There is the sin of professors; there is a profession that will
stand with an unsanctified heart and life. The sin of such will
overpoise the salvation of their souls, the sin-end being the
heaviest end of the scale: I say, that being the heaviest end which
hath sin in it, they tilt over, and so are, notwithstanding their
glorious profession, drowned in perdition and destruction.
The iniquity that cleaveth to men that profess, if they cast it not
away, but countenance it, will all prove nettles and briars to them;
and I will assure thee, yea, thou knowest, that nettles and thorns
will sting and scratch but ill-favoredly. "I went," saith Solomon,
"by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void
of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and
nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was
broken down." Prov. 24:30,31.
Suppose a man were, after work all day, to be turned into a bed of
nettles at night; or, after a man had been about such a business,
should be rewarded with chastisements of briars and thorns; this
reward for work would be but little help, relief, or comfort to him.
But this is the reward of a wicked man, of a wicked professor from
God: nettles and thorns are to cover over the face of his vineyard,
his field, his profession, and that at the last of all; far this
covering over the face of his vineyard with nettles and thorns, is
to show what fruit the slovenly, slothful, careless professor will
reap out of his profession when reaping-time shall come.
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