A30122:271
The barren fig tree, or, The doom and downfall of the fruitless professor showing…The barren fig tree, or, The doom and downfall of the fruitless professor shewing…
The barren fig tree, or, The doom and downfall of the fruitless professor showing that the day of grace may be past with him long before his life is ended : the signs also by which such miserable mortals may be known / by John Bunyan ; to which is added his Exhortation to peace and unity among all that fear God.The barren fig tree, or, The doom and downfall of the fruitless professor shewing that the day of grace may be past with him long before his life is ended : the signs also by which such miserable mortals may be known / by John Bunyan ; to which is added his Exhortation to peace and unity among all that fear God.
London: printed for J. Robinson, 1688
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
To some Men that have grievously sinned under a Profession of the Gospel, God giveth this Token of his Displeasure, they are denied the Power of Repentance, their Heart is bound, they cannot repent: It is impossible that they should ever repent should they live a thousand Years, It is impossible for those Fall-a-ways to be renewed again unto Repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to open shame, Heb. 6. 4, 5, 6. Now to have the Heart so hardened, so judicially hardened, this is as a bar put in by the Lord God against the Salvation of this Sinner. This was the burden of Spira's Complaint, I cannot do it: O now I cannot do it.
To some Men that have grievously sinned under a Profession of the Gospel, God giveth this Token of his Displeasure, they are denied the Power of Repentance, their Heart is bound, they cannot repent: It is impossible that they should ever repent should they live a thousand Years, It is impossible for those Fall-a-ways to be renewed again unto Repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, aed put him to open shame, Heb. 6. 4, 5, 6. Now to have the Heart so hardened, so judicially hardened, this is as a bar put in by the Lord God against the Salvation of this Sinner. This was the burden of Spira's Complaint, I cannot do it: O now I cannot do it.
This Man sees what he hath done, what should help him, and what will become ⟨p. 105⟩of him, yet he cannot repent; he pulled away his Shoulder before, he stopped his Ears before, he shut up his Eyes before, and in that very posture God left him, and so he stands to this very Day. I have had a fancy, that Lot's Wife, when she was turned into a Pillar of Salt, (Gen. 19. 26.) stood yet looking over her Shoulder, or else with her Face towards Sodom; as the Judgment caught her, so it bound her, and left her a Monument of God's Anger to after-Generations.