N00458:650
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.
USE III.
This may also be for a word of Trial unto spared sinners. If the case stands thus with you, that you are now upon the Trial with God, and if upon it you do not bring forth fruit to his praise, you must for all this be destroyed, it loudly calls upon you, seriously and throughly to examine your selves, under which of these Hypotheses you now stand. ⟨p. 295⟩The difference is vastly great, if you bear fruit well, but if not, you see what is your doom: and doth not this call for your reflection upon this? doth it not say, that it infinitely concerns you to know what improvement you have made of this mercy of God that hath spared you? will it not be a fearful thing to be mistaken here? and that you may be guided aright in this self-examination, take diligent notice of the condition expressed in the Text; it doth not say if you grow worse, and fall into grosser abominations than before you indulged your selves in; if you grow more lewd, and more debauched; which yet it is to be feared, is the woeful effect of sparing mercies upon too many unhappy creatures, whom their deliverances have emboldened in sin; but if you […]: If the Judgment found you unconverted, and leaves you unconverted, and […] about your conversion, this is […] to bring you under the sentence, whatsoever reformation it may work in your […] •• versation, however you may […] from some sins which you formerly lived in, and do some duties which heretofore you lived in the neglect of, yet if there be no• a through change wrought in you, […] not effectually brought home to […] be it, […] is still a truth as to you, that […] ⟨p. 296⟩