Chapter 7
The plowman guides his plow with care and skill.
So does the Spirit, in sound conviction still.
OBSERVATION.
It requires not only strength, but much skill and judgment, to manage and guide the plow. The Hebrew word which we translate to plow, signifies to be intent, as an artificer is about some curious piece of work. The plow must neither go too shallow nor too deep in the earth; it must not indent the ground by making crooked furrows, nor leap and make baulks in good ground; but be guided as to a just depth of earth, so to cast the furrow in a straight line, that the floor or surface of the field may be made plain. As it is (Isaiah 28:25). And hence that expression (Luke 9:62): He that puts his hand to the plow, and looks back, is not fit for the Kingdom of Heaven. The meaning is, that as he that plows, must have his eyes always forward, to guide and direct his hand in casting the furrows straight and even; (for his hand will be quickly out when his eye is off). So he that heartily resolves for heaven, must addict himself wholly and intently to the business of religion, and not have his mind entangled with the things of this world, which he has left behind him; whereby it appears, that the right management of the plow, requires as much skill as strength.
APPLICATION.
This observation in nature, serves excellently to shadow forth this proposition in divinity. That the work of the Spirit in convincing and humbling the heart of a sinner, is a work wherein much of the wisdom, as well as power of God is discovered. The work of repentance and saving contrition, is set forth in Scripture by this metaphor of plowing (Jeremiah 4:3; Hosea 10:12): Plow up your fallow ground; that is, be convinced, humbled, and broken hearted for sin. And the resemblance between both these works, appears in the following particulars.
(1) It is a hard and difficult work to plow, it's reckoned one of the most painful manual labors. It is also a very hard thing to convince and humble the heart of a secure, stout, and proud sinner, hardened in wickedness. What Luther says of a dejected soul, that it is as easy to raise the dead as to comfort such a one. The same I may say of the secure, confident sinner. It is as easy to rend the rocks, as to work saving contrition upon such a heart. [illegible]; all the melting language and earnest entreaties of the Gospel, cannot urge such a heart to shed a tear: Therefore it's called a heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26), a firm rock (Amos 6:12). Shall horses run upon the rock? Will one plow there with oxen? Yet when the Lord comes in the power of his Spirit, these rocks do rend and yield to the power of the word.
(2) The plow pierces deep into the bosom of the earth, makes (as it were) a deep gash or wound in the heart of it. So does the Spirit upon the hearts of sinners, he pierces their very souls by conviction (Acts 2:37). When they heard this they were pricked (or pierced point blank) to the heart. Then the word divides the soul and Spirit (Hebrews 4:12). It comes upon the conscience with such pinching dilemmas, and tilts the sword of conviction so deep into their souls, that there is no stanching the blood, no healing this wound, till Christ himself come and undertake the cure. [reconstructed: Haeret lateri lethalis arundo]; this barbed arrow cannot be pulled out of their hearts by any but the hand that shot it in. Discourse with such a soul about his troubles, and he will tell you, that all the sorrows that ever he had in this world, loss of estate, health, children, or whatever else, are but flea-bitings to this; this swallows up all other troubles. See how that Christian Niobe (Luke 7:38) is dissolved into tears. Now deep calls to deep at the noise of his water spouts, when the waves and billows of God go over the soul. Spiritual sorrows are deep waters, in which the stoutest and most magnanimous soul would sink and drown, did not Jesus Christ by a secret and supporting hand, hold it up by the chin.
(3.) The plow rends the earth in parts and pieces, which before was united, and makes those parts hang loose, which formerly lay close. Thus does the spirit of conviction rend in sunder the heart, and its most beloved lusts (Joel 2:13). Rent your hearts, and not your garments; that is, rather than your garments; for the sense is comparative, though the expression be negative. And this rending implies, not only acute pain; flesh cannot be rent asunder without anguish; nor yet only force and violence; the heart is a stubborn and knotty piece and will not easily yield, but it also implies a disunion of parts united: as when a garment, or the earth, or any continuous body is rent; those parts are separated which formerly cleaved together. Sin and the soul were glued fast together before, there was no parting of them, they would as soon part with their lives, as with their lusts; but now when the heart is rent for them truly; it is also rent from them everlastingly (Ezekiel 7:15-19).
(4) The plow turns up, and discovers such things as lay hid in the bosom of the earth before, and were covered under a fair green surface, from the eyes of men. Thus when the Lord plows up the heart of a sinner by conviction, then the secrets of his heart are made manifest [reconstructed: 1 Corinthians 14:24-25]; the most secret and shameful sins will then come out; for the word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of the soul and spirit, the joints and marrow, and is a quick discerner of the thoughts, and secret intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12). It makes the fire burn inwardly, so that the soul has no rest till confession give a vent to trouble. Gladly would the shuffling sinner conceal and hide his shame; but the word follows him through all his sinful shifts, and brings him at last to be his own, both accuser, witness and judge.
The work of the plow is but opus ordinabile: a preparative work in order to fruit. Should the husbandman plow his ground never so often, yet if the seed be not cast in and quickened, in vain is the harvest expected. Thus conviction also is but a preparative to a farther work upon the soul of a sinner. If it stick there, and go no farther, it proves but an abortive or untimely birth. Many have gone thus far, and there they have stuck; they have been like a field plowed, but not sowed, which is a matter of trembling consideration; for hereby their sin is greatly aggravated, and their eternal misery so much the more increased. O when a poor damned creature shall with horror reflect upon himself in hell, how near was I once under such a sermon, to conversion? My sins were set in order before me, my conscience awakened and terrified with the guilt of them; many purposes and resolves I had then to turn to God, which had they been perfected by answerable executions, I had never come to this place of torment; but there I stuck, and that was my eternal undoing. Many souls have I known so terrified with the guilt of sin, that they have come roaring under horrors of conscience to the preacher; so that one would think such a breach had been made between them and sin, as could never be reconciled; and yet, as angry as they were in that fit with sin, they have hugged and embraced them again.
It is best plowing when the earth is prepared and softened by the showers of rain, then the work goes on sweetly and easily. And never does the heart so kindly melt, as when the Gospel clouds dissolve, and the free grace and love of Jesus Christ comes sweetly [reconstructed: showering] down upon it; then it relents and mourns sincerely (Ezekiel 16:63). That you may remember, and be confounded, and never open your mouth any more of your shame, when I am pacified toward you for all that you have done. So it was with that poor penitent (Luke 7:38), when the Lord Jesus had discovered to her the super-abounding riches of his grace, in the pardon of her manifold abominations; her heart melted within her, she washed the feet of Christ with tears. And indeed, there is as much difference between the tears which are forced by the terrors of the law, and those which are extracted by the grace of the Gospel, as there is between those of a condemned malefactor, who weeps to consider the misery he is under, and those of a pardoned malefactor, that receives his pardon at the foot of the ladder, and is melted by the mercy and clemency of his gracious prince toward him.
The plow kills those rank weeds that grow in the field, turns them up by the roots, buries and rots them. So does saving conviction kill sin at the root, makes the soul sick of it, begets indignation in the heart against it (2 Corinthians 7:11). The word there signifies the rising of the stomach, any being angry even to sickness; religious wrath is the fiercest wrath, now the soul cannot endure sin, trembles at it. I find a woman more bitter than death (says penitent Solomon) (Ecclesiastes 7:26). Conviction like a [reconstructed: surfeit], makes the soul loathe what it formerly loved and delighted in.
That field is not well plowed, where the plow jumps and skips over good ground, and makes baulks, it must turn up the whole field alike; and that heart is not savingly convicted where any lust is spared and left untouched. Saving conviction extends itself to all sins, not only to sin in general, with this cold confession, I am a [reconstructed: sinner]? but to the particulars of [illegible], indeed, to the particular circumstances and aggravations of time; place, manner, occasions, thus and thus have I done; to the sin of nature, as well as practice, behold I was shaped in iniquity (Psalm 51:5). There must be no baulking of any sin; the sparing of one sin, is a sure argument you are not truly humbled for any sin. So far is the convicted soul from a studious concealment of a beloved sin, that it weeps over that, more than over any other actual sin.
New ground is much more easily plowed than that which by long lying out of tillage, is more consolidated and bound together, by deep rooted thorns and brambles, which render it difficult to the plowman. This old ground is like an old sinner, that has lain a long time hardening under the means of grace. O the difficulty of convincing such a person! Sin has got such rooting in his heart, he is so habituated to the reproofs and calls of the word, that few such are wrought upon. How many young persons are called, to one obdurate, inveterate sinner? I do not say but God may call home such a soul at the eleventh hour; but I may say of these compared with others, as Solomon speaks (Ecclesiastes 7:28). One man among a thousand have I found, etc. Few that have long resisted the Gospel, that come afterwards to feel the saving efficacy thereof.
Reflections.
O grace, forever to be admired! that God should send forth his word and Spirit to plow up my hard and stony heart! indeed, mine, when he has left so many of more tender, sincere, sweet, and melting tempers without any culture or means of grace. O blessed Gospel! heart-dissolving voice! I have felt your efficacy, I have experienced your divine and irresistible power, you are indeed sharper than any two-edged sword, and wound to the heart; but your wounds are the wounds of a friend. All the wounds you have made in my soul, were so many doors opened to let in Christ, all the blows you gave my conscience, were but to beat off my soul from sin, which I embraced and had retained to my everlasting ruin, had you not separated them and me. O wise and merciful [reconstructed: Physician], you did indeed bind me with cords of conviction and sorrow; but it was only to cut out that stone in my heart, which had killed me if it had continued there. O how did I struggle and oppose you, as if you had come with the sword of an enemy, rather than the lance and probe of a skillful and tender-hearted physician? Blessed [reconstructed: be] the day wherein my sin was discovered and embittered! O happy sorrows which prepared for such matchless joys! O blessed hand: which turned my salt waters into pleasant wine! and after many pangs and sorrows of soul did bring forth the man child of deliverance and peace [illegible].
But O, what a rock of adamant is this heart of mine that never yet was wounded and savingly pierced for the terrors of the law, or melting voice of the Gospel! Long have I sat under the word, but when did I feel a relenting pang? O my soul! my stupefied soul! you have got an antidote against repentance, but do you have any against [reconstructed: hell]? You can keep out the sense of sin now, but are you able to keep off the terrors of the Lord hereafter? If you could turn a deaf ear to the sentence of Christ in the day of judgment, as easily as you do to the entreaties of Christ in the day of grace, it were somewhat; but surely there is no defense against that. Ah, fool that I am, to quench these convictions, unless I knew how to quench those flames they warn me of.
And may not I challenge the first place among all the mourners in the world, who have lost all those convictions which at several times came upon me under the word? I have been often awakened by it, and filled with terrors and tremblings under it; but those troubles have soon worn off again, and my heart (like water removed from the fire) returned to its native coldness. Lord, what a dismal case am I in? Many convictions have I choked and strangled, which it may be shall never more be revived, until you revive them against me in judgment. I have been in pangs, and brought forth nothing but wind; my troubles have wrought no deliverance, neither have my lusts fallen before them. My conscience indeed has been sometimes sick with sin, indeed, so sick as to vomit them up by an external partial reformation: but then with the dog have I returned again to my vomit, and now I doubt am given over to a heart that cannot repent. Oh that those travailing pangs could be quickened again! but alas! they are ceased. I am like a prisoner escaped, and again recovered, whom the jailer loads with double irons. Surely, O my soul! if your spiritual troubles return not again, they are but gone back, to bring eternal troubles. It is with you, O my soul! as with a man whose bones have been broken and not well set; who must (however terrible it appear to him) endure the pain of breaking and setting them again, if ever he be made a sound man. O that I might rather choose to be the object of your wounding mercy, than of your sparing cruelty! If you plow not up my heart again by compunction, I know it must be rent in pieces at last by desperation.
The Poem.
There's skill in plowing, that the plowman knows,
For if too shallow, or too deep he goes;
The seed is either buried, or else [illegible]
To rooks and daws become an easy prey.
This as a lively emblem, fitly may
Describe the blessed spirit's work and way:
Whose work on souls, with this does symbolize;
Between them both, thus the resemblance lies.
Souls are the soil, conviction is the plow.
God's workmen draw, the spirit shows them how.
He guides the work, and in good ground, does bless
His workmen's pains, with sweet and fair success.
The heart prepared, he scatters in the seed
Which in its season springs, no fowl nor weed
Shall pick it up, or choke this springing corn;
Till it be housed in the heavenly barn.
When thus the spirit plows up the fallow ground,
When with such fruits, his servant's work is crowned;
Let all the friends of Christ, and soul say now;
As they pass by these fields, God speed the plow.
Sometimes this plow thin, shelfy ground does turn.
That little seed which springs, the sunbeams burn.
The rest uncovered lies, which fowls devour,
Alas! their hearts were touched, but not with power.
The cares and pleasures of this world have drowned
The seed, before it peeped above the ground,
Some springs indeed, the scripture says that some
Do taste the powers of the world to come.
These embryos never come to timely birth,
Because the seed that's sown wants depth of earth.
Turn up, O God, the bottom of my heart;
And to the seed that's sown, do you impart
Your choicest blessing. Though I weep and mourn;
In this wet seed-time; if I may return
With sheaves of joy; these fully will reward
My pains, and sorrows, be they never so hard.
