A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of Jude

Now in this description you may observe a gradation, 1. Whose fruit withereth. 2. Without fruit. 3. Twice dead. First bad fruit, and then leaves, and then rottenness. Note,¹ That deceivers and hypocrites grow worse and worse: you have it from the Apostle Paul also, 2 Tim. 3. 13. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived; they deceive others, and the devil deceiveth them; the two states are now at a stay, wicked men grow worse and worse, and godly men grow better and better: observe then which way is your progress and growth; the glory of the Lord in Ezekiel, departed by degrees, first, from the holy place, then from the Altar of burnt offering, then the threshold of the house, then the City, then the mountain which is on the East side of the City; it stood hovering there as loth to be gone: So the Spirit of God doth not all at once depart from men, but by degrees: first men suspect duties, then dispute against them, then shake them off, and then come to beastliness and profaneness: Or if you will take the graduation thus, first God is cast out of the Closet, private intercourses are neglected, then out of the Family, then out of the Congregation, and public Ordinances seem useless things, and then blasphemies, and a profane vertiginous spirit ensueth: first men begin to wrangle, and sceptically to debate matters of Religion, and within a while to oppose the truth, the beginning is foolishness, and the latter end is mischievous madness, Eccles. 10. 13.

Now in this description you may observe a gradation, 1. Whose fruit withereth. 2. Without fruit. 3. Twice dead. First bad fruit, and then leaves, and then rottenness. Note,¹ That deceivers and hypocrites grow worse and worse: you have it from the Apostle Paul also, 2 Tim. 3. 13. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived; they deceive others, and the divel deceiveth them; the two states are now at a stay, wicked men grow worse and worse, and godly men grow better and better: observe then which way is your progress and growth; the glory of the Lord in Ezekiel, departed by degrees, first, from the holy place, then from the Altar of burnt offering, then the threshold of the house, then the City, then the mountain which is on the East side of the City; it stood hovering there as loth to be gone: So the Spirit of God doth not all at once depart from men, but by degrees: first men suspect duties, then dispute against them, then shake them off, and then come to beastliness and profaness: Or if you will take the graduation thus, first God is cast out of the Closet, private intercourses are neglected, then out of the Family, then out of the Congregation, and publike Ordinances seem useless things, and then blasphemies, and a profane vertiginous spirit ensueth: first men begin to wrangle, and sceptically to debate matters of Religion, and within a while to oppose the truth, the beginning is foolishness, and the latter end is mischievous madness,