A30122:361
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.
Solomon saith, Two are better than one, because if one fail, the other may raise him; then surely twenty are better than two, and an hundred are better than twenty, for the same reason, because they are more capable to help one another. If ever Christians would do any thing to raise up the fallen Tabernacles of Jacob, and to strengthen the weak, and comfort the feeble, and to fetch back those that have gone astray, it must be by Unity.
Solomon saith, Two are better than one, because if one fail, the other may raise him; then surely twenty are better than two, and an hundred are better than twenty, for the same reason, because they are more capable to help one another. If ever Christians would do any thing to raise up the fall'n Tabernacles of Jacob, and to strengthen the weak, and comfort the feeble, and to fetch back those that have gone astray, it must be by Unity.
We read of the Men of Babel, Gen. 11. 6. The Lord said, Behold, the People are one, &c. And now nothing will be restrained from them that they have imagined to do.
We learn by Reason what great things may be done in worldly Achievements where Unity is: And shall not Reason (assisted with the Motives of Religion) teach us, that Unity among Christians may enable them to enterprise greater Things for Christ? would not this make Satan fall from Heaven like Lightning? For as Unity built literal Babel, it's Unity that must pull down mystical Babel. And on the other hand, where Divisions ⟨p. 32⟩are, there is Confusion; by this means a Babel hath been built in every Age. It hath been observed by a Learned Man, and I wish I could not say truly observed, That there is most of Babel and confusion among those that cry out most against it.