N00458:412
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. Hence it was only Gods m•er patience which reprieved them from that destruction all this while. There was nothing in them to lay him under the obligation to do it. Men are not in themselves any things the better Morally for being in the visible Church; they have the same nature in them, the same evil heart cleaving to them. It alters indeed their outward estate, but that in it self doth not change their hearts; nor are they at all changed, as long as they remain barren, that very thing is an evidence that they are the same men still: It therefore can be ⟨p. 173⟩nothing but patience that keeps ruin from them. It cannot be thought rationally, that God is the less provoked by them, because they are within the pale, whilst they abide unfruitful, than he is with others, or that their sin is less, because they are there, no, but a great deal more: they are a trial to his patience, they live upon it, it is that only keeps them from perishing.
2. Hence it was only Gods m•er patience which reprieved them from that destruction all this while. There was nothing in them to lay him under the obligation to do it. Men are not in themselves any things the better Morally for being in the visible Church; they have the same nature in them, the same evil heart cleaving to them. It alters indeed their outward estate, but that in it self doth not change their hearts; nor are they at all changed, as long as they remain barren, that very thing is an evidence that they are the same men still: It therefore can be ⟨p. 173⟩nothing but patience that keeps ruine from them. It cannot be thought rationally, that God is the less provoked by them, because they are within the pale, whilst they abide unfruitful, than he is with others, or that their sin is less, because they are there, no, but a great deal more: they are a trial to his patience, they live upon it, it is that only keeps them from perishing.