BOOK IV.—The danger of a loose, careless, and unfruitful profession
your hearts, is an active thing. If you have it but in your consciences, you cannot be quiet for it, it will put you upon doing, and it will accuse and excuse accordingly, as you obey or disobey it: Rom. 2:15,
It 'shews the work of the law written in their hearts,' and it works there, and all truth would break out in practice, if men did not 'imprison it' (so Rom. 1:18, the word imports). But if it have a place in the heart and the affections, it shews itself to be 'the word of life' indeed, Philip. 2:16, that would break out into the life. It is quick and powerful; 'Thy word was as fire in my bones,' says the prophet, Jer.
20:9, 'and I was weary of forbearing, and could not stay.' You carry fire in your bosoms, and fire will not be smothered.
BOOK IV: The danger of a loose, careless, and unfruitful profession The danger of a loose, careless, and unfruitful profession; or the danger of men's living under the dispensation and enjoyment of the ordinances of the gospel; viz., the preaching of the word, the sacrament of the Lord's supper, and church communion, if they live in sin, indulge their lusts, or be unfruitful.—Two cases resolved: 1.
How far a regenerate man is capable of sinning against knowledge; 2.
Wherein the sin against the Holy Ghost differs from other sins against knowledge.
CHAPTER I
The text in Heb. 6:7, 8, explained, with some observations from it.
For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: but that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose and is to be burned.—HEB.
6:7, 8.
MY design is to convince men of what great moment and consequence the ordinances of God are to the souls of them that live under the dispensation of them, for a blessing or a curse, according as they are fruitful and obedient under them and improving of them, or remiss and negligent; and by this consideration, to move them to all strictness and holiness of conversation. To this end I have taken this text.
1. The apostle speaks to professors that had long lived under the doctrine and means of salvation, who yet had made but small proficiency. Thus he speaks in the foregoing chapter, ver. 12,
'Whenas for the time ye ought to be teachers, you have need of one to teach you again which be the first principles.' Yea, and they were fallen back to this (as those words imply), to become 'such as have need of milk.' Whereupon he exhorts them, chap. 6:1, to 'go on to perfection,' namely, both in knowledge and holiness.
2. And he lays before them the danger that professors are in, if the means of grace have not their due effect; and this danger he sets before them in the example of many that have been enlightened and fall away, and are never renewed again to repentance.
3. He represents the condition of men under a similitude of the earth (to which he compares men's hearts), when it either proves fruitful or barren. Those hearts that drink in the rain and bring forth fruit, have a blessing to bring forth more fruit; and, on the contrary, that earth or those hearts that bring forth thorns upon often drinking in
that rain, are rejected and then cursed. The equity of this proceeding is taken from the same and like law, that by the same reason the fruitful should receive a blessing, by the same the unfruitful should have a rejection, for so both God and man use to do with the earth in like cases. When man hath bestowed his pains to till it, and God seconding man's labour hath sent his rain upon it, and it brings forth nothing but thorns, then it comes to pass, and that deservedly, that man rejects it (as the word is) and God curseth it; and the end or issue of it, is to be burned, together with its thorns.
I shall now open the particulars of this similitude, and unto what the allusion thereof should refer. Here is earth bringing forth of thorns, upon having the rain falling on it, rejected, cursed, and whose end is to be burnt, and the estate of men that fall away compared thereunto.
What is there in other scriptures?
No one place will help us to understand all of these jointly, but some places will give light unto the one, some unto the other.
More immediately Paul had in his eye the parable of our Saviour concerning the thorny ground: Mat. 13:22, 23, 'He also that received seed amongst the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.' The thorny ground, the third ground, as it is termed, notes out the highest sort of those temporaries that fall away; and answerably, it is the highest sort of those temporaries, and the eminentest gifts of them, Paul had been speaking of: ver. 4, 'For it is impossible that those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,' &c.
And as Christ there differenceth a good hearer's heart (the fourth ground) from this thorny ground, that the good earth receives the word, brings forth fruit sixty and an hundredfold, so answerably in this place, the earth that is fruitful is said to be blessed, that is, to bring forth more fruit, but that which doth not is cursed and rejected.
