Upon the incurableness of some bad ground,
Husbandry Spiritualized; or, For strangeness now is got between My God and me, as maybe seen By what is now, and what was then; :
'Tis just as if I were two men.
My fragrant branches blasted be,
No fruits like those that I can fee.
Some canker-worm lies at my root, Which fades my leaves, destroys my fruit.
My fout is banish'd from thy fight, For this it mournethday and night.
Yet why dost thou desponding lie ?
With Jonah call a backward eye.
Sure in thyGodhelp maybe had, There's precious balm inGilead.
That God that made me spring at first, When I was barren and accurst, Can much more easily restore My soul to what it was before.
'Twas Heman's, Job's, and David's case, Yet all recovered werebygrace.
A word, a smile on my poor soul, Will make it perfect found and whole.
A glance of thine hath soon diffolv'd Afoul in finand grief involv'd.
Lord, if thou canst not work the cure,, I am contented to endure.
CHAP.
VI.
Upon the incurableness of somebadGround.
No Skill can mend the miry ground; and sure Somefouls thegospelleaves as pasta cure.
OBSERVATION.
LTHOUGH the industry and skill of the husbandman can make some ground that was useless and bad, good for tillage and pasture, and improve that which was barren; and by his cost and pains make one acre worth ten ; yet such is the nature of some rocky or miryground, where the water stands, and there is no way to cleanse it, that it can never be made fruitful.
The husbandman is fainto let it alone, as an incurable piece of waste or worthless ground ; and though the funandclouds shed their influences on it, as well asuponbetter
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land, yet that doth not at all mend it. Nay, the more showers : it receives, the worse it proves. For these do noway secundate or improve it; nothing thrives there, but worthless figs and rushes. 1
APPLICATION.
ANY also, there are, under the gospel, who are given M overbyGod to judicial blindness, hardness of heart, a reprovate sense, and perpetual barrenness; so that how excellent soever the means are, which they enjoy, and how efficacious soever to the conversion, edification, and salvation of others; yet they shall never do their souls good. Ezek. xlvii .
9, 11. " Everythingwheresoeverthe river comes shall live,but " the miryplaces thereof, and the marshes thereof shall never
" be healed, but be given to salt;" (i. e.)given to an obstinate and everlasting barrenness. Compare Deut. ix. 23. By: these waters, faith the judicious † Mr. Strong, understand the doctrine of the gospel ; as Rev. xxi. 2. a river of water of life, clear as crystal ; Hicfluvius eft uberrima doctrina Chrifti, faith
Mr. Brightman.
This river is the most fruitful doctrine of Christ ; yet these waters do not heal the miry, marshy places,
(i. e.) men that live unfruitfully under ordinances, who are : compared to miry, marshy places, in three respects :
(1.) In miry places the water hath not free passage, but frands, and settles there. So it is with these barren souls, therefore the apostle prays, that the gospel may run, and be glorified, 2 Theff. iii. 1.
The word is said to run, when it meets with no stop, Gum liberepropagatur, when it is freely propagated, and runs through the whole man ; when it meets with no stop, either in the mouth of the speaker, or hearts of the hearers, as it doth in these.
(2.) Inamiry place the earth and water is mixed together ; this mixture makes mire. So when the truths of God do mix with the corruptions of men, that they either hold some truths, and yet live in their lusts ; or else when men do make use of the truths of God to justify and plead for their sins.
Or, (3.) When, as inamiry place the longer the water stands in it, the worse it grows; so the longer men abide under ordinances, the more filthy and polluted they grow : These are the miry places that cannot be healed, their disease is incurable, desperate.
Othis is a sad case ! and yet very common; many persons :
* Spiritual barrenness. p. 8.
H 2
Husbandry Spiritualized; or, are thus given over as incorrigible, and hopeless,Res. xxii. tr.
"Let him that is filthy be filthy still." Jer. vi. 29." Reprobate " silver shallmen call them, for the Lord hath rejected them. "
Isa. vi . 10, 11. " Go make the heart of this people fat, their ears " dull," &c.
