An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

3. They may expect wonderful success and fruitfulness in their labour. For seeing God hath sent them, and they come in his Name, their labour shall not be in ¹vain. The Apostles, though few, were made salt enough to season the whole world. At one Sermon, Peter converted three thousand, Rom. 15. 19. Paul tells us, The Gospel did spread it self by his preaching; yea some of Caesars own household became converts. Thus doth the Lord wonderfully cooperate with his own instruments; insomuch that Divines have a Rule, Qualis vocatio, talis successus; yet this must be wisely understood: for as in the Scripture many precious godly women went barren, and had the reproach of not bearing children, as Sarah and Hannah: So many eminent servants of God, though called by him, and owned (as it were) by name, yet have not had such success in converting of souls, as others had. Yea Christ himself did not convert so many as the Apostles. Isa. 49. 2. Christ speaks notably to this, of this protection by God, yet the little success he had. So that it's the Scriptures complaint of stretching out the hands in vain all the day long, to a gain-saying people. Therefore ²we are to distinguish of people, for they are either such as never had the Word of God preached to them; or such, who though enjoying of it for many years, yet have so universally apostatized, that a Reformation is like a new plantation of the Gospel. Now to such a people as these, commonly the Word hath been successful, and multitudes have been caught in the Net of the Gospel. Commonly at such seasons there hath been a preparedness made for the Gospel to run and to be glorified. Thus you see the Romans, Corinthians, and many Heathenish places were converted from their Idols to serve the living God. Thus also among the Jews, when Christ came as a reformer to that apostate people, he saith, That the harvest was great, but the labourers were few, Luk. 10. 2. There were more to be converted, but no instruments to do it; and therefore he bids them, Pray unto God, to send labourers into his harvest: As with ground new broken up, there the labourer hath the greater hopes.