N00458:596
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.
There are three things in which this may be discovered.
1. His former barrenness shall not be charged upon him. All the guilt of it shall be removed: it was a great height that he was arrived unto; he had been all this while heaping up provocation, and filling a terrible account: but upon his returning to God, all these scores are c•ost, and his person is justified; his sins are blotted out as a cloud, an act of oblivion it past, and his iniquities shall be remembered no more against him, Ezek. 18 21, 22.
1. His former barrenness shall not be charged upon him. All the guilt of it shall be removed: it was a great height that he was arrived unto; he had been all this while heaping up provocation, and filling a terrible account: but upon his returning to God, all these scores are c•ost, and his person is justified; his sins are blotted out as a cloud, an act of oblivion it past, and his iniquities shall be remembred no more against him, Ezek. 18 21, 22.
2 God will repent him of the evil which he had threatened him withal. It is true, repentance cannot properly be in God, because it argues something rash, imprudent, inconsiderate in him that acts it, of which the Infinitely wise God is incapable: but it is ascribed to him on the account of his providence. God sometimes threatens sinners, and in those threatenings, there is a reserve, in case of their repentance: and then, when ⟨p. 264⟩