Christ executes, by the gospel, that curse upon many fouls, which he denounced against the fig-tree, Matth. xxi. 19. "Let
" no fruit grow on thee henceforth for ever; and immediately:
" the fig-tree withered away." To be given up to such a condition, is a fearful judgment indeed, a curse with a witness; the sum of all plagues, miseries, and judgments, a fatal stroke at the root itself.
It is a woe to have a bad heart (faith one) but it is the depth of woe to have a heart that never shall be made better.
To be barren under the gospel, is a forejudgment, but to have thatpertinaxfterilitas, a pertinacious barrenness ; this is to be twice dead, and plucked up by the root, as Jude speaks.
And to shewyou the woful, and miserable state and plight of such men, let the following particulars be weighed.
(1.) It is a stroke at the soul itself, an inward spiritual judgment; and by how much the more inward and spiritual any judgment is, by so much the more dreadful and lamentable.
As foul-mercies are the best of mercies, so soul-judgments are the saddest of all judgments.
If itwerebutatemporal stroke upon the body, the loss of an eye, anear, a hand, afoot, though in itself it would be aconfiderable loss, yet it were nothing to this.
Omnia Deus dedit duplicia, faith Chryfoftom, speak-ingof bodily members; God hath givenmen double members, two eyes, if one be loft, the other supplies its wants; two hands, two ears, two feet, that the failing of one may be supplied by the help of the other ; animamvero unam, butone foul ; if that perish, there is not another to supply its loss. " The soul,
" faith a * heathen, is the man, that which is seen, is not the " man." The apostle calls the body a vile body, Phil. iii. 21. and so it is, compared with the soul ; and Daniel calls it the
Sheath, which isbutacontemptible thing to the sword which is in it. O it were far better that in any bodies perish, than one soul; that every member were made the feat and subject of the most exquisite torture, than such a judgment should fall upon the soul.
(2.) It is the severest stroke God can inflict upon the foul in this life, to give it up to barrenness ; because it cuts off all hopes, frustrates all means, nothing can be a blessing to him.
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Ifonecomes from the dead, if angels should descend from heaven to preach to him, there is no hope of him. If God shut up am an, who can open ? Job xii. 14. As there was none found in heaven or earth that could open the seals of that book, Rew v. 5. to is there no opening by the hand of the most able and skiltul mini try, those seals of hardness, blindness and unbelief, thus impressed upon the spirit.
Whom justice to locks up, mercy will never let out. This is that which maks up the anathema Maranatha; 1 Cor. xvi. 22. which is the dreadful left curse in all the book of God, accursed till the Lord come.
(3.) It is the most indifcernible stroke to themselves that can be, and by that so much the more desperate.
Hence there is said to be poured out upon them the spirit of slumber, Ifa. xxix. 10. " The Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of " deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes."
Montanus renders it, The Lord hath mingled upon you the spirit of deep sleep.
And so it is an allusion toafoporiferous medicine mingled, and made up of opium, and such-like stupefactive ingredients, which caftsa man into such a deep sleep, that do what you will to him, he feels, he knows it not.
"Make their eyes heavy and " their ears dull; left they should fee, and hear, and be con- " verted," Ifa. vi. 9, 10. This is the heart that cannot repent, which is fpokenof, Rom. ii. 5.
For men are not sensible at all of this judgment, they do not in the least suspect it, and that is their misery.
Though they be cursed trees, which shall never bear any fruit to life, yet many times they bear abundance of other fair and pleasant fruits to the eye, excellent gifts, and rare endowments; and these deceive and undo them.
Mat. vii. 22. " We have prophesied in thy name;" this makes the wound desperate, that there is no finding of it, no prope to search it.
(4.) It is a stroke that cuts off from the soul all the comfort and sweetness of religion. A man may pray, hear, and confer, but all those duties are dry stalks to him, which yield no meat, no solid substantial nutriment; some common touches upon the affections he may sometimes find in duty, the melting voice or rhetoric of the preacher may perhaps strike his natural affections, as another tragical story pathetically delivered may do ; but to have any real communion with God in ordinances, any discoveries or views of the beauty of the Lord in them, that he cannot have; for these are the special effects and operations of the spirit, which are always restrained.
