N00458:202
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.
In the clearing up of this Doctrine we may consider, 1. The evidence that there are such. 2. Who are so to be accounted? 3. How this comes to pass. 4. Why God suffers such in the visible Church.
In the cleering up of this Doctrine we may consider, 1. The evidence that there are such. 2. Who are so to be accounted? 3. How this comes to pass. 4. Why God suffers such in the visible Church.
1. For the evidence that there are such; nay more, that the biggest part of visible Professors are for the most part such, we have warrant sufficient from the Scripture to conclude: nor do we find that the visible Church was ever without such since the beginning. In Adams family there was a Cain who offered unaccepted Sacrifice. In Noah's a Cursed Ham, whom the deluge had not washed from his wickedness. Abraham had a scoffing Ishmael, and Isaac a profane Esau. When Israel were in the Wilderness, and were accounted Holiness to the Lord, yet there was many a vile wretch discovered, and a mixed multitude always rebelling against God. What they were afterwards, Gods frequent complaints by his Prophets, do sufficiently discover. How it was with his vineyard, we see, Isa. 5. begin. And the application of it we have, verse. 5. and if we we shall descend ⟨p. 76⟩to Gospel times, we shall find it so; Christ himself when he was here, had a Judas in his own family; and what do the warnings and predictions of the Apostles signify, but that there were too many of these in the primitive Churches? and they warn us of worse and more degenerate times to come afterwards, but this will be most evidently discovered to us in the Consideration of the next thing; viz.
1. For the evidence that there are such; nay more, that the biggest part of visible Professors are for the most part such, we have warrant sufficient from the Scripture to conclude: nor do we find that the visible Church was ever without such since the begining. In Adams family there was a Cain who offered unaccepted Sacrifice. In Noah's a Cursed Cham, whom the deluge had not washed from his wickedness. Abraham had a scoffing shmael, and Isaack a profane Esau. When Israel were in the Wilderness, and were accounted Holiness to the Lord, yet there was many a vile wretch discovered, and a mixt multitude always rebelling against God. What they were afterwards, Gods frequent complaints by his Prophets, do sufficiently discover. How it was with his vineyard, we see,