A30122:370
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.
And hence i• is that Christ prays, John 17. 21. That his Disciples might be one, as the Father and he were one, that the World might believe the Father sent him: As if he should say, you may preach me as long as you will, and to little ⟨p. 36⟩purpose, if you are not at Peace and Unity among your selves. Such was the Unity of Christians in former days, that the intelligent Heathen would say of them, That though they had many Bodies, yet they had but one Soul: And we read the same of them, Acts 4. 32. That the multitude of them that believed were of one Heart and one Soul.
And as the Learned Stillingfleet observes in his Irenicum; The Unity and Peace that was then among Christians, made Religion amiable in the Judgment of impartial Heathens: Christians were then known by the benignity and sweetness of their Dispositions, by the candour and ingenuity of their Spirits, by their mutual Love, Forbearance, and Condescension to one another: But either this is not the practice of Christianity, (viz. a Duty that Christians are now bound to observe) or else it is not calculated for our Meridian, where the Spirits of Men are of too high an elevation for it; for if Pride and Uncharitableness, if Divisions and Strifes, if Wrath and Envy, if Animosities and Contentions ⟨p. 37⟩were but the Marks of true Christians, Diogenes need never light his Lamp at noon to find out such among us; but if a Spirit of Meekness, Gentleness, and Condescension; if a stooping to the Weaknesses and Infirmities of one another, if pursuit after Peace, when it flies from us, be the indispensable Duties, and characteristical Notes of Christians, it may possibly prove a difficult Inquest to find out such, for the crowds of those that shelter themselves under that glorious Name.