N00458:659
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.
3. Affect your hearts by thinking how fearful this destruction must needs be. How dismal a thing it will be for you, after all this to fall into the hands of revenging justice. Think, if I bear no fruit, I must needs be destroyed at last, and will not all these things be then remembered against me? and how much better would it then have been, if I had been cut of by such a streak that fell upon me, and I was endangered by? had I not ⟨p. 299⟩better have perished so many years ago, than to have been let alive to fill up so much more wrath, and lay in so many heavier aggravations of guilt, to make my woes of much the more intolerable.
3. Affect your hearts by thinking how fearful this destruction must needs be. How dismal a thing it will be for you, after all this to fall into the hands of revenging justice. Think, if I bear no fruit, I must needs be destroyed at last, and will not all these things be then remembred against me? and how much better would it then have been, if I had been cut of by such a streak that fell upon me, and I was endangered by? had I not ⟨p. 299⟩better have perished so many years ago, than to have been let alive to fill up so much more wrath, and lay in so many heavier aggravations of guilt, to make my woes of much the more intollerable.
4. Know it that if now at last you will hearken to the voice of God, and accept of his grace to make you fruitful, all shall be well still▪ if yet before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, you will give glory to God, you may escape this fearful sentence. This very last threatening which I am now urging upon you, it sent to you in mercy, and I am commanded to tell you of it before it comes to pass; that so you may have, at least, one more advantage presented before you to escape it: and oh let it not be despised if you neglected the last sabbaths encouragement, yet if you will entertain this sabbaths terror, and be persuaded to repent and return to God, it is not yet too late for you to escape the curse, and obtain the blessing.