had, in a physical sense, so every Christian hath, in a moral sense, two natures in one person. There is the divine nature, or the nature of God; and there is the huinan, corrupt nature, the nature of sinful man. And each of these has inclinations suited unto it: there is the carnal part, and that is too apt to be seduced and drawn away with the pleasures of sin, that are objects proportioned to the carnal part; but then there is also a divine, and, if I may so call it, a supernatural nature, imprinted by regeneration, that only doth relish heavenly and spiritual things: so that it is not more natural to a godly man, by reason of the propensions of the old nature, to sin against God; than it is natural to him, by reason of the propensions of the new nature, to obey and serve God. Now when nature acts suitably to its own sway and pondus, this must needs cause two things: first, facility and easiness; secondly, delight and complacency. Streams flow from the fountain with ease, because they take but their natural course: so the works of obedience flow easily from that fountain-principle of grace that is broken up in the hearts of the children of God, because they flow naturally from them; and, therefore, because nature makes things easy, that easiness will make them pleasant and delightful. It is true, indeed, when they work, there is an opposition and reluctancy from their other contrary nature; for, as they act suitably to the one, so they act quite contrary to the other nature: but doth not the gracious and new nature as strongly wrestle against and oppose the workings and eruptions of the old nature, as the old doth the workings of the new? It doth: and therefore you, that are truly regenerate, never sin because of the easiness of it, because of its suitableness, because you must offer violence to your nature if you resist a temptation: do you not offer violence to your nature, if you close with that temptation? You are not all of one piece, if I may so speak, if you are regenerate. And what! must the corrupt part only be indulged and gratified, and must the renewed part be always opposed? Why should not grace, since it

is as much, nay more yourself than sin is, why should not that have the same scope and liberty to act freely as sin doth? Truly, these things are riddles to wicked men; and they are unfit judges in this case: they wonder what we mean, when we speak of easiness and delight in ways of obedience, which they never found to be otherwise than the most burthensome thing in the world. And, truly, it is no wonder; for they have no principle suited to these things: they are made up only of the old nature, that is as contrary and repugnant to them as darkness is to light. But, if once God renew and sanctify them, then they will confess as we do, that the works of God have more easiness in them than the generality of the world do imagine. And therefore St. Paul tells us, that he delighted in the law of God after the inward man: Rom. vii. 22. But why after the inward man, but because, though his corrupt part was contrary thereunto, yet his renewed part, which he calls his inward man, was suited to the duties of the Law of God, and carried him out as naturally to obedience as the spark flies upward? And, hence it is, that the children of God delight in the ways of obedience, because they suit with their new nature that is implanted in them.

2. Another thing, that makes working for salvation so delightful is, that Visible Success, that the children of God gain; and that Visible Progress, that they make in this work.

Nothing doth usually cause greater delight in work, than to see some riddance in it; and that we are like, at length, to bring it to some issue. So, truly, this is that, which mightily delights the children of God: to see that their work goes forward; that their graces thrive; that their corruptions pine and consume away; that they are much nearer salvation, than when they first believed; that they are perfecting holiness in the fear of God, and every day growing nearer unto heaven and happiness than other; and that, though these works of theirs are now imperfect, yet they shall be shortly finished and consummate in glory.

Well, then, if pleasure and delight do affect you, here you see is that, which is solid and substantial: it springs from success in your work, and from that suitableness that is in your renewed part thereanto. And, therefore, the more work, the greater delight you find; because the greater progress you make, and the more suitable to it your will becomes. Nay, your delight is of the same nature with that, which you shall enjoy in heaven. The work, in which the blessed are there employed, is of the

same nature with yours: only, their suitableness to it is perfect, and therefore their delight and pleasure is perfect: and, accordingly, the more suitable your hearts are to your work, the more delight and pleasure you will find in it. This is that, which makes heaven a place of happiness, because there is no corruption, no body of sin and death there, to make those duties, that are there required from glorified saints, to be irksome and grievous to them.

ii. Consider THE EXCEEDING GREATNESS OF YOUR REWARD. Doth Job fear God for nought? was the cavil of Satan, when God applauded himself that he had such a servant as Job was upon the earth. The Devil himself thought it no wonder, that Job should fear and serve a rewarding God; a God, whose hands are as full of blessings, as his mouth is full of commands. And, yet, what were these great somethings, that the Devil envies Job for; and thinks every one would have done as much as he, if they had but as great a recompence for it? it was but hedging him about, but blessing the works of his hands, and increasing his substance; as it is in Job i. 10. Alas! these are poor, mean rewards, to what God intends to bestow: such rewards they are, as that God still reckons himself in arrears to his children, till he hath given them something better than he can bestow upon them here upon earth: these things he casts but as crumbs unto dogs; when he reserves a far better portion for his children. And yet Satan thinks Job well paid for his service, in having these lower enjoyments, in causing the works of his hands to prosper : Doth Job serve God for nought? And, therefore, if Satan doth not wonder that Job fears and serves God for temporal mercies, will it not be to the great wonder of Satan himself that you should not fear and serve God, who have infinitely better things promised to you than temporal mercies are? Do you deserve your breath, in spending of it some few hours in prayer? or, do you deserve your plentiful estate, by laying out some small part of it for God? Why, to be able to think or speak, to enjoy health and strength, are such mercies, though outward mercies, as can never be recompensed to God; although you should think of nothing but of his glory, and speak of nothing but of his praise; although you should impair your health and waste your strength, and languish away in the performance of holy duties. These, though they are obligations to obedience, yet they are not the reward of obedience: no; far higher and more glorious things