And again, as in the parable of the thorny ground this is added, that 'they bring not fruit to perfection,' that is, mature, kindly ripe, Luke
8:14, so upon this place interpreters have generally made the like observations, that of the good earth it is here said, τίκτουσα, it begets its fruits, brings them forth as a mature birth; of the other, the thorny, it is said, ἐκφέρουσα, it casts them out as abortive; so Grotius. And the different cause of these events in both places is in like manner resolved into the difference of the soil itself; for in all these sorts of grounds the seed sown is the same, the rain that falls the same; but there are said to be thorns in the one, that is, the roots of lusts remaining unpulled up, and these grow up again after the tops have been cut off, and insensibly draw away the sap, and so their hearts are never regenerated. The other is a good ground or soil, where lusts are parted with, and the heart changed, 2 Peter 1:14, and 'made partaker of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.' And thus Paul distinguisheth of these here, declaring professedly, that those that fall away never had true and saving graces: 'We hope better things of you, and things that accompany salvation,' instancing in their 'labour of love,' which the enlightenings in those other had not. Paul's hope of these hearers, that the issue of them would be different from the other, lay in this, that although their standing at a stay and not thriving was a shrewd, ill sign, yet notwithstanding that, he believed that they should never so apostatise as those others had done, because this apostasy befalls only those that never had honest and changed hearts, nor a work that had salvation in it; but he hopes better things of them, and to have been wrought in them, and things
that have salvation annexed to them; as if he had said, When I consider that first work upon you, how sound and thorough it was:
Heb. 10:32–34, 'When I but call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; partly, whilst ye were made a gazing-stock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used. For ye had compassion of me in bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.' He knew
God would certainly revive them again; but yet in the mean time, to quicken them, he lays before them, and minds them of the example of those that fall away.
2. That other part of the similitude, 'the earth that brings forth thorns is nigh unto cursing,' alludes manifestly to the state of the earth before the fall, and after the fall, compared together. Before the fall, the earth was so blessed of God, that it was fruitful with very small pains, by virtue of that first word of blessing, Gen. 1. Paradise is termed the garden of God, because so eminently blessed of God.
And thus it is with man's heart: his soul was planted, in the original constitution of it, a paradise unto God, planted with a right seed, out of which all graces rose up and grew, and man so long inherited a blessing from God; but falling from God, then, on the contrary, to shew how cursed man himself was, God cursed the very earth itself to bring forth thorns. Now as Adam was a type of Christ, and his world of Christ's world, so even this instance also represents what falls out under the dispensation of the gospel. Although man be fallen in Adam, yet to them that live under the gospel God sends his word and Spirit to manure them once more, and try if they will be fruitful (so you have it both in Isa. 5 and in the parable of the vineyard) God sends messengers and dressers early and late; and now the second time of itself it brings forth thorns, then (as of trees,
Jude says, ver. 12) it is 'twice dead,' and so twice cursed, first in Adam through his fall, then by their falling from a second work which they have lost.
3. For that other piece of the similitude, 'whose end is to be burnt.' It may be an allusion to the condition of the earth in Sodom and Gomorrah; for as the inhabitants of those cities are made types of men under the gospel, Jude 7, so here their land or earth may also be supposed to be so. Now, Gen. 13:10, it is said of that land for the fruitfulness of it, that it was 'watered as the garden of God.' So then, as the inhabitants of that land, the men of Sodom, are in Jude made
'examples of the vengeance of hell fire,' so the curse that befell that earth for their sakes, that was once the nearest resemblance of the earth in the state of innocency, may be considered to have been singled out by God to make it the shadow of the hearts of those most eminent professors, whom proving unfruitful, God above all other curseth. For, lo, this place and soil is not only turned into a barren wilderness, as the psalmist threatens, but into a lake (as hell is called) of brimstone. The vapours which arise out of it do kill all the birds that fly over it; and the apples that grow on the banks thereof to this day are a proverb, 'apples of Sodom,' looking fair, but falling to dust when touched, and all things burnt and blasted. And unto this earth, thus cursed and burnt up, doth the apostle here compare the hearts of the apostates cursed for being unfruitful and unworthy, abusing the means of grace.
