Upon the Harvest-Season.
Corn^ fully ripe^ is reajid, and gather'' d in: So must yourselves, when ripe in grace, or sin.
V V HEN the fields are -white to harvest, then husbandmen walk through them, rub the ears ; and finding the grain full and solid, they presently prepare their scythes and sickles; send for their harvest-men, who quickly reap and mow them down ; and after these follow the binders, who tie it up ; from the field where it grew, it is carried to the barn, where it is threshed out ; the good grain gather- ed into an heap, the chaff separated and burnt, or thrown to the dung- hill. How bare and naked do the fields look after harvest, which before were pleasant to behold ? When the harvest-men enter into the field, it is (to allude to that, Joel ii. 3.) before them, like the garden of Eden, and behind them a desolate wilderness ; and, in some places, it is usual to set fire to the dry stubble when the corn is housed ; which rages furiously, and covers it ail with ashes.
A HE application of this, I find made to my hands by Christ himself, in Mat. xiii. 38, 39. " The field is the world ; the good '' seed are the children of the kingdom ; the tares are the children *' of the Mocked one ; the enemy that sowed them is the devil ; the " harvest is the end of the world ; the reapers are the angels."
The field is the world ; there both the godly and ungodly live and grow together, until they be both ripe ; and then they shall both be reaped down by death : death is the sickle that reaps down both. I will open this allegory in the following particulars :
1. In a catching harvest, when the husbandman sees the clouds begin to gather and grow black, he hurries in his corn with all pos- sible haste, and houses it day and night.
So doth God, the great Husbandman ; he hurries the saints into their graves when judgments are coming upon the world ; Isa. Ivii. 1. " The righteous perish, and no man layeth it to heart ; and mer- "^ ciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is " taken away from the evil to come." Methuselah died the year before the flood ; Augustine a little before the sacking of Hippo ; Parens just before the taking of Heidelburg ; Luther a little before the wars broke out in Germany. But what speak I of single saints ? Sometimes the Lord houses great numbers together, before some sweeping judgment comes. How many bright and glorious stars did set almost together within the compass of a fewyears, to the astonish-
THE IlEAVEXLY USE OF EARTHLY THINGS. Ill
ment of many wise and tender hearts in England ? I find some of them thus ranked in a funeral elegy :
The learned Twisse went first, (it was his right) Then holy Palmer, Burroughs, Love, Gouge, White, Hill, Whitaker, grave Gataker and Strong, Perne, Marshal, Robinson, all gone along. I have not nam'd them half; their only strife Hath been (of late) who should first part with life. These few who yet survive, sick of this age, Long to have done their parts, and leave the stage. The Lord sees it better for them to be under-ground, than above- ground ; and therefore, by a merciful providence, sets them out of harm's way.
2. Neither the corn nor tares can possibly resist the sharp and keen sickle, when it is applied to them by the reaper s hand ; neither can the godly or ungodly resist the stroke of death when God inflicts it ; Eccl. viii. 8. " No man can keep alive his own soul in the day " of death ; and there is no discharge in that war." The frail body of man is as unable to withstand that stroke, as the weak reeds or feeble stalks of the corn are to resist the keen scythe and sharp sickle.
3. The reapers receive the wheat which they cut down into their arras and bosom. Hence that expression by way of imprecation upon the wicked, Psal. cxxix. 6, 7. " Let them be as the grass upoi* the *' house top, which withers before it grows up ; wherewith the mower " filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves, his bosom.'' Such withered grass are the wicked, who are never taken into the reaper's bosom ; but as soon as saints are cut down by death, they fall into the hands and bosoms of the angels of God, who bear them in their arms and bosoms to God their father, Luke xvi. 22. For look, as these blessed spirits did exceedingly rejoice at their conversion, Luke XV. 10. and thought it no dishonour to minister to them, whilst they stood in the field, Heb. i. 14. So when they are cut down by death, they will rejoice to be their convoy to heaven.
4. When the com and weeds are reaped and mowed down, they shall never grow any more in that field ; neither shall we ever return to live an animal life any more after death. Job vii. 9, 10. " As the *' cloud is consumed, and vanisheth away ; so he that goeth down to " the grave, shall come up no more ; he shall return no more to '^ his house, neither shall his place know him any more."
Lastly, (to come home to the particular subject of this chapter) the reapers are never sent to cut down the harvest until it be fully ripe ; neither will God reap down saints or sinners until they be come to a maturity of grace or wickedness. Saints are not reaped down until their grace is ripe. Job v. 26. " Thou shalt come to thy grave " in a full age, as a shock of corn cometh in its season." ' Not that * every godly man dies in such a full old age, (saith Mr. Caryl on that
11^ HtJSBAKDRY SPIRITUALIZED ; OR,
* place) but yet, in one sense, it is an universal truth, and evei* fuU
* filled ; for whensoever they die, they die in a good age ; yea, ' though they die in the spring and flower of their youth, they die
* in a good old age ; i. e. they are ripe for death whenever they die-
* Whenever a godly man dies, it is harvest-time with him, though
* in a natural capacity he be cut down while he is green, and crop-
* ped in the bud or blossom ; yet in his spiritual capacity he never
* dies before he be ripe. God ripens him speedily, when he intends
* to take him out of the world speedily ; he can let out such warm
* rays and beams of his Spirit upon him, as shall soon maturate the
* seeds of grace into a preparedness for glory.'
The wicked also have their ripening-time for hell and judgment ; God doth with much long-suffering endure the vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction. Of their ripeness for judgment the Scrip- ture often speaks. Gen. xv. 1 . " The sin of the Amorites is not " yet full." And of Babylon it is said, Jer. li. 13. " O thou that •' dwellest upon many waters ! thine end is come, and the measure *' of thy covetousness."