Again, the end of it is love. Consider when thou doest any duty, what puts thee on work. Is it love doth constrain thee? If love do not constrain thee, it is manifest that thou dost not seek God but thy self, and art to every good work a Reprobate; that is, thou art not then able to do any thing that God will accept; the best thing thou doest will not relish with God. A hard estate indeed, that when a man shall come to appear before God, he shall not have one good thing that he hath done in all his life that God will own. Some there be that take a great deal of pains in coming to the word, in prayer public and private, in charity and giving to the poor: Alas, when thou shalt come to an account, and none of these things shall stead thee, not one of them shall speak for thee, but all shall be lost, How heavy will thy ease be? 2 John 8. Look to your selves, that you lose not the thing that you have wrought: By being indisposed to do the works of a living man we lose all; that is to say, God will never own nor accept them: we shall never have reward for them. So that here is ⟨p. 71⟩the case, thou being dead, unable to perform the works of a living man, canst have no reward from heaven at all, until a man is quickened, and hath life from Christ. Without me, saith our Saviour, you can do nothing. St. Austin on this place observes that Christ saith not, Without me ye can do no great matter: no, but unless you be cut off from your own stock, taken from your own root, and be ingrafted into me, and have life from me, and be quickened by me, you can do nothing at all: Nothing, neither great nor small, all that you do is lost. So that if there were nothing but this being dead, you could do no good action. I know that in me, that is, in my flesh (saith St. Paul) there dwelleth no good thing: that is, nothing spiritually good, nothing for which I may look for a reward in heaven. The Lord will say of such a man, thou hast lived ten, twenty, forty, or it may be fifty years under the Ministry, and yet hast not done a good work, or thought a good thought that I can own. Cut down this fruitless tree, why cumbers it the ground? And this is the case of every man of us while we continue in our natural condition: till we be ingrafted into Christ, and live by his life, God will own nothing we do.
Again, the end of it is love. Consider when thou doest any duty, what puts thee on work. Is it love doth constrain thee? If love do not constrain thee, it is manifest that thou dost not seek God but thy self, and art to every good work a Reprobate; that is, thou art not then able to do any thing that God will accept; the best thing thou doest wil not relish with God. A hard estate indeed, that when a man shall come to appear before God, he shall not have one good thing that he hath done in all his life that God will own. Some there be that take a great deal of paines in coming to the word, in prayer publique and private, in charity and giving to the poor: Alas, when thou shalt come to an account, and none of these things shall stead thee, not one of them shall speak for thee, but all shall be lost, How heavy will thy ease be? 2 John 8. Look to your selves, that you lose not the thing that you have wrought: By being indisposed to doe the works of a living man we lose all; that is to say, God will never own nor accept them: we shall never have reward for them. So that here is ⟨p. 71⟩the case, thou being dead, unable to perform the works of a living man, canst have no reward from heaven at all, until a man is quickned, and hath life from Christ. Without me, saith our Saviour, you can doe nothing. St. Austin on this place observes that Christ saith not, Without me ye can doe no great matter: no, but unlesse you be cut off from your own stock, taken from your own root, and be ingrafted into me, and have life from me, and be quickned by me, you can do nothing at all: Nothing, neither great nor small, all that you do is lost. So that if there were nothing but this being dead, you could do no good action. I know that in me, that is, in my flesh (saith St. Paul) there dwelleth no good thing: that is, nothing spiritually good, nothing for which I may look for a reward in heaven. The Lord will say of such a man, thou hast lived ten, twenty, forty, or it may be fifty yeares under the Ministry, and yet hast not done a good work, or thought a good thought that I can own. Cut down this fruitlesse tree, why cumbers it the ground? And this is the case of every man of us while we continue in our natural condition: till we be ingrafted into Christ, and live by his life, God will own nothing we do.
