In previous chapters, Cary emphasized becoming a wise steward who seeks to follow God's commands (where they're explicit) and discern what is good (where they're not). Now he moves on to address a couple specific sources of anxiety for the Christian who is trying to please God. Like previous practices that have been discussed, the attempt to have the right motivations is the result of sincere but unsound teaching. In short, motivations are important, but focusing on them leads us to miss what's most important.
Cary argues that we should be more concerned with the question of whether what we are doing is good than whether we have the right motivations. He describes a student who realized she needed to drop his course because she had too much on her plate, but was worried that her motivations were solely about grades and that dropping the course would amount to selfishness. This kind of deliberation, based on motivations rather than on what's good, leads into what he describes as an "endless inner labyrinth": we have many real, mixed motivations for what we do, and furthermore:
