Use 2

USE II.

For Exhortation, these few lessons may be here learnt:

1. Are we God's vineyard? Labor we then to bring forth our fruits to God. It is the complaint which he makes of Israel (Hosea 10:1): He is an empty vine, he brings forth fruit to himself. It is the Apostle's demand (1 Corinthians 9:7): Who plants a vineyard, and eats not the fruit? Shall God be at all the charge he has laid out upon us, and shall he not have our fruits paid to him? Shall we seek ourselves, and our carnal interests, and neglect to glorify God? God forbid! The great study and care lying upon us is to be always enquiring, how we may do most for God; how we may so live as he may have honor by us; and then we live as those that are not our own, but [illegible] bought with a price. Then indeed we answer our end, when we bring honor to him ([illegible] 43:21).

2. Let us go to him for all the manuring that we need at any time. Do we find grace at a stay among us, and our fruitfulness impeded? It is his work to purge us that we may bring forth more fruit (John 15:2). Do our hearts grow hard? Beg of him to dig them up again and make them mellow: are we barren? Seek of him to mend us: do we find the briars and thorns of carnal lusts growing up, and beginning to stunt the graces of his Spirit in us? Ask him to stub them up [illegible] and let us cheerfully submit to his husbandry in all these things.

[illegible] Let this put us upon it the more to lament the degeneracy of the visible Church. Is that God's vineyard? And is all the rest of the world a wilderness? And does that begin to look like a wilderness too? Are there growing in it, instead of plants of renown, the degenerate plants of a strange vine? Does it bring forth instead of grapes, wild grapes? It should deeply affect our hearts when we take notice of this, to think, this is God's vineyard, and therefore how much of dishonor is there hereby brought to his holy name? These are they from whom alone he expects fruit, and do they answer his ends so little? Let it be for a lamentation.

4. Let us [illegible] him, and call earnestly for his help, when at any time the Church is under oppression. Who should be acquainted with the damages done to the vineyard, but the Owner? And let this be our great encouragement to pray hard, and to pray believingly in times of calamity, to consider that we can go to God and say, your Church, your Chosen, your Beloved are in distress — your vineyard is laid [illegible]. God has given us this hold of faith to fasten on; and let us make the best improvement of it in the most cloudy and dark days of affliction, because he who has chosen Zion, will not forsake her.