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Fruit you may bear indeed; but now that your vine is the vine of Sodom, your grapes must of course be grapes of gall, Deut. xxxii. 32. The scripture speaks of two sorts of fruit, which grow on the branches upon the natural stock; and it is plain enough, they are of the nature of their degenerate stock. (1.) The wild grapes of wickedIsa. v. 2. These grow in abundance by influence from hell: See Gal. v. 19, 20, 21. At their gates are all manner of these fruits, both new and old. Storms come from heaven to put them back; but they still grow. They are struck at with the sword of the Spirit, the word of God; conscience gives them many a secret blow; yet they thrive. (2.) Fruit to themselves, Hosea x. 1. What else are all the unrenewed man's acts of obedience, his reformation, sober deportment, his prayers, and good works? They are all done chiefly for himself, not for the glory of God. These fruits are like the apples of Sodom, fair to look at, but fall to ashes, when handled and tried. Ye think ye have not only the leaves of a profession, but the fruits of a holy practice too; but if ye be not broken off from the old stock, and ingrafted in Christ Jesus, God accepts not, nor regards your fruits.

Here I must take occasion to tell you, there are five faults will be found in heaven with your best fruits. (1.) Their bitterness; your clusters are bitter, Deut. xxxii. 32. There is a spirit of bitterness, wherewith some come before the Lord, in religious duties, living in malice and envy; and which some professors entertain against others, because they outshine them, by holiness of life, or because they are not of their opinion or way. This, wheresoever it reigns, is a fearful symptom of an unregenerate state. But I do not so much mean this, as that which is common to all the branches of the old stock; namely, the leven of hypocrisy, Luke xii. 1. which sours and embitters every duty they perform. The wisdom that is full of good fruits is without hypocrisy, James iii. 17. (2.) Their ill savour. Their works are abominable, for themselves are corrupt, Psal. xiv. 1. They all savour of the old stock, not of the new; it is the peculiar privilege of the saints, that they are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, 2 Cor. ii. 15. The unre generate man's fruits savour not of love to Christ, nor of the blood of Christ, nor of the incense of his intercession;

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and therefore will never be accepted of in heaven. (3.) Their unripeness. Their grape is an unripe grape, Job xv. 33. There is no influence on them from the Sun of righteousness, to bring them to perfection; they have the shape of fruit, but no more. The matter of duty is in them; but they want right principles and ends; their works are not wrought in God, John iii. 21. Their prayers drop from their lips, before their hearts be impregnated with the vital sap of the Spirit of supplication; their tears fall from their eyes, ere their hearts be truly softened; their feet turn to new paths, and their way is altered, while yet their nature is not changed. (4.) Their lightness. Being weighed in the balances, they are found wanting, Dan. v. 27. For evidence whereof, you may observe, they do not humble the soul, but lift it up in pride. The good fruits of holiness bear down the branches they grow upon, making them to salute the ground, 1 Cor. xv. 13. "I laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.' But the blasted fruits of unrenewed mens performance hang lightly on branches towering up to heaven, Judges xvii. 13. Now know I, that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest." They look indeed so high, that God cannot behold them. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? Isa. lviii. 3. The more duties they do, and the better they seem to perform them, the less are they humbled, the more they are lifted up. This disposition of the sinner is the exact reverse of what is to be found in the saint. To men, who neither are in Christ, nor are solicitous to be found in him, their duties are like windy bladders, wherewith they think to swim ashore to Immanuel's land: But these must needs break, and they consequently sink; because they take not Christ for the lifter up of their head, Psalm iii. S. Lastly, They are not all manner of pleasant fruits, Cant. vii. 13. Christ is a King must be served with variety. Where God makes the heart his garden, he plants it as Solomon did his, with trees of all kinds of fruits, Eccles. ii. 5. And accordingly it brings forth the fruit of the Spirit in all goodness, Eph. v. 9. But the ungodly are not so; their obedience is never universal; there is always some one thing or other excepted. In one

word, their fruits are fruits of an ill tree, that cannot be accepted in heaven.

2dly, Our natural stock is a dead stock, according to the threatening, Gen. ii. 17. "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Our root now is rottenness, no marvel the blossom go up as dust. The stroke is gone to the heart; the sap is let out, and the tree is withered. The curse of the first covenant, like a hot thunder-bolt from heaven, has lighted on it, and ruined it. It is cursed now as the fig-tree, Mat. xxi. 19. "Let no fruit grow on thee, henceforth for ever." Now it is good for nothing, but to cumber the ground, and furnish fuel for Tophet.

