A30122:52
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.
Had a Fig-tree planted in [his] Vineyard.
In [his] Vineyard. Hypocrites, with rotten Hearts, are not afraid to come before God in Zion. These words therefore suggest unto us, a prodigious kind of boldness and hardened Fearlessness: For what presumption higher, and what attempt more desperate, than for a Man that wanteth Grace, and the true Knowledge of God, to crowd himself (in that condition) into the House, or Church of God; or to make profession of, and desire that the name of God should be called upon him?
In [his] Vineyard. Hypocrites, with rotten Hearts, are not afraid to come before God in Sion. These words therefore suggest unto us, a prodigious kind of boldness and hardened Fearlessness: For what presumption higher, and what attempt more desperate, than for a Man that wanteth Grace, and the true Knowledg of God, to croud himself (in that condition) into the House, or Church of God; or to make profession of, and desire that the name of God should be called upon him?
For the Man that maketh a Profession of the Religion of Jesus Christ, that Man hath, as it were, put the Name of God upon himself, and is called and reckoned now, (how fruitless soever before God, or Men) the Man that hath to do with God, the Man that God owneth, and will stand for. This Man, I say, by his Profession suggesteth this to all that know him, to be such a Professor. Men merely natural, I mean, Men that have not got the devilish art of Hypocrisy, are ⟨p. 12⟩afraid to think of doing thus. And of the rest durst no Man join himself to them, but the people magnified them.