N00458:322
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.
1. When men may be said to be barren after all?
A. It hath been already expressed under a former Doctrine, what are the Characters of a fruitless tree in the Vineyard. All I shall here add is only to observe, that there is a two-fold barrenness that may be taken notice of in professors that sit under the means of Grace, and have long enjoyed Gods patient strivings with them, VIZ; total and partial.
1. Total barrenness is when men, after all, remain in their natural state, unconverted to God. Every Child of Adam, in his unconverted state, is barren: he is utterly uncapable of bringing forth any fruit that is acceptable to God; he is a briar and thorn, and cannot bear figs. The sinner, before conversion, hath no saving principle in him, and therefore he cannot serve God; his best moral actions are but glittering abominations: as long therefore as he abides thus, and doth not truly turn to God, he is the same man that he was born: whatsoever men obtain by means, though they get a great deal of literal, knowledge in the things of God, and obtain so much of a civil and moral conversation, as the young man in, Mat. 19. yet if▪ ⟨p. 132⟩he be not savingly changed, if he be not throughly turned to God, he is an empty vine, his works are dead works, he is still dead in trespasses and sins. Nature under all its moral refinings, is but nature still; grace is another manner of thing, and he is a stranger to it; he is yet in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity.
1. Total barrenness is when men, after all, remain in their natural state, unconverted to God. Every Child of Adam, in his unconverted state, is barren: he is utterly uncapable of bringing forth any fruit that is acceptable to God; he is a briar and thorn, and cannot bear figs. The sinner, before conversion, hath no saving principle in him, and therefore he cannot serve God; his best moral actions are but glitering abominations: as long therefore as he abides thus, and doth not truly turn to God, he is the same man that he was born: whatsoever men obtain by means, though they get a great deal of literal, knowledge in the things of God, and obtain so much of a civil and moral conversation, as the young man in,