Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

IV. I am to show how the branches are cut off from the natural stock, the first Adam, and grafted into the true Vine, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks to the husbandman, not to the branch, that it is cut off from its natural stock, and ingrafted into a new one. The sinner, in his coming off from the first stock, is passive; and neither can nor will come off from it of his own accord; but clings to it, till almighty power make him to fall off, John vi 44. No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me, draw him. And chap. v. 40. Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. The ingrafted branches are God's husbandry, 1 Cor. iii. 9 The planting of the Lord, Isa. lxi. 3. The ordinary means he makes use of in this work, is the ministry of the word, 1 Cor. iii 9 We are labourers together with God. But the efficacy thereof is wholly from him, whatever the minister's part or piety be, ver. 7. Neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth: but God that giveth the increase. The Apostle preached to the Jews, yet the body of that people remained in infidelity, Rom. x. 16. Who hath believed our report? Yea, Christ himself, who spoke as never man spoke, saith concerning the success of his own ministry, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, Isa xlix. The branches may be hacked by the preaching of the word: but the stroke will never go through, till it be carried home on them, by an omnipotent arm. However God's ordinary way is, by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe, 1 Cor i. 21.

IV. I am to shew how the branches are cut off from the natural stock, the first Adam, and grafted into the true Vine, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks to the husbandman, not to the branch, that it is cut off from its natural stock, and ingrafted into a new one. The sinner, in his coming off from the first stock, is passive; and neither can nor will come off from it of his own accord; but clings to it, till almighty power make him to fall off, John vi 44. No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me, draw him. And chap. v. 40. Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. The ingrafted branches are God's husbandry,