SPIRITUAL BARRENNESS. 185
new spiritual life by the word, they are as the unhealed places, over which the curse here mentioned hangs.
(2.) The healing of these quickened souls consists in the curing and mortifying of their sinful distempers. This follows the other. Where there is life, there will be healing. Let not men pretend that they live spiritually, if their lusts be not healed. If men are proud, worldly, sensual, they are dead also; there is no effect of the waters of the sanctuary upon them. If men are not made holy, humble, believing, zealous, if they receive not the spirit of prayer and faith, they are not healed.
This is the condition of the " miry and marshy places" here men- tioned : — God, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, causeth the gospel to be dispensed among a people, to be preached, where they do, or may, and ought to attend unto it; but they are not converted by the word, not sanctified by it, but continue in their old state and condition. He that was filthy is filthy still ; he that was unrighteous is so still ; — he that was in the mire of the world and sin is so still.
3. What is the lot and portion of such persons? Why, " they shall be given to salt ; " that is, as I have showed, to barrenness, fruitless- ness, unprofitableness, and eternal ruin.
This is the meaning of the proposition ; and it is a dreadful word, which yet is true, and will prove so at the last day. Woe to the "miry and marshy places" of the world! woe to the persons and places to whom [and to which] the waters of the sanctuary have come and they are not healed !
I shall not need to insist much on the proof of the proposition, the Scripture so abounds with testimonies of it. But I shall do these three things: — 1. Name some places that plainly speak the same truth; 2. Show the degrees in which God proceeds usually in this great work, in giving up unprofitable hearers to ruin; and, 3. Give the grounds of it : —
1. For other Scriptures which assert the same truth, take Pro v. i. 25—31, " But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when }^our fear cometh ; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind ; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me : for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord : they would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way. and be filled with their own devices;" — Prov. xxix. 1, "He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy;" — Luke xiii. 6, " He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig-
] 86 THE SIN AND JUDGMENT OF
tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none," etc. So Heb. x. 28-30; 2 Cor. ii. 15, 16.
2. For the degrees of rejection, see Ezek. x. 18, xi. 23; Heb. vi. 8, " But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned." They are first rejected, then cursed, and lastly burned. But, —
3. That which I shall principally insist upon, is to show the ways whereby God doth usually proceed in giving up such persons to bar- renness, and so to everlasting ruin: — ■
(1.) He casts them out of his care; — he will be at no more charge nor cost with them, nor about them. So, Heb. vi. 8, the land is adoxi/Aog, — " rejected ;" the owner will take no more care or pains about such an unprofitable piece of land ; he will till it no more, dress it no more, but leave it to its own barrenness. God is the great husband- man, John xv. 1. When a miry place is not healed, he will cast it out of his husbandry. So Ezek. xxiv. 13, They have had their time and season, and " are not purged ;" therefore " they shall be purged no more." Jer. vi. 29, 30, " The bellows are burned, the lead is consmned of the fire ; the founder melteth in vain : for the wicked are not plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." This the Lord Christ declares to be his way of pro- ceeding with them, Zech. xi. 8, 9, " My soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me. Then said I, I will not feed you : that that dieth, let it die ; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another." A sad parting, the Lord knows ! They give up Christ, — he gives up them ; and their meeting will be infinitely more sad to them. Now, this the Lord doth several ways: —