Let me enlarge a little here also. Every unrenewed man is a branch of a dead stock. When thou seest, sinner, a dead stock of a tree, exhausted of all its sap, having branches on it in the same condition; look on it as a lively representation of thy soul's state. (1.) Where the stock is dead, the branches must needs be barren. Alas! the barrenness of many professors plainly discovers on what stock they are growing. It is easy to pretend to faith, but shew me thy faith without thy works, if thou canst, James ii. 17. (2.) A dead stock can convey no sap to the branches, to make them bring forth fruit. The covenant of works was the bond of our union with the natural stock, but now it is become weak through the flesh; that is, through the degeneracy and depravity of human nature, Rom. vii. 3. It is strong enough to command, and to bind heavy burdens on the shoulders of those who are not in Christ; but it affords no strength to bear them. The sap, once in the root, is now gone; and the law, like a merciless creditor, apprehends Adam's heirs, saying, Pay what thou owest; when, alas! his effects are riotously spent. (3.) All pains and cost are lost on the tree whose life is gone. In vain do men labour to get fruit on the branches, when there is no sap in the root. First, The gardener's pains are lost; ministers lose their labour on the branches of the old stock, while they continue on it. Many sermons are preached to no purpose; because there is no life to give sensation. Sleeping men may be awakened, but the dead cannot be aised without a miracle; even so, the dead sinner must

remain so, if he be not restored to life, by a miracle of grace.

Secondly, The influences of heaven are lost on such a tree; in vain doth the rain fall upon it; in vain is it laid open to the winter-cold and frosts. The Lord of the vineyard digs about many a dead soul, but it is not bettered. "Bruise the fool in a mortar, his folly will not depart." Though he meets with many crosses, yet he retains his lusts; let him be laid on a sick-bed, he will there lie like a sick beast, groaning under his pain, but not mourning for, nor turning from his sin. Let death itself stare him in the face, he will presumptuously maintain his hope, as if he would look the grim messenger out of countenance. Sometimes there are common operations of the divine Spirit performed on him ; he is sent home with a trembling heart, and with arrows of conviction sticking in his soul; but at length he prevails against these things, and turns as secure as ever. Thirdly, Summer and winter are alike to the branches of the dead stock. When others about them are budding, blossoming, and bringing forth fruit, there is no change on them; the dead stock has no growing time at all. Perhaps it may be difficult to know in the winter what trees are dead, and what are alive; but the spring plainly discovers it. There are some seasons, wherein there is little life to be perceived, even among saints; yet times of reviving come at length. But even when the vine flourisheth, and the pomegranates bud forth, (when saving grace is discovering itself, by its lively actings, wheresoever it is,) the branches on the old stock are withered; when the dry bones are coming together, bone to bone, amongst saints, the sinners bones are still lying about the grave's mouth. They are trees that cumber the ground, near to be cut down, and will be cut down for the fire, if God in his mercy prevent it not, by cutting them off from that stock, and ingrafting them into another. Lastly, Our natural stock is a killing stock. If the stock die, how can the branches live? If the sap be gone from the root and heart, the branches must needs wither. In Adam all die, 1 Cor. xv..22. The root died in Paradise; and all the branches in it, and with it. is impoisoned, thence the branches come to be infected;

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death is in the pot; and all that taste of the pulse or pottage are killed.

Know then, that every natural man is a branch of a killing stock. Our patural root not only gives us not life, but it has a killing power, reaching all the branches thereof. There are four things which the first Adam conveys to all his branches; and they are abiding in, and lying on, such of them as are not ingrafted to Christ. First, A corrupt nature. He sinned, and his nature was thereby corrupted or depraved; and this corruption is conveyed to all his posterity. He was infected, and the contagion spread itself over all his seed. Secondly, Guilt; that is an obligation to punishment, Rom. v. 21. "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for all that have sinned." The threatenings of the law, as cords of death, are twisted about the branches of the old stock, to draw them over the hedge into the fire. And till they be cut off from this stock by the pruning knife, the sword of vengeance hangs over their heads, to cut them down. Thirdly, This killing stock transmits the curse into the branches. The stock as the stock (for I speak not of Adam in his personal and private capacity) being cursed, so are the branches, Gal. iii. 10. "For as many as are of the works of the law, are under the curse.' This curse affects the whole man, and all that belongs to him, every thing he possesses; and worketh three ways. (1.) As poison, infecting; thus their blessings are cursed, Mal. ii. 2. Whatever the man enjoys, it can do him no good, but evil, being thus impoisoned by the curse. His prosperity in the world destroys him, Prov. i. 32. The ministry of the gospel is a savour of death unto death to him, 2 Cor. ii. 16. His seeming attainments in religion are cursed to him; his knowledge serves but to puff him up, and his duties to keep him back from Christ. (2.) It worketh as a moth, consuming and wasting by little and little, Hos. v. 12. "Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth." There is a worm at the root, consuming them by degrees. The curse pursued Saul, till it wormed him out of all his enjoyments, and out of the very shew he had of religion. Sometimes they decay as the fat of lambs, and melt away as the snow in a sun-shine. (3.)