Use 4
USE IV.
Let this also serve to quicken decaying Christians, who yet have the root of the matter in them. Are there any such among us, that have fallen from their first love, and are grown into a great measure of barrenness, who have sometimes flourished in the Courts of God? Be awakened and roused up to remember the first works and do them, and to excite you hereunto, consider,
1. You greatly dishonor God, and grieve his holy Spirit by this. All the fruit that is born to God in this world is produced by true believers; if then you come short too what shall he do to his vineyard? This is a very ill requital of God, for all that he has done for you more than others: to others he has given the means of grace, and it is their great iniquity that they despise them, but he has given you grace with the means, and that is unspeakably more; he may therefore well expostulate with you in a solemn manner.
2. You are also yourselves great losers by it. The more fruit that you bear, the more glory you shall have. Will it not be a great loss, though you be saved by fire, yet to have a great many of your works burnt up? You will also die with the less comfort: the reflection of your minds upon so much unprofitableness, under such glorious advantages as you have had, will be a sad thought in a dying hour, when you are going to give up your accounts. Hence.
1. Be much in mortifying the lusts that are in you. It is from the prevalency of them that your fruitfulness is obstructed: if they be subdued and kept under, grace will thrive and put forth; but as long as they are indulged that will be at an under. Go then to the Father, the great Husbandman, and pray to him that he will purge you, that so you may bear fruit.
2. Stir up the graces that are within you. God has given you a saving principle, but it must be exercised; it will not bring forth fruit without your careful and diligent improvement of it. And call upon the Spirit of Grace to help you. This will be a good way for you to recover your lost time, and by double diligence to be the more fruitful, from the consideration of your former decays.
