III. Nor does the Lord deceive or trifle with us, when he says that he will requite works with what he had freely given previously to the performance of them. For since it is his pleasure that we be employed in good works, while aspiring after the manifestation or enjoyment of those things which he has promised, and that they constitute the road in which we should travel to endeavour to attain the blessed hope proposed to us in heaven, therefore the fruit of the promises, to the perfection of which fruit those works conduct us, is justly assigned to them. The apostle beautifully expressed both those ideas, when he said that the Colossians applied themselves to the duties of charity, “for the hope which was laid up for them in heaven, whereof they heard before in the word, of the truth of the gospel.”[195] For his assertion, that they knew from the gospel, that there was hope laid up for them in heaven, is equivalent to a declaration that it depended not on any works, but on Christ alone; which perfectly accords with the observation of Peter, that believers “are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.”[196] When it is said that they must labour for it, it implies, that in order to attain to it, believers have a race to run, which terminates only with their lives. But that we might not suppose the reward promised us by the Lord to be regulated according to the proportion of merit, he proposes a parable, in which he has represented himself under the character of a householder, who employs all the persons he meets in the cultivation of his vineyard; some he hires at the first hour of the day, others at the second, others at the third, and some even at the eleventh hour; in the evening he pays them all the same wages.[197] A brief and just explanation of this parable is given by the ancient writer, whoever he was, of the treatise “On the Calling of the Gentiles,” which bears the name of Ambrose. I shall adopt his words in preference to my own. “By the example of this comparison, (says he,) the Lord has shown a variety of manifold vocation pertaining to the same grace. They who, having been admitted into the vineyard at the eleventh hour, are placed on an equality with them who had laboured the whole day, represent the state of those whom, to magnify the excellence of grace, God, in his mercy, has rewarded in the decline of the day, and at the conclusion of life; not paying them the wages due to their labour, but sending down the riches of his goodness, in copious effusions, on them whom he has chosen without works; that even they who have laboured the most, and have received no more than the last, may understand theirs to be a reward of grace, not of works.” Lastly, it is also worthy of being observed, that in those places where eternal life is called a reward of works, it is not to be understood simply of that communion which we have with God, as