by Rev. Thomas Boston.
(From “Human Nature in its Fourfold State”)
I am now 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 is cut off from its natural stock, and grafted 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 makes 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,” Isaiah I, i. 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 parts or piety be, ver. 7, “Neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.” The Apostles 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, says concerning the success of his own ministry, “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought,” Isa. xix. 4. The branches may be hacked by the preaching of the word; but the stroke will never go through, till it is carried home by the omnipotent arm. However, God’s ordinary way is, “by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe,” I Cor. i. 21.
The cutting of the branch from the natural stock, is performed by the pruning knife of the law, in the hand of the Spirit of God, Gal. ii. 19, “For I, through the law, am dead to the law.” It is by the bond of the covenant of works, as I said before, that we are knit to our natural stock: therefore, as a wife, unwilling to put away, pleads and hangs by the marriage tie; so do men by the covenant of works. They hold by it, like the man who held the ship with his hands; and when one hand was cut off, held it with the other; and when both were cut off, held it with his teeth. This will appear from a distinct view of the Lord’s works on men, in bringing them off from the old stock; which I offer in the following particulars. (This article to be continued next month. The main part held over for lack of space.—Editor)