A39665:1506
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.
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.
UNregenerate men who never were acquainted with the mystery of spiritual union with Iesus 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 intangle the thred of my discourse, I shall (as in the former Chapters) set before you a paralel betwixt the best fruits of natural men, and those of a wild ungraffed tree.
The root that bears this wild fruit is a degenerate root, and that's the cause of all this sourness and harshness in the fruit it bears; it's the seed of some better Tree accidentally blown, or cast into some waste and bad soil, where not being ⟨p. 175⟩manured and ordered aright, it's turned wild: So all the fruits of unregenerate men low from the first Adam, a corrupt and degenerate root; he was indeed planted a right seed, but soon turned a wild and degenerate plant; he being the root from which every man naturally springs, corrupts all the fruit that any man bears from him. It's observed by Gregory, pertinent to my present purpose, Genus humanum in parent primo, velut in radice putruit; Mankind was putrefied in the root of his first parent,