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For ftrangeness now is got between
My God and me, as may be feen
By what is now, and what was then;
'Tis just as if I were two men.
My fragrant branches blafted 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 mourneth day and night.
Yet why dost thou desponding lie?
With Jonah cat a backward eye.
Sure in thy God help may be had,
There's precious balm in Gilead.
That God that made me fpring at firk,
When I was barren and accurft,
Can much more easily restore
My foul to what it was before.
'Twas Heman's, Job's, and David's cafe,
Yet all recovered were by grace.
A word, a fmile on my poor foul,
Will make it perfect found and whole.
A glance of thine hath foon diffolv'd
A foul in fin and grief involv'd.

Lord, if thou canst not work the cure,
I am contented to endure.

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No fkill can mend the miry ground; and fure
Some fouls the gofpel leaves as paft a cure.

A

OBSERVATION.

LTHOUGH the industry and skill of the hufband man can make fome ground that was useless and bad, good for tillage and pafture, and improve that which was barren; and by his cost and pains make one acre worth ten; yet fuch is the nature of fome rocky or miry ground, where the water ftands, and there is no way to cleanse it, that it can never be made fruitful. The hufbandman is fain to let it alone, as an incurable piece of waste or worthless ground; and though the fun and clouds fhed 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 thefe do no way fecundate or improve it; nothing thrives there, but worthlefs figs and rushes.

MAN

APPLICATION.

ANY alfo, there are, under the gofpel; who are given over by God to judicial blindness, hardness of heart, a reprooate fenfe, and perpetual barrennefs; fo that how excellent foever the means are, which they enjoy, and how efficacious foever to the converfion, edification, and falvation of others; yet they fhall never do their fouls good. Ezek. xlvii. 9, 11. Every thing wherefoever the river comes fhall live, but "the miry places thereof, and the marshes thereof fhall 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; Hic fluvius eft uberrima doctrina Chrifti, faith Mr. Brightman. This river is the most fruitful doctrine of Chrift; yet thefe waters do not heal the miry, marshy places, (i. e.) men that live unfruitfully under ordinances, who are compared to miry, marfhy places, in three refpects :

(1.) In miry places the water hath not free paffage, but frands, and fettles there. So it is with these barren fouls, therefore the apoftle prays, that the gospel may run, and be glori fied, z Theff. I. 1. The word is faid to run, when it meets with no ftop, Cum libere propagatur, when it is freely propagated, and runs through the whole man; when it meets with no stop, either in the mouth of the fpeaker, or hearts of the hearers, as it doth in these.

(2.) In a miry 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 fome truths, and yet live in their lufts; or else when men do make use of the truths of God to justify and plead for their fios. Or,

(3.) When, as in a miry place the longer the water stands in it, the worse it grows; fo the longer men abide under ordinances, the more filthy and polluted they grow: Thele are the miry places that cannot be healed, their difeafe is incurable, defperate.

Ò this is a fad cafe! and yet very common; many perfons

* Spiritual barrenness. p. 8.

are thus given over as incorrigible, and hopeless, Rev. XXII. 11. "Let him that is filthy be filthy ftill." Jer. vi. 29. “ Reprobate "filver shall men call them, for the Lord hath rejected them." Ifa. vi. 10, 11. “Go make the heart of this people fat, their ears "dull," &c.

Chrift executes, by the gofpel, that curfe 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 fuch a con-. dition, is a fearful judgment indeed, a curfe with a witness; the fum of all plagues, miferies, 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 fhall be made better. To be barren under the gospel, is a fore judgment, but to have that pertinax fterilitas, a pertinacious barrennefs; this is to be twice dead, and plucked up by the root, as Jude fpeaks.

And to fhew you the woful, and miferable state and plight of fuch men, let the following particulars be weighed.

(1.) It is a ftroke at the foul itself, an inward. fpiritual judgment; and by how much the more inward and fpiritual any judgment is, by fo much the more dreadful and lamentable. As foul-mercies are the beft of mercies, fo foul-judgments are the faddeft of all judgments. If it were but a temporal stroke upon the body, the lofs of an eye, an ear, a hand, a foot, though in itself it would be a confiderable lofs, yet it were nothing to this. Omnia Deus dedit duplicia, faith Chryfoftom, fpeak ing of bodily members; God hath given men double members, two eyes, if one be loft, the other fupplies its wants; two hands, two ears, two feet, that the failing of one may be fupplied by the help of the other; animam vero unam, but one foul; if that perish, there is not another to fupply its lofs. "The foul,

faith a * heathen, is the man, that which is feen, is not the "man." The apoftle calls the body a vile body, Phil. iii. 21. and fo it is, compared with the foul; and Daniel calls it the Sheath, which is but a contemptible thing to the fword which is in it. O it were far better that many bodies perish, than one foul; that every member were made the feat and fubject of the moft exquifite torture, than fuch a judgment should fall upon the foul.

