Use 4

USE IV.

This may also teach us to have a care of placing too much upon men. It is true, all the gifts, and graces, and industry, which one has and uses more than another, is of God, and he is to be acknowledged in it: but when they are best furnished for their work, and most faithful in the discharge of it, they are men still: they are but instruments in the hand of God; and Paul uses this as an argument to discover the vanity of his Corinthians by, in saying, I am of Paul, &c. (1 Corinthians 3): who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but Ministers by whom you believed, even as the Lord give every man. It follows not that because such a Minister is able, pious and painful, that therefore he must needs convert more to God than another that is not so furnished as he is; that because we have parents that are godly, and are very diligent in doing their duty for us and to us, that we must of necessity be saved: If God has placed us under such, we have a great deal of reason to bless him for it, for every good and perfect giving is from him: but know it, that they may do all that lies in their power, and yet you may get no good by them; and if you confide in this, it is the way to get none.