N00458:389
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. More particularly take these two Rules.
1. That you may be under all the means of Grace, and strivings of the Spirit and yet Gods patience be near worn •ut. The Husbandman, as long as the fig-tree is in the Vineyard; and he is waiting for fruit of in, ⟨p. 162⟩neglects not the husbandry of it, but gives it the tendance that is proper, and he is wont to do so, till he resolves with himself that there will no good come of it, and so to remove it away. Thus God doth by men in the visible Church; let them be never so sinful and vain, yet they shall have the Ordinances, and possibly many convictions of the Spirit, awakenings and terrors, which are a witness that Gods day of Patience is not at an end with them; but it doth not say but that they may speedily be cut off: the man without the Wedding Garment is taken from the Table: this therefore is no plea sufficient to build your confidence upon.
2. That God frequently withdraws his Spirit from the means, as the first effect of his departure from unfruitful sinners. He possibly neither takes the means from them, nor them from the means for the present; but he secretly withdraws from them, and leaves them only under outward dispensations, without any inward impressions upon their hearts; he makes their hearts fat, and leaveth senselessness and remo•cele•ness upon them: the Spirit of God departs from them, and then the means ripen them the faster, and make them the more stupid and sottish; and the going away of the Spirit it an awful desertion, and, though not regarded