I am but a rotten post gilded over, and all my duties but hedge-fruit, which God makes no account of. O cutting thought! that the unlearned shall rise and take heaven, when I, with all my excellent gifts, shall descend into hell. Heaven was not made for scholars, as such, but for believers: As one said, when they were comforting him upon his death-bed, that he was a knowing man, a doctor of divinity: O, said he, I shall not appear before God as a doctor, but as a man; I shall stand upon a level with the most illiterate in the day of judgment. What doth it avail me that I have a nimble wit, whilst I have none to do myself good? Will my judge be charmed with a rhetorical tongue? Things will not be carried in that world as they are in this. If I could, with Berengarius, discourse de omni scibile, of every thing that is knowable, or, with Solomon, unravel nature from the cedar to to the hyssop, what could this advantage me, as long as I am ignorant of Christ, and the mystery of regeneration? My head hath often ached with study, but when did my heart ache for sin? Methinks, O my soul! thou trimmest up thyself in these natural ornaments to appear before God much as that delicate Agag did, when he was to come before Samuel, and fondly conceits that these things will procure favor, or at least pity from him; but yet think not, for all that, the bitterness of death is past: Say not within thyself, will God cast such a one as I into hell? Shall a man of such parts be damned? Alas! justice will hew thee to pieces, as Samuel did that spruce king, and not abate thee the least for these things; many thousand branches of nature, as fair and fruitful as thyself, are now blazing in hell, because not transplanted by regene ration into Christ; and if he spared not them, neither will he spare thee.

2. I am a poor despised shrub, which have no beauty at all in me, and yet such an one hath

the Lord chosen to transplant into A reflection for a Christ, whilst he left many fragrant true, but weak bebranches standing on their native stock, liever.

to be fuel of his wrath to all eternity!

O grace! for ever to be admired! Ah! what cause have I to be thankful to free grace, and for ever to walk humbly with my God! the Lord hath therefore chosen an unlikely, rugged, unpolished creature as I am, that pride may forever be hid from mine eyes, and that I may ever glory in his presence. 1 Cor. i. 29. I now have the advantage of a better root and soil than any carnal person hath; it will therefore be a greater shame to me, and a reproach to the root that bears me, if I should be outstripped and excelled by them: yet, Lord, how often do I find it so ? I see some of them meek and patient, whilst I am rough and surly; generous and noble, whilst I am base and penurious. Truly such a branch as I am is no honor to the root that bears it.

THE POEM.

I AM a branch of that fair Eden tree,
Which to mankind God hath ordain'd to be
The common stock; his situation good,
His branches many, of himself a wood
And like a cedar by the river fed,
Unto the clouds his ample branches spread :
Sin smote his root, then justice cut him down,
And levell'd with the earth his lofty crown.

What hope of branches when the tree's o'erturn'd, But like dry faggots to be bound and burn'd? It had been so, had not transcendent love, Which in a sphere above our thoughts doth move, Prepar'd a better stock to save and nourish Transplanted twigs, which in him thrive and flourish. In Adam all are curs'd; no saving fruit Shall ever spring from that sin-blasted root: Yea, all the branches that in him are found, How flourishing soever, must be bound And pil'd together, (horrid news to tell!) To make an everlasting blaze in hell. God takes no pleasure in the sweetest bud Disclos'd by nature, for the root's not good. Some boughs indeed richly adorned are With natural fruits, which to the eye are fair * Rare gifts, sweet dispositions, which attract The love of thousands, and from most exact Honor and admiration. You'll admire That such as these are fuel for the fire. Indeed, ten thousand pities 'tis to see Such lovely creatures in this case to be. Did they by true regeneration draw

The

sap of life from Jesse's root, the law,

By which they now to wrath condemned are,

Would cease to curse, and God such buds would spare.

But out of him there's none of these can move

His unrelenting heart, or draw his love.

Then cut me off from this accursed tree,

est I for ever be cut off from thee.

CHAPTER II.

UPON THE UNION OF THE GRAFT WITH THE STOCK.

Whene'er you bud and graft, therein you see
How Christ and souls must here united be.

OBSERVATION.

WHEN the husbandman hath prepared his grafts in the season of the year, he carries them, with the tools that are necessary for that work, to the tree or stock he intends to ingraft, and having cut off the top of the limb in some smooth part, he cleaves it with his knife or chissel a little beside the pith, knocks in his wedge to keep it open, then, having prepared the graft, he carefully sets it into the cleft, joining the inner side of the barks of graff and stock together, there being the main current of the sap, then pulls out his wedge, binds both together, as in barking, and clays it up, to defend the tender graft and wound. ed stock from the injuries of the sun and rain.

These tender scions quickly take hold of the stock, and having immediate coalition with it, drink in its sap, concoct it into their own nourishment, thrive better, and bear more and better fruits than ever they would have done upon their natural root; yea, the smallest bud, being carefully inoculated and bound close to the stock, will, in a short time, become a flourishing and a fruitful limb.

APPLICATION.

This carries a most sweet and lively resemblance of the soul's union with Christ by faith; and indeed there is nothing in nature that shadows forth this great gospelmystery like it it is a thousand pities that any who are employed about, or are but spectators of such an action,

should terminate their thoughts, as too many do, in that natural object, and not raise up their hearts to these beavenly meditations which it so fairly offers them.

1. When a twig is to be ingrafted, or a bud inoculated, it is first cut off by a keen knife from the tree on which it naturally grew.

And when the Lord intends to graft a soul into Christ, the first work about it is cutting work, Acts ii. 37. their hearts were cut by conviction and deep compunction; no scion is ingrafted without cutting-no soul united with Christ without a cutting sense of sin and misery. John xvi. 8, 9.

2. When the tender shoot is cut off from the tree, there are, ordinarily, many more left behind upon the same tree, as promising and vigorous as that which is taken; but it pleaseth the husbandman to choose this and leave them.

Even so it is in the removing or transplanting of a soul by conversion; it leaves many behind it in the state of nature as likely and promising as itself; but so it pleaseth God to take this soul and leave many others; yea, often such as grew upon the same root, I mean the immediate parent. "Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord; yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau."

3. When the grafts are cut off, in order to this work, it is a critical season with them: If they lie too long before they are ingrafted, or take not with the stock, they die, and are never more to be recovered: they may stand in the stock awhile, but are no part of the tree.

So when souls are under a work of conviction, it is a critical time with them; many a one have I known then to miscarry, and never recovered again; they have in deed for a time stood like dead grafts in the stock, by an