Works of John Bunyan Volume III Part 114

After that thou shalt cut it down.

Thus far we have treated of the barren fig-tree, or fruitless professor, with some signs to know him by; whereto is added also some signs of one who neither will nor can, by any means, be fruitful, but they must miserably perish. Now, being come to the time of execution, I shall speak a word to that also; 'After that thou shalt cut it down.'

[PROPOSITION SECOND. The death or cutting down of such men will be dreadful.]

Christ, at last, turns the barren fig-tree over to the justice of G.o.d, shakes his hands of him, and gives him up to the fire for his unprofitableness. 'After that thou shalt cut it down.'

Two things are here to be considered:

First. The executioner; thou, the great, the dreadful, the eternal G.o.d. These words, therefore, as I have already said, signify that Christ the Mediator, through whom alone salvation comes, and by whom alone execution hath been deferred, now giveth up the soul, forbears to speak one syllable more for him, or to do the least act of grace further, to try for his recovery; but delivereth him up to that fearful dispensation, 'to fall into the hands of the living G.o.d' (Heb 10:31).

Second. The second to be considered is, The instrument by which this execution is done, and that is death, compared here to an axe; and forasmuch as the tree is not felled at one blow, therefore the strokes are here continued, till all the blows be struck at it that are requisite for its felling: for now cutting time, and cutting work, is come; cutting must be his portion till he be cut down. 'After that thou shalt cut it down.' Death, I say, is the axe, which G.o.d often useth, therewith to take the barren fig-tree out of the vineyard, out of a profession, and also out of the world at once. But this axe is now new ground, it cometh well-edged to the roots of this barren fig-tree. It hath been whetted by sin, by the law, and by a formal profession, and therefore must, and will make deep gashes, not only in the natural life, but in the heart and conscience also of this professor: 'The wages of sin is death,' 'the sting of death is sin' (Rom 6:23; 1 Cor 15:56).

Wherefore death comes not to this man as he doth to saints, muzzled, or without his sting, but with open mouth, in all his strength; yea, he sends his first-born, which is guilt, to devour his strength, and to bring him to the king of terrors (Job 18:13,14).

But to give you, in a few particulars, the manner of this man's dying.

1. Now he hath his fruitless fruits beleaguer him round his bed, together with all the bands and legions of his other wickedness.

'His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins' (Prov 5:22).

2. Now some terrible discovery of G.o.d is made out unto him, to the perplexing and terrifying of his guilty conscience. 'G.o.d shall cast upon him, and not spare'; and he shall be 'afraid of that which is high' (Job 27:22; Eccl 12:5).

3. The dark entry he is to go through will be a sore amazement to him; for 'fears shall be in the way' (Eccl 12:5). Yea, terrors will take hold on him, when he shall see the yawning jaws of death to gape upon him, and the doors of the shadow of death open to give him pa.s.sage out of the world. Now, who will meet me in this dark entry? how shall I pa.s.s through this dark entry into another world?

4. For by reason of guilt, and a shaking conscience, his life will hang in continual doubt before him, and he shall be afraid day and night, and shall have no a.s.surance of his life (Deut 28:66,67).

5. Now also want will come up against him; he will come up like an armed man. This is a terrible army to him that is graceless in heart, and fruitless in life. This WANT will continually cry in thine ears, Here is a new birth wanting, a new heart, and a new spirit wanting; here is faith wanting; here is love and repentance wanting; here is the fear of G.o.d wanting, and a good conversation wanting: 'Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting'

(Dan 5:27).

6. Together with these standeth by the companions of death, death and h.e.l.l, death and evils, death and endless torment in the everlasting flames of devouring fire. 'When G.o.d cometh up unto the people he will invade them with his troops' (Hab 3:16).

But how will this man die? Can his heart now endure, or can his hands be strong? (Eze 22:14).

(1.) G.o.d, and Christ, and pity, have left him. Sin against light, against mercy, and the long-suffering of G.o.d, is come up against him; his hope and confidence now lie a-dying by him, and his conscience totters and shakes continually within him!

(2.) Death is at his work, cutting of him down, hewing both bark and heart, both body and soul asunder. The man groans, but death hears him not; he looks ghastly, carefully, dejectedly; he sighs, he sweats, he trembles, but death matters nothing.

(3.) Fearful cogitations haunt him, misgivings, direful apprehensions of G.o.d, terrify him. Now he hath time to think what the loss of heaven will be, and what the torments of h.e.l.l will be: now he looks no way but he is frighted.

(4.) Now would he live, but may not; he would live, though it were but the life of a bed-rid man, but he must not. He that cuts him down sways him as the feller of wood sways the tottering tree; now this way, then that, at last a root breaks, a heart-string, an eye-string, sweeps asunder.

(5.) And now, could the soul be annihilated, or brought to nothing, how happy would it count itself, but it sees that may not be.

Wherefore it is put to a wonderful strait; stay in the body it may not, go out of the body it dares not. Life is going, the blood settles in the flesh, and the lungs being no more able to draw breath through the nostrils, at last out goes the weary trembling soul, which is immediately seized by devils, who lay lurking in every hole in the chamber for that very purpose. His friends take care of the body, wrap it up in the sheet or coffin, but the soul is out of their thought and reach, going down to the chambers of death.

