A30122:391
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.
How many are there that take upon them to teach others, that had need be taught in the beginning of Religion; that instead of multiplying Knowledge, multiply Words without Knowledge; and instead of making known God's Counsel, darken Counsel by Words without Knowledge? The Apostle speaks of some that did more than darken Counsel, for they wrested the Counsel of God; 2 Pet. 3. 16. In Paul's Epistles (saith he) are some things hard to ⟨p. 48⟩be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. Some things in the Scripture are hard to be known, and they are made harder by such unlearned Teachers, as utter their own Notions by Words without Knowledge.
How many are there that take upon them to teach others, that had need be taught in the beginning of Religion; that instead of multiplying Knowledg, multiply Words without Knowledg; and instead of making known God's Counsel, darken Counsel by Words without Knowledg? The Apostle speaks of some that did more than darken Counsel, for they wrested the Counsel of God; 2 Pet. 3. 16. In Paul's Epistles (saith he) are some things hard to ⟨p. 48⟩be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. Some things in the Scripture are hard to be known, and they are made harder by such unlearned Teachers, as utter their own Notions by Words without Knowledg.
None are more bold and adventurous to take upon them to expound the dark Mysteries and Sayings of the Prophets and Revelations, and the 9th of the Romans, which I believe contains some of those many things which in Paul's Epistles, Peter saith, were hard to be understood. I say, none are more forward to dig in these Mines, than those that can hardly give a sound Reason for the first Principles of Religion; and such as are ignorant of many more weighty things, that are easily to be seen in the Face and Superficies of the Scripture; nothing will serve these but swimming in the Deeps, when they have not yet learned to wade through the Shallows of the Scriptures: Like the Gnostics of old, who thought they knew all Things, though they knew nothing as they ought