N00458:429
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. Think now what a terrible thing it is to be cut down for your barrenness, Do not make a mock at destruction, but be afraid of excision; consider therefore.
1. What a loss you will then sustain. Then will you lose all at once, and for ever. You are then cast out of the vineyard, and all the advantages of it are gone, no more to be recruited: then you will have no more Sabbaths, no more counsels, and instructions, ⟨p. 181⟩no more warnings and calls, no more secret strivings of the Spirit of God, no more day of grace, no more hopes of salvation to Eternity. Is it a light matter with you now to think of losing all these? I can assure you that it will not be so in the recognition: when you shall look back from the pit whither you are going, and from whence there is no returning, and there remember all these things, it will be a far more bitter momento than Jerusul•ms was in the Land of Assyria.
2. What an account you will have to give in to God when he shall come to cut you down. Then will you wish that you had never grown in such a Soil, been within such a pale, enjoyed so much cost and labour as was laid out upon you: then will you wish that you had grown in the remotest Desert, where God and Christ had never been heard of. When God shall count up to you all that he hath done for you, all the privileges which you enjoyed by his benignity, all the free offers that he made to you, and endeavours which he industriously used with you, to persuades you to give up your selves to his fear, and service, and all the patience with which he waited upon you, and all the wilful scorn and contumely which you cast upon this; and it will be a most fearful reckoning.