N00458:411
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. These were all of them heirs of destruction before in their natural state. All those that are planted in Gods Vineyard, were at the first transplanted out of the Wilderness; there was no difference in them from others, but what God was pleased to make by bringing them under the Gospel, so the Apostle tells his Ephesians, Eph. 2. 12: yea he assures them that, They were by nature Children ⟨p. 172⟩of wrath even as others, verse. 3. All mankind were fallen under condemnation by sin; God in his mercy picks up whom he pleaseth among these, and puts them under the means of Salvation, where he makes the offers, and proposeth the terms of it unto them; but still this is their natural estate, God therefore puts his people in mind of what they were, when he first looked upon them, Ezek, 16. 3: God for this end appointed a remembrance to be solemnly observed by the children of Israel, and to be after at the appointed time openly acknowledged, Deut. 26. […], Now mens merely being in the visible Church doth not really alter this state, but only puts them under the advantage for it, and affords to them a mer•ful treaty, in which God transacts with them about it.
1. These were all of them heirs of destruction before in their natural state. All those that are planted in Gods Vineyard, were at the first transplanted out of the Wilderness; there was no difference in them from others, but what God was pleased to make by bringing them under the Gospel, so the Apostle tells his Ephesians, Eph. 2. 12: yea he assures them that, They were by nature Children ⟨p. 172⟩of wrath even as others, verse. 3. All mankind were fallen under condemnation by sin; God in his mercy picks up whom he pleaseth among these, and puts them under the means of Salvation, where he makes the offers, and proposeth the terms of it unto them; but still this is their natural estate, God therefore puts his people in mind of what they were, when he first looked upon them, Ezek, 16. 3: God for this end appointed a remembrance to be solemnly observed by the children of Israel, and to be after at the appointed time openly acknowledged,