N00458:407
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.
6. Cutting down is in order to casting out. When the Husbandman is come to ⟨p. 170⟩this work, it saith that he is resolved this tree shall stand here no longer; and therefore as soon as that is done he presently throws it out of the vineyard; it is there to continue no longer: if he had intended it a room in his Orchard, he would have let it grow still, for it was because he could not endure to see it there that he thus dealt with it. Thus God, when he comes to bring this Judgment upon unfruitful professors, he removes them by it out of the visible Church, he takes them away from all relation, to, or benefit of the privileges that hitherto they had enjoyed there. There is an Ordinance of Christ, instituted in his Church, whereby men are cut off from communion with his people, which is a ministerial cutting them down, and is a figure or token of what God himself will do to such if they repent not, but go on to provoke him.
6. Cutting down is in order to casting out. When the Husbandman is come to ⟨p. 170⟩this work, it saith that he is resolved this tree shall stand here no longer; and therefore as soon as that is done he presently throws it out of the vineyard; it is there to continue no longer: if he had intended it a room in his Orchard, he would have let it grow still, for it was because he could not endure to see it there that he thus dealt with it. Thus God, when he comes to bring this Judgment upon unfruitful professors, he removes them by it out of the visible Church, he takes them away from all relation, to, or benefit of the priviledges that hitherto they had enjoyed there. There is an Ordinance of Christ, instituted in his Church, whereby men are cut off from communion with his people, which is a ministerial cutting them down, and is a sigure or token of what God himself will do to such if they repent not, but go on to provoke him.
7. Cutting down is for some other use. When the Owner cuts up his fig-tree, and casts it out of the Vineyard, he doth not throw it away and make no improvement of it; no, though it will not bear figs, yet it will make fires; and so it will not be altogether unprofitable, though it answers not the end of its planting, yet there is an use that he puts it to; he therefore makes it up into faggots, and so burns it as he hath occasion for it; and such is the improvement which God makes of such as did not serve and glorify him