N00458:13
The barren fig trees doom. Or, A brief discourse wherein is set forth the…
The barren fig trees doom. Or, A brief discourse wherein is set forth the woeful danger of all who abide unfruitful under Gospel privileges, and Gods husbandry. Being the substance of sixteen sermons preached on Christ's parable of the fig-tree. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Four lines from Matthew]The barren fig trees doom. Or, A brief discourse wherein is set forth the woful danger of all who abide unfruitful under Gospel priviledges, and Gods husbandry. Being the substance of sixteen sermons preached on Christ's parable of the fig-tree. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Four lines from Matthew]
Boston: printed by Benjamin Harris, 1691
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.
Luke XIII. 6, 7, 8, 9. He spake also this Parable: A certain man had a Fig-tree planted in his Vineyard, and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he to the Dresser of his Vineyard, behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree and find none; cut it down why cumbereth it the ground. And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, & dung it. And if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after, that thou shalt cut it down.
SERMON I.
THE Occasion of this short and pithy Parable, is declared in the beginning of the Chapter. Our Saviour had b•• (Chap. 12.) Preaching a solemn Sermon in the Audience of a Multitude; and after it, some of the company make report to him, of a bloody act of Pilate upon some Galileans: he knowing their hearts, and perceiving what improvement they made of it, in censure and not ⟨p. 2⟩in self-application; reflecting upon themselves as being warned hereby: he therefore instructs them in the proper use which was to be made of that and such other Providences as sometimes fall out tacitly reprehending them for rash Judgment, in concluding those to have been unparalleled Sinners: giving them to understand, that in these ways of Divine Dispensation, The• Judgments of God were unsearchable, and his ways past finding out. That, though God sometimes makes some Sinners notable Examples of his awful Severity, even in this world; yet there are as bad as they, if not worse, spared in the day of his Patience; and that therefore the best use the Living can make of such Exemplary Providences, is to consider themselves, fee how much they deserved it; that it was mere Sovereignty that made others and not them the Monuments of this Severity; that this was a loud call to Repentance, and if they did not improve it to that end, though they did now escape, yet Ruin and Destruction would ere-long fall upon them: and farther to set forth the great peril they were under, he joyns this Parable. It was therefore nextly referred to the present state of the Jer, to show them upon what a precipice they then stood, and what danger they then lay open to, notwithstanding the present lenity they were partaker's in. But, because What is written, is written for our Instruction. There is a profitable