Use 2
USE II.
This tells us that all the time that is afforded to a sinner, after some eminent deliverance is bestowed upon him, is probation time. It is an opportunity given him on very purpose, to see if he will yet at last improve the day of grace, and return to God. Such deliverances are not evidences that God is reconciled to them, and that their state is now good, because God has heard prayers for them, and has spared them from just now going to the pit: no, but they in their distress made promises, that if God would restore them, and give them a little more time, they would not live as before they had done: if they might have their life given them: and a few more Sabbaths and ordinances allowed them, they would husband them better; and they who prayed with them, promised that they would dig about them, and dung them; this is the ground on which they were restored, and now they live upon trial, whether they will do so or no: and there are three things wherein this probation is to be taken notice of.
1. It gives them a new opportunity to return to God, and live to his praise. It affords them not only farther time, but also a renewed season; it suffers them to stand still in the vineyard; it stops the ax of revenge from cutting them down; it gives them leave to go to God's House, and there to hear his Word, and to be called upon, counselled and warned to repent; it lengthens out the day of their visitations, and holds the things of their peace still before them: now, all the opportunities of grace which are bestowed upon men, are properly trials which God useth with them; for he will have his own glory by them in the conclusion.
2. Indeed the very season upon which God gives them more time, is to see if they will do better now than they did before. It is upon a supposition that it will repent them after such dangers and deliverances, of their former neglects and that they will be thereby quickened to husband such an opportunity better; God says, surely such a sinner, whom I have brought from the gates of the grave, who has been restored to a new life, and that when he was almost beyond hope, will lead a new life; he will surely receive instruction, and hearken to the calls of the Gospel, surely he will not after this forget God, and return again to his old vain and sinful courses.
3. Hence if this be neglected the time is like to be short. The parable mentions but a year; and probations after provocations are not wont to be long: when judgment is begun, God is in haste. To shew his pity, and how loth he is that sinners should perish, he will still hear a little longer: but, to shew his holiness, he will not tarry long if the end be not answered. And there is great reason why God should now use speed, because if such eminent deliverances of his will not work on their hearts, but they out-grow, and get them over, there is little expectation that they should after that get any good by forbearance; for by this carriage of theirs they are the more desperately hardened in their sins.
