My fragrant branches blasted be. No fruits like those that I can sec. Some canker-worm lies at my root, Which fades my leaves, destroys my fruit. My soul is banish'd from thy sight, For this it mourneth day and night. Yet why dost thou desponding lie ? With Jonah cast a backward eye. Sure in thy God help may be had, There's precious balm in Gilead. That God that made me spring at firsts 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 were by grace. A word, a smile on my poor soul, Win make it perfect, sound, and whole. A glance of thine hath soon dissolv'd A soul in sin and grief involv'd. Lord, if thou canst not work the cure, I am contented to endure.
Upon the incurableness of some bad Groiiiid
No skill can mend the miry ground ; and sure Some soids the gospel leaves as past a cure.
xIlLTHOUGH 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 ban-en ; and by his cost and pains make one acre worth ten : yet such is the nature of some rocky or miry ground, where the water stands, and there is no way to cleanse it, that it can never be made fruitful. The husbandman is fain to let it alone, as an incurable piece of waste or worthless ground; and though the sun and clouds shed their influences on it, as well as upon better land, yet that doth not at all mend it. Nay, the more showers it receives, the worse it proves. For these do no way fecundate or improve it ; nothing thrives there but worthless flags and rushes.
THE HEAVENLY USE OF EARTHLY THINGS. §S
IT-I-ANY also, there are, under the gospel, who are given over by God to judicial blindness, hardness of heart, a reprobate 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. '' Every thing wheresoever the river *' comes shall live, but the miry places thereof, and the marshes " thereof shall never be healed, but be given to salt ;"" i. e. given te an obstinate and everlasting barrenness. Compare Deut. ix. 23. By these waters, saith the judicious Mr. Strong *, understand the doctrine of the gospel ; as Rev. xxi. 2. a river of water of hfe, clear as crystal : Hie fluvius est uberrima doctrina Christie saith 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 stands and settles there. So it is with these barren souls ; therefore the apostle prays, that the gospel may run, and be gloriiied, 2 Thes. iii. 1. The word is said to run, when it meets with no stop, Cum libera propagatur^ 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.) In a miry place the earth and water are mixed together ; this mixture makes mire. So when the truths of God do mix ^vith the corruptions of men, that they either hold some truths, and yet Uve 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 in a miry 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.
O this is a sad case ! and yet very common; manv persons are thus given over as incorrigible, and hopeless ; Rev. xxii. 11. " Let him " that is filthy be filthy still.'' Jer. vi. 29. " Reprobate silver shall ♦' men 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 souls, which he denounced against the fig-tree. Mat. xxi. 19. " Let no fruit grow " on thee henceforth for ever ; and immediately the fig-tree wither- '' ed away."^ To be given up to such a condition, is a fearful judg- ment 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 hav
* Spiritual barrenness, p, 8.
56 ' HUSBANDRY Sl^IllITUALIZED ; OK,
a bad heart, (saith 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 sore judgment, but to have Xhsii pertinax sterilitas^ a pertinacious barrenness ; this is to be twice dead, and plucked up by the root, as Jude speaks.
And to shew you 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 soul-mercies are the best mercies, so soul-judgments are the saddest of all judgments. If it were but a temporal stroke upon the body, the loss of an eye, an ear, a hand, n foot, though in itself it would be a considerable loss, yet It were nothing to this. Omnia Deus dedit duplicia, saith Chry- sostam, speaking of bodily members ; God hath given men double members, two eyes, if one be lost, the other supplies its want; two hands, two ears, two feet, that the failing of one may be supplied by the help of the other : animam vera unam, but one soul ; if that perish, there is no other to supply its loss. " The soul, saith 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 is but a con- temptible thing to the sword which is in it. Oh ! it were far better that many bodies perish, than one soul ; that every member were made the seat and subject of the most exquisite torture, than such a judgment should fail upon the soul.