God hath said to such, as he did to them, Gen. vi. 3."My "Spirit shall no longer strivewiththem;" andthenwhat sweet
Husbandry Spiritualized ; or, ness is there in ordinances ? What is the word, separated from the Spirit, but a dead letter? It is the Spirit that quickens,
2 Cor. iii. 2.
Friend, thou must know that the gospel works not like a natural cause upon those that hear it; if so, the effect would always follow, unless miraculoussy stopt and hindred ; but it works like a moral instituted cause, whose efficacy and success depends upon the arbitrary concurrence of the Spirit with it.
" The wind blows where it listeth, so is everyone " that is born of the Spirit," John iii. 8. " Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth."
Ordinances are as the pool of Bethesda, which had its healing virtue only when the angel moved the waters; but the Spirit never moves savingly upon the waters of ordinances, for the healing of their souls, how many years soever they lie by them, though others feel a . divine power in them, yet they shall not. As the men that travelled with Paul, when Christ appeared to him from heaven, they saw the light, but heard not the voice which he heard to salvation: So it is with these, they fee the ministers, hear the words, which are words of salvation to others, but not so to them.
Concerning these miserable souls, we may sigh, and fay to Christ, as Martha did concerning her brother Lazarus:
Lord, it thou hadst been here, in this sermon, or in this prayer, this soul had not remained dead.
But here is the woe that lies upon him, God is departed from the means, and none can help him.
(5.) It is such a stroke upon the spiritofman, asisafearful Agn of his eternal reprobation.
It is true, we cannot positive. ly say of a man in this life, he is are probate, one that God will never thew mercy to; but yet there are some probable marks of it upon some men in this world, and they are of a trembling consideration wherever they appear; of which this is one of the saddest, 2 Cor. iv. 3. " I four gospel be hid, it is
" hid to those that are loft, in whom the God of this world " hath blinded the minds of them that believe not; left the 44 light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of " God, should shine unto them."
So Acts xiii. 48. " As many as were ordained unto eternal life believed.
Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep," John x. 26. And agaio, Matth. xiii. 11. " To you it is given to know the mysteries
" of the kingdom, but to them it is not given."
There cannot be a more dreadful character of a person marked out for wrath, than to continue under the ordinances, as the rocks and mirv places do under the natural influences of heaven.
What blessed opportunities had Judas? He was under Christ's own
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ministry, he often heard thegraciouswordsthatproceeded out of his mouth; he was day and night in his company, yet never the better; and why ? Because he was the son of perdition, that is, am an appointed to destruction and wrath.
(6.) And lastly, To add no more.
It is such a stroke of Goduponthe fouls of men, as immediately fore-runs hell and damnation , Heb. vi. 8. " But that which beareth thorns and " briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to " be burnt."
So that look as some faints, in this world, have had a prelibation or foretaste of heaven,which the scripture calls the earnest of the spirit ; fo this is a precursor of hell, a sign of wrath at the door. We may say of it, as it is said of the pale horse in the Revelation, that hell follows it.
" If a man abide " not in me, (faith Christ, John xv. 6) he is cast forth asa " branch, and withered ;" which is the very state of these barren, cursed souls. And what follows ? Why, faith he, men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
Lo, this is the vengeance which the gospel executesuponthis barren ground.
REFLECTION S.
1. Well then, blessed be God that made me feel the saving power of the gospel. O,
Thefincerefoul's reflection. let God be exalted for ever for this mercy ! thathowdefective soever I am in common gifts, though I have a dull understanding, a leaking memory, a stammering tongue; yet I have felt, and do feel the power of the gofpeluponmy heart.
I bless thee(my God)that although I labour under many spiritual infirmities, yet I am not sick of this incurabledifease.
Ihavegiventhee indeed just cause to inflict and execute. this dreadful curse upon me also, but thou hast not dealt with me after my deserts, but according to the riches of thy mercy.
Some little fruit I bring forth, and what it is, is by virtue of my union with Jesus Christ, Rom. vii. 4.
And this hath more initasto my comfort, than all the glittering gifts and splendid performances of the most glorious hypocrite can yield to him: if I might have my choice (faith one) I would chase and prefer the most despicable and sordid work of a rustic Christian, before all the victories of Alexander, and triumphs of Caesar.
Bleffedtherefore be the Lord, who hath aboundedunto me in alt spiritual blessings, in beavenly places in Christ Jesus...
