--

inclined, let us remember the story we have just heard what ignominy, disgrace, and suffering, will certainly await us! All this distress might have been avoided, if we had obferved the paths of duty. Let us then always confider the protection of our heavenly Father as our only true home-as the great fource of all our comfortour only refuge in every diftrefs; and if we ever do wander from it, (as who is there who does not often get wrong?) let us take the earliest opportunity to retreat. But if we are ever fo unfortunate as entirely to leave it, let us in time, like the prodigal before us, think of returning, before the door is fhut aginft us.-What encouragement has the finner to draw him to re-. pentance! His converfion, we are told, occafions joy even among the bleffed inhabitants of heaven. His gracious Father, embracing him with the arms of mercy, receives him with thofe kind expreffions: This my fon was dead, and is alive again. While holy angels, taking up the ftrain, unite in harmony: This our brother was dead, and is alive again; he was loft, and is found.

SERMON XI.

MAT. XX. 8.

SO WHEN EVEN WAS COME, THE LORD OF THE
VINEYARD SAITH UNTO HIS STEWARD, CALL
THE LABOURERS, AND GIVE THEM THEIR
HIRE; BEGINNING FROM THE LAST UNTO
THE FIRST. AND WHEN THEY CAME WHO
HAD BEEN HIRED ABOUT THE ELEVENTH
HOUR, THEY
EVERY MAN A

PENNY.

RECEIVED

Na late difcourfe* I endeavoured to explain

IN

the cafe of the thief on the cross, which hath induced many, it may be feared, to truft in a death-bed repentance. I fhall now confider another paffage of fcripture-the parable of the labourers hired into the vineyard; which may, perhaps, be mifapplied in the fame mifchievous

way.

VOL. IV.

* See Vol. II. Serm. XXXV.

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The

The general fubftance of the parable, you will recollect, is this:

A householder went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. Such as he found, he agreed with by the day, at the price of the country*.

Some hours afterwards he went out again, and finding others unemployed, he sent them alfo into his vineyard; and even, at a very late hour, finding others who could get no work, he hired them alfo. In the evening he paid all his workmen; and gave fuch as had wrought only one hour, the fame wages which he gave to thofe who had laboured through the day.

"Now from this paffage (fays the man who wishes to find a cover for his fins) it is evident we are not tied up fo ftrictly, as many fuppofe, to the duties of religion: the gospel is more liberal. The labourers hired into their master's vineyard, we find, entered at different times, but

*The penny was a Roman coin, current among the Jews: it was worth about 7d. or 8d. of our money, and was the price of a day's labour in Judea. The good Samaritan therefore paid the hoft about one fhilling and fourpence in value; and as that fum would purchafe much more than the fame fum now, it was fufficient for the purpose.

all

all received an equal reward. There is no difference made between him who laboured from an early hour, and him who laboured from a late one. And what can be meant by this, except that fome men repent fooner, and fome later; but that a merciful God is as well inclined to accept the late penitent as the early one? Since this is the cafe," he cries, "we may fafely defer our repentance till the eleventh hour, or later if need be; and if we then enter the vineyard-if we then repent, we may expect, from our Saviour's own promife, an equal reward with them who have laboured through the day."

A man's falvation is in a very deplorable state, when he begins thus to tamper with the terms of falvation; and, instead of making his practice agree with his religion, fets his wits at work to make his religion agree with his practice.-I hope none of you, my brethren, are in fo dangerous a ftate. However, as the leaft fallacy in this point is in a high degree dangerous, I shall, in the following difcourfe, endeavour to fhew you, first, the meaning of the parable; from which it will appear that it furnishes no argument for a late repentance; and fhall, fecondly, fhew you what

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what kind of repentance alone is available in the fight of God.

As to the meaning of the parable, it does not relate to chriftians, but to heathens-not to those who wilfully defer repentance, but to those who were before ignorant of the truth of religion; to those who were idle-not because they would not work, but becaufe no man had hired them.

The Jews had long been God's peculiar people; but when our Saviour came into the world, that distinction was to be loft, and the gospel to be preached to all mankind. This great truth, however, which was fo displeasing to the Jews, our bleffed Lord opened by degrees. He endeavoured to loosen the prejudices of men, fometimes by leaving them to conjecture from obfcure hints, and fometimes by giving them plainer fimilitudes.

Among other difcourfes of this tendency he here inftructs the Jews, under the fimilitude of a mafter who went out at different hours to hire labourers, that God intended to call other labourers into the chriftian church befides them, at different periods of time, as their converfion could