Chapter XVI.

A General Rule, Teaching Us How To Answer Our Obligations To God.

Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.—Cant. 4:16.

As the creatures are appointed by God to obey man; so man is obliged to love God, and in this the creatures are our monitors. Thus the trees furnish us with ripe, sweet, perfect, and pleasant fruits; which, if they were unripe, sour, or rotten, nobody would taste or care for. So it is not sufficient for man to offer his service, his love, fear, and honor unto God, unless they be genuine and perfect in their kind, being made acceptable 470 unto God through Christ and in Christ, by the Holy Ghost, who produces in us all true and perfect fruits. This then is the great end for which we must labor, by faith and prayer, that we may bring forth fruits acceptable to God: like the trees which spend the whole twelve months of the year in laboring to produce fruits wholesome and pleasant to the eater; for God will no more accept our unripe, sour, or bitter works, than we ourselves would relish sour and unripe fruits.

2. Moreover, as the trees serve us, and naturally provide for our pleasure and benefit; so is it our duty to serve God “out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned” (1 Tim. 1:5), without hypocrisy and sinister designs, that both we and our works may be acceptable in his sight. In a word, that universal rule which holds in nature, must necessarily be transferred to our love and duty to God, namely, that a man ought never to cease from laboring, till he has brought forth fruits acceptable to God: on the other hand, that all superstition, will-worship, and hypocrisy, are as hateful and abominable in the sight of God, as unripe or rotten fruits are to us.