I cannot remember a sermon as another can, but blessed be God that I am able to favour it, and feel it ; that I have an heart to love, and a will to obey all that God discovers to be my duty.
Husbandry Spiritualized; or, 2. O, then how little cause have I to make my The formal boast of ordinances, and glory in my external pri professor's reflection. vileges, who never bear spiritual fruit under them ? If I well confider my condition, there is matter of trembling, and not of glorying in these things.
It may be while I have beenglorying in them, and lifting up my secure heart upon them, the Lord hath been secretly blasting my soul under them, and insensibly executing this horrible curse by them.
Shall Iboast, with Capernaum, that I am lifted up to heaven, since I may, with her, at last be cast down to hell? And if fo, Lord, what a hell will my hell be! It will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for me.
It drew tears from the eyes of Christ, when he was looking upon Jerusalem, under the fame consideration that I doubt I havecaufe to look upon my own soul, Luke xix. 41. " He wept over it,
" saying, if thou hadstknown, even thou, at least in this thy "day, the things which belong to thy peace, but now they
"are hid from thine eyes." So long have I been a hearer, a professor of the gospel, so many years I have enjoyed its distinguishing ordinances,but have they not been all dry and empty things tome; hath not the spirit of formality acted me in them?
Have not self-ends and worldly respects lainat the bottom of any best duties ? Have not my discourses, in communion with saints, been trade words, speaking what I have learnt, but not felt? Sad is my condition now, but it would be desperate and irrecoverable, shouldst thou execute this curseuponme.
The less fruit.
3. And what may I think of my condition?
Lord, I acknowledge my unprofitableness, under the means, hath been shameful; and this hath made my condition doubtful. I have often ful Christian's reflection. trembled for fear, left my root had been blasted by such a curse; but if so, whence is this trembling ? Whence these fears and sorrows about it ? Doth such fruit grow in thatfoil which thou hast cursed ? I am told but now, that on whom this judgment falls, to them thou givest an heart that cannot repent.
Lord, I bless thee for these evidences of freedom from the curse; for the fruits of fear, sorrow, and holy jealousy. *The laws of men spare for the fruits fake, and wilt thou not spare me also, my God, if there be found in me a blessing inthebud, Ifa. Ixv. 8.
4. To conclude, what a serious reflection The gospel should this occasion in every dispenser of the * The Roman laws defer punishing a woman with child. Chryst.
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gospel ? How should he say when he goes to preacher's reflections. preach the gospel, I am going to preach that word, which is to be afavour of life or death to these fouls ; upon how many of my poor hearers may the curse of perpetual barreness be executed this day! O how should such a thought melt his heart into compassion over them, and make him beg hard, and plead earnestly with God for a better issue of the gospel thanthisuponthem
Y The POEM.
OU that besides your pleasant fruitful fields, Have useless bogs, and rocky ground, that yields
You no advantage, nor doth quit your cost, But all your pains and charges on them's loft :
Hearken to me, I'll teach you how to get More profit by them, than if they were set
At higher rents than what your tenants pay For your most fertile lards; and here's the way.
Think when you view them, why the Lord hath chose These, as the emblem to decipher those That under gospel-grace grow worse and worse;
For means are fruitless when the Lord doth curse.
Sweet showers descend, the fun his beams reflects On both alike, but not with like effects.
Observe and see how after the sweet showers The grass and corn revive; the fragrant flowers
Shoot forth their beauteous heads, the vallies sing, All fresh and green, as in the verdant spring.
But rocks are barren still, andbogs are fo; Wherenoughtbut flags, and worthless rushes grow.
Upon these marshygrounds there lies this curse, Themorerain falls, by so much more the worse.
Even so the dews of grace, that sweetly fall, From gospel-clouds, are not alike to all.
The gracious foul doth germinate and bud, But to the reprobate it doth no good.
He's like the wither'd fig-tree, void of fruit; A fearful curse hath smote his very root.
The heart's made fat, the eyes with blindness seal'd; The piercing'st truths the gospel e'er reveal'd,
Shall be to him but as the fun and rain Are to obdurate rocks, fruitless and vain.
Be this your meditation when you walk By rocks andfenny-grounds, thus learn to talk
VOL . VI,