The Power of Holiness is Expressed in the Duties of God’s Worship 3/3

2. The second end God hath appointed divine ordin­ances and religious duties for, is to be a means whereby he may let out himself to his people, and communi­cate the choicest of his blessings into their bosoms.‘There,’ saith the psalmist, speaking of the mountain of Zion, where the temple stood, the place of God's worship, ‘the Lord com­manded the blessing, even life for evermore,’ Ps. 133:3; that is, he hath ap­pointed the blessing of life spiritual, grace, and com­fort, which at last shall swell into life eternal, to issue and stream thence.  The saints ever drew their water out of these wells.  ‘Your heart shall live that seek God,’ Ps. 69:32.  And their souls must needs die that seek not God here.  The husbandman may as well expect a crop where he never plowed and sowed; and the tradesman to grow rich, who never opens his shop-doors to let customers in; as he to thrive in grace, or comfort, that converseth not with the duties of religion.  The great things God doth for his people are got in communion with him.  Now here appears the power of holiness—when a soul makes this his business, which he follows close, and attends to, in duties of religion, viz. to receive some spiritual ad­vantage from God by them.  As a scholar knowing he is sent to the university to get learning himself, gives up to pursue this, and neglects other things (it is not riches, or pleasures he looks after, but learning); thus, too, the gracious soul bestirs him, and flees from one duty to another, as the bee from flower to flower, to store itself with more and more grace.  It is not credit and reputation to be thought a great saint, but to be indeed such, that he takes all this pains for.  The Christian is compared to a merchantman that trades for rich pearls; he is to go to ordinances, as the mer­chant that sails from port to port, not to see places, but to take in his lading, some here, some there.  A Christian should be as much ashamed to return empty from his traffic with ordinances, as the mer­chant to come home without his lading.  But, alas! how little is this looked after by many that pass for great professors, who are like some idle persons that come to the market, not to buy provision, and carry home what they want, but to gaze and look upon what is there to be sold, to no purpose.  O my brethren, take heed of this!  Idleness is bad anywhere, but worst in the market-place, where so many are at work before thy eyes, whose care for their souls both adds to thy sin, and will, another day, to thy shame.  Dost thou not see others grow rich in grace and comfort, by their trading with those ordinances, from which thou comest away poor and beggarly? and canst thou see it without blushing?  If thou hadst but a heart to pro­pound the same end to thy soul, when thou comest, thou mightest speed as well as they.  God allows a free trade to all that value Christ and his grace, according to their preciousness.  ‘Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price,’ Isa. 55:1. The Spirit of God seems, in the judgment of some, to allude to a certain custom in maritime towns.  When a ship comes with commodities to be sold, they use to cry them about the town.  ‘Oh, all that would have such and such commodities, let them come to the waterside, where they are to be had at such a price.’ Thus Christ calls every one that sees his need of him; and of his graces, to the ordinances, where these are to be freely had of all that come to them, for this very end.