N00458:640
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. That Gods holiness and justice do stand engaged for the sinners destruction. It must therefore needs be: this renders it unavoidable. Sinners please themselves with dreams of mercy, as if there were no other Attribute in God but that, concerned about them: but know it, that if ever any sinner be saved, mercy and truth must meet together, righteousness and peace must kiss each other. Final Barrenness cut• off the man from saving mercy, because Holiness and Justice do forbid it. Holiness, is God bound for his own Glory, so as not to bear any thing that stands in the way of it; now as it is Gods glory to forgive the penitent, so it would be a wrong to it to spare the obstinate; he would lose the glory of his Truth in his threatenings, yea the glory of his having honour by the creature that will pay him none. Justice also stands in the way; for every sinner is ⟨p. 289⟩devoted to destruction by the Law-threatening, to which the Justice of God stands obliged; there is but one way to salve this Justice in the justifying of a sinner, and that is by the imputation of the Righteousness of Christ to him, which must be according to the condition of the New-Covenant, which the sinner by his obstinacy keeps himself from, and therefore hath no claim to the privileges of it; and so he must needs perish.
6. That Gods holiness and justice do stand engaged for the sinners destruction. It must therefore needs be: this renders it unavoidable. Sinners please themselves with dreams of mercy, as if there were no other Attribute in God but that, concerned about them: but know it, that if ever any sinner be saved, mercy and truth must meet together, righteousness and peace must kiss each other. Final Barrenness cut• off the man from saving mercy, because Holiness and Justice do forbid it. Holiness, is God bound for his own Glory, so as not to bear any thing that stands in the way of it; now as it is Gods glory to forgive the penitent, so it would be a wrong to it to spare the obstinate; he would lose the glory of his Truth in his threatnings, yea the glory of his having honour by the creature that will pay him none. Justice also stands in the way; for every sinner is ⟨p. 289⟩devoted to destruction by the Law-threatning, to which the Justice of God stands obliged; there is but one way to salve this Justice in the justifying of a sinner, and that is by the imputation of the Righteousness of Christ to him, which must be according to the condition of the New-Covenant, which the sinner by his obstinacy keeps himself from, and therefore hath no claim to the priviledges of it; and so he must needs perish.