Abraham laboured, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Prophets laboured in sowing; at the Lord’s coming the harvest was found ripe. The reapers sent with the scythe of the Gospel, carried the sheaves into the Lord’s floor, where Stephen was to be threshed. 3. But here comes in that Paul, and he is sent to the Gentiles. And this he does not conceal in setting forth the grace, which he had specially and peculiarly received. For he says in his Scriptures, that he was sent to preach the Gospel where Christ had not been named.3275 But because that first harvest was past already, and all the Jews who remained are no harvest, let us consider that harvest which we ourselves are. For it has been sown by Apostles and Prophets. The Lord Himself sowed it. For He was in the Apostles, seeing that Christ also Himself reaped it. For they are nothing without Him; He is perfect without them. For He saith Himself to them, “For without Me, ye can do nothing.”3276 What then doth Christ from henceforth sowing among the Gentiles say? “A sower went out to sow.”3277 “There” are reapers “sent out” to reap, “here” an unwearied sower “went out” to sow. For what fear did it cause him, that “some seed fell on the way side, and some on rocky places, and some among thorns”? If he had been afraid of these unmanageable3278 grounds, he would never have got to the good ground. What is it to us, what affair of ours is it to be disputing now of the Jews, and talking of the chaff? this only concerns us, that we be not “the way side,” nor “the rock,” nor “the thorns,” but “the good ground.” Be our heart well- prepared, that from it may come the “thirty,” or the “sixty fold,” or the thousand, and the “hundred fold;” some more, some less; but all is wheat. Let it not be “the way side,” where the enemy as a bird may take away the seed trodden down by the passers by. Let it not be “the rock,” where the shallow soil makes it spring up immediately, so that it cannot bear the sun. Let it not be the “thorns,” the lusts of this world, the anxieties of an ill-ordered3279 life. For what is worse than that anxiety of life, which doth not suffer one to attain unto Life? What more miserable, than by caring for life, to lose Life? What more unhappy, than by fearing death, to fall into death? Let the thorns be rooted up, the field prepared, the seeds put in, let them grow unto the harvest, let the barn be longed for, not the fire feared. 4. My place accordingly it is, whom with all my unworthiness the Lord hath appointed to be a labourer in His field, to say these things to you, to sow, to plant, to water, yea to dig round about some trees, and to apply the basket of3280 dung; belongeth it to me to do these things faithfully; to you to receive them faithfully; to the Lord to aid me in my labour, and 3275 Rom. xv. 20. 3276 John xv. 5. 3277 Luke viii. 5. 3278 Difficiles. 3279 Vitiosæ. 3280 i.e. to appoint the exercises of penance; see Sermon lx. (cx. Ben) (i.). 882 On the words of the Gospel, Luke x. 2, ‘The harvest truly is plenteous,’…