4. There is one thing yet more that, in prosecution of this similitude, he compares the means of grace which these enjoy unto: (1.) rain;
(2.) the tillage or manurement of it, 'the earth that oft drinks in the rain, and is dressed.' This of the rain I know some apply to the preaching of the word, which is compared by Moses to the rain,
Deut. 32:2, and Isa. 55:10; yet I rather take it, that here the apostle
doth in this intend two sorts of means vouchsafed to men's spirits, whereof the one he compares to the rain which comes immediately from heaven, the other to that of man's work in manuring and tilling tee earth—so noting out distinctly inward influences, illapses, and dews of the Spirit by the rain; and denoting means outward dispensed by man's ministry by the other, as sacraments, preaching, admonition, or the like. And my reason is, because look as the things themselves in the similitude itself are different, the rain is from heaven, which God alone can give (who is thereby distinguished from the idol gods that cannot give rain), whereas the dressing, planting, yea, watering with waterpots,—Paul plants, Apollos waters,—are the works of man, and so a different means from that of the rain which God gives immediately; so answerably, in the means or dispensations vouchsafed by God, signified by these unto men living under the gospel, I observe how Paul doth as distinctly mention two sorts of them in the former part of his discourse: 1. Inward, a being enlightened, a partaking of the heavenly gift, and of the Holy Ghost.
2. Outward, teachings by men, Heb. 5:12, which also that passage, having 'tasted of the good word of God,' that is, of the gospel as preached by men, implies. And so the two parts of the similitude of my text (verses 7, 8) correspond fitly with those two parts of dispensations by God vouchsafed (verses 4–6), for even unregenerate men partake of the Holy Ghost, as rain and water from heaven, and it falls as the rain both on the hearts of bad as well as good.
I shall now add two sorts of observations, whereof the one concerns the ground that is cursed, the other the good ground, where true grace accompanying salvation is wrought.
Obs. 1. First concerning the bad ground that is cursed, observe, that in carnal hearts all influences from heaven and means outward
administered, do but nourish self, and in the end their lusts, although by accident, as Paul speaks of the law's causing sin, Rom.
7:7. The rain causeth briers to grow as well as corn and fruits, and a poisoned plant turns the rain into poison. Thus men turn grace into wantonness and presumption, and the power of men's lusts prevail over all such enlightenings. The thorns did not only overtop, outgrow, and choke the gifts and graces given, but did convert and turn the actings of those gifts into thorns. The rain rots dead oaks in the end, and so do the means these.
Obs. 2. That God, in rejecting such as are more deeply enlightened, proceedeth by degrees, and not until they have oft drunk in much means. So also the parable of the fig-tree holds forth, Luke 13:8; he first stayed two years, then afterwards one year longer, and digged and dunged it. He goes on by degrees: as, 1, he deserts it, which is here intimated by being nigh to cursing, that is, by withdrawments, in comparison unto what he once afforded in drawing nigh to them; then, 2, he curseth with final rejection, if they become such as God hath no pleasure in, which he shews by being more strange to them; yet he doth not presently curse them, though they are next door to it, as the word nigh here implies, and as it is elsewhere taken, Luke
21:30, 31.
Obs. 3. That in this life God may curse such men, when it is along while after that they are burnt and cast to hell. That indeed is the end of all, but it may come long after cursing. Thus the fig-tree, Mat.
21:19, stood above ground after it was cursed; and thus God aware against the Israelites in the wilderness long afore they died, 'that they should not enter into his rest.'
The second sort of observations are concerning the elect, those that here are supposed to have good hearts.
Obs. 1. That although they may stand long at a stay, and seem to go backward, yet God will not take the like advantage of them in the end. This is evident from this instance here. Many of these Hebrews that still professed were such, as 'for the time they might have been teachers;' and yet they still needed milk, the lowest nourishment, they needed even the first principles to be taught them. Yea, it is added in that 12th verse, that they 'were become such as needed milk.' Even as old men that are decayed come to live most on milk again, their stomachs are so weak, and so are these too decayed in strength and appetite to things holy. These deserved that cursing that was executed upon those others, that by such degrees fell off; but yet the apostle says, 'We hope better things of you,' for 'God is not unmindful of your labour of love,' &c., which they formerly had. They had such a work, which (as he loved*) would again revive, and yet he sets this severe dealing of God's with others before them to quicken them, this being in itself an ill sign in any, and shewed they were nigh unto cursing, and had best look to it. Solomon committed the same sin against Jeroboam, whom God set up, that Saul did against David, and yet God pardoned the one and cast off the other. And the reason is, because God treats in his dispensations of grace to the one according to the tenor of a covenant of works, but with the other according to the covenant of grace, which, Heb. 8:9, 10, is differenced thus, 'Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord: I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.'
Obs. 2. That even to good hearts the blessing of much fruit is not at first or presently vouchsafed, until they have oft drunk in the rain,