N00458:335
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.
2. There are a great many Temptations that the Children of God do meet with to hinder them in their constant serving of God. The World we live in, is a place of Temptation, and every thing is full of it: and the tendency of it is to abuse or discourage the Christian from his work. There are the Temptations of carnal pleasures, of worldly encumbrances, of difficulties and threatening dangers in Duty. Riches have their shares, and so hath poverty: peace hath its allure-ments, and persecution it's affrightments.
2. There are a great many Temptations that the Children of God do meet with to hinder them in their constant serving of God. The World we live in, is a place of Temptation, and every thing is full of it: and the tendency of it is to abure or discourage the Christian from his work. There are the Temptations of carnal pleasures, of worldly encumbrances, of difficulties and threatning dangers in Duty. Riches have their shares, and so hath poverty: peace hath its allure-ments, and persecution it's affrightments.
3. The corrupt part that is in us, often takes advantage by these Temptations to obstruct the Christian in his business. It is by these things that the Law in his Members brings him into Captivity? and if the Spirit of God leaves him to himself to try what is in him, it is always so: he either dallies with allurements, and diverts unhappily to these things, and spends his time with them; or he stops at discouragements, and sits still disheartened; and by these means he neglects the work of God, which causeth the fruits of Holiness to grow very thin upon him, as the grapes on the vines after the Vintage, Micah. 7. 2.
3. The corrupt part that is in us, often takes advantage by these Temptations to obstruct the Christian in his business. It is by these things that the Law in his Members brings him into Capativity? and if the Spirit of God leaves him to himself to try what is in him, it is always so: he either dallies with allurements, and diverts unhappily to these things, and spends his time with them; or he stops at discouragements, and sits still disheartned; and by these means he neglects the work of God, which causeth the fruits of Holiness to grow very thin upon him, as the grapes on the vines after the Vintage,