(2.) It is the feverest stroke God can inflict upon the foul in this life, to give it up to barrennefs; because it cuts off all hopes, fruftrates all means, nothing can be a bleffing to him.

* Όνη στον άνθρωπος το ορώμενον. Plato,

If one comes from the dead, if angels fhould defcend from heaven to preach to him, there is no hope of him. If God shut up a man, who can open? Job xii. 14. As there was none found in heaven or earth that could open the feals of that book, Rev. 5. 10 is there no opening by the hand of the most able and skiltul miniftry, thofe feals of hardness, blindness and unbelief, thus impreffed upon the fpirit. Whom juftice to locks up, mercy will never let out. This is that which maks up the anathema Maranatha, 1 Cor. xvi. 22. which is the dreadfulleft curfe in all the book of God, accurfed till the Lord come.

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(3.) It is the most indifcernible stroke to themselves that can be, and by that fo much the more defperate. Hence there is faid to be poured out upon them the fpirit of lumber, Ifa. xxix. 10." The Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of • deep fleep, and hath clofed your eyes." Montanus renders it, The Lord hath mingled upon you the fpirit of deep fleep." And fo it is an allufion to a foporiferous medicine mingled, and made up of opium, and fuch-like ftupefactive ingredients, which calls a man into fuch a deep fleep, 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 fpoken of, Rom. ii. 5. For men are not fenfible at all of this judgment, they do not in the leaft fufpect it, and that is their mifery. Though they be curfed trees, which shall ne ver bear any fruit to life, yet many times they bear abundance of other fair and plealant fruits to the eye, excellent gifts, and rare endowments; and thefe deceive and undo them. Mat. vii. 22. "We have prophefied in thy name;" this makes the wound defperate, that there is no finding of it, no prope to

fearch it.

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(4.) It is a stroke that cuts off from the foul all the comfort and fweetnefs of religion. A man may pray, hear, and confer, but all thofe duties are dry ftalks to him, which yield no meat, no folid fubftantial nutriment; fome common touches upon the affections he may fometimes find in duty, the melting voice or rhetoric of the preacher may perhaps ftrike 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 fpirit, which are always restrained. "My

God hath faid to fuch, as he did to them, Gen. vi. 3. "Spirit fhall no longer ftrive with them;" and then what fweet

nefs is there in ordinances? What is the word, feparated 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 caufe upon those that hear it; if so, the effect would always follow, unlefs miraculously stopt and hindred; but it works like a moral inftituted caufe, whofe efficacy and fuccefs depends upon the arbitrary concurrence of the Spirit with it. "The wind blows where it lifteth, fo is every one "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 favingly upon the waters of ordinances, for the healing of their fouls, how many years foever they lie by them, though others feel a. divine power in them, yet they fhall not. As the men that

travelled with Paul, when Christ appeared to him from heaven, they faw the light, but heard not the voice which he heard to falvation: So it is with thefe, they see the minifters, hear the words, which are words of falvation to others, but not so to them. Concerning thefe miferable fouls, we may figh, and fay to Christ, as Martha did concerning her brother Lazarus: Lord, it thou hadst been here, in this fermon, or in this prayer, this foul had not remained dead. But here is the woe that lies upon him, God is departed from the means, and none can help him.

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(5.) It is fuch a stroke upon the spirit of man, as is a fearful fign of his eternal reprobation. It is true, we cannot positive. ly fay of a man in this life, he is a reprobate, one that God will never fhew mercy to; but yet there are fome probable marks of it upon fome men in this world, and they are of a trembling confideration wherever they appear; of which this is one of the faddeft, 2 Cor. iv. 3. "If our gospel be hid, it is "hid to thofe that are loft, in whom the God of this world "hath blinded the minds of them that believe not; left the light of the glorious gospel of Chrift, who is the image of "God, fhould fhine 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 perfon marked out for wrath, than to continue under the ordinances, as the rocks and miry places do under the natural influences of heaven. What blcffed opportunities had Judas? He was under Chrift's own

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