A39665:1502
Husbandry spiritualized, or, The heavenly use of earthly things consisting of many pleasant observations,…
Husbandry spiritualized, or, The heavenly use of earthly things consisting of many pleasant observations, pertinent applications, and serious reflections and each chapter concluded with a divine and suitable poem : directing husband-men to the most excellent improvements of their common employments : whereunto is added ... several choice occasional meditations / by John Flavell.Husbandry spiritualized, or, The heavenly use of earthly things consisting of many pleasant observations, pertinent applications, and serious reflections and each chapter concluded with a divine and suitable poem : directing husband-men to the most excellent improvements of their common imployments : whereunto is added ... several choice occasional meditations / by John Flavell.
London : Printed and are to be sold by Robert Boulter, l674
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.
OBSERVATION.
A Wild tree naturally springing up in the wood or hedge, and never grafted or removed from its native soil, may bear some fruit, and that fair and beautiful to the eye, but it will give you no content at all in eating, being always harsh, sower and unpleasant to the taste; but if such a stock be removed into a good soil, and grafted with a better kind, it may become a good tree, and yield store of choice and pleasant fruit.
A Wild tree naturally springing up in the wood or hedge, and never graffed or removed from its native soyl, may bear some fruit, and that fair and beautiful to the eye, but it will give you no content at all in eating, being alwayes harsh, sower and unpleasant to the taste; but if such a stock be removed into a good soyl, and graffed with a better kind, it may become a good tree, and yield store of choice and pleasant fruit.
APPLICATION.
Unregenerate men who never were acquainted with the mystery of spiritual union with Jesus Christ but still grow upon their natural root, old Adam, may by the force and power of natural principles bring forth some fruit, (which like the wild hedge fruit we speak of) may indeed be fair and pleasant to the eyes of men, but God takes no pleasure at all in it; its sower, harsh, and distasteful to him, because it springs not from the spirit of Christ, Isa, 1. 13. I cannot away with it, it is iniquity, &c. but that I may not entangle the thread of my discourse, I shall (as in the former Chapters) set before you a parallel betwixt the best fruits of natural men, and those of a wild ungraffed tree.