I had thought to have enlarged, but I forbear. G.o.d, who teaches man to profit, bless this brief and plain discourse to thy soul, who yet standest a professor in the land of the living, among the trees of his garden. Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]General Doctrine of Toleration, 8vo, 1781.

[2] This awful destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans is narrated by Josephus in his sixth book of the Jewish Wars, in language that makes nature shudder. Mult.i.tudes had a.s.sembled to celebrate the pa.s.sover when the invading army beleaguered the city; a frightful famine soon filled it with desolation: this, with fire and sword, miserably destroyed one million, three hundred and thirty-seven thousand, four hundred and ninety Jews, while the Christians fled before the siege, and escaped to the mountains.

Well might the sun vail his face at that atrocious deed, which was so quickly followed by such awful punishment.--Ed.

[3] Reader, do not imagine that this was peculiar to Bunyan's days; look not upon your neighbours to find an example, but search your own heart--'Lord, is it I?' and strive and pray that you may bring forth more fruit.--Ed.

[4] The mode of admitting a member to church-fellowship, among the Baptists, was and now is by introducing the trembling convert to a private meeting of the whole church, that they may hear why the union is sought, how the soul became alarmed, and fled for refuge to Christ, with the grounds of hope; inquiries having been previously made into Christian character and G.o.dliness. If, with all these precautions, a barren professor gains admittance, the punishment is not upon the garden, but upon the barren tree.--Ed.

[5] 'Humour,' the temper or disposition of mind. Not out of love to humility, but these creeping things pretend to be humble, to gain some sinister end.--Ed.

[6] However strange it may appear, it is true that the Ranters, in Bunyan's time, used these arguments, and those so graphically put into the mouth of Bye-ends, in the Pilgrim, to justify their nonconformity to Christ. The tom-fooleries and extravagancies of dress introduced by Charles II, are here justly and contemptuously described. The ladies' head-dresses, called 'frizzled fore-tops,'

became so extravagant, that a barber used high steps to enable him to dress a lady's head!--Ed.

[7] A word not to be found in our dictionaries, being local and almost obsolete. It means a division, end, or border of a town or village.--Ed.

[8] See the character of Talkative, in the Pilgrim's Progress.

'His house is as empty of religion as the white of an egg is of savour. There is in his house neither prayer, nor sign of repentance for sin. He is the very stain, reproach, and shame of religion.

Thus say the common people that know him, A saint abroad and a devil at home.'--Ed.

[9] How great is the mercy that those horrid barbarities, perpetrated upon peaceful Christians, are now only heard of in those distance parts of Satan's empire, China and Madagascar! Has the enmity of the human heart by nature changed? No; but the number of Christians has so vastly increased with a civilizing influence, as to change the face of society. What a paradise will this earth become when Christ shall reign in every heart!--Ed.

[10] In the midst of these faithful admonitions, we venture to remark that, according to Lightfoot, so valuable was the fig-tree that it was never destroyed until means were carefully used to restore its fruitfulness, and that the use of these means occupied a period of three years. This ill.u.s.trates the wisdom of our Lord in selecting the fig-tree as the princ.i.p.al object presented to view in his parable. It is a most valuable tree--capable of bearing much fruit; still, after every trial, if it remains barren, it must be cut down as a c.u.mber-ground, and sent to the fire.--Ed.

[11] A 'hit,' in some parts of the country, is used to express a good crop. A 'hitting season' means a fruitful season.--Ed.

[12] This mode of infusing new vigour into plants and trees is thus described in the Gemara--'They lay dung in their gardens, to soften the earth. They dig about the roots of their trees, and sprinkle ashes, and pluck up suckers, and make a smoke beneath to kill vermin.'--Ed.

[13] Among the superst.i.tions of the ancients, Michaelis states that both the Greeks and Asiatics had a superst.i.tion that a tree might be rendered fruitful by striking it, at the intercession of a friend, three times with the back of an axe.--Ed.

[14] However painfully unpleasant these terms may appear to eyes or ears polite, it is a homely but just representation, and calculated to make a lasting impression on every reader.

Afflictions, trials, crosses, are used as a means of creating or reviving spiritual life, as manure is applied to vegetation.--Ed.

[15] Mahomet professed descent from Ishmael, and that he came to revive the religion which G.o.d had revealed to Abraham, who taught it to Ishmael. Mahometanism is the religion of the outcast of G.o.d.--Ed.

[16] Bunyan had been haunted with the temptation 'to sell and part with Christ,' and, under a fear that he had fallen under that temptation, the case of Esau made a dreadful impression upon his soul; extreme horror and anguish seized upon his spirit; 'he was like a man bereft of life and bound over to eternal punishment,'

for two years. At length, after an awful storm, he found peace in the promise, 'his blood cleanseth from ALL sins,' and a proof that he had not sold Christ.--See Grace Abounding, No. 139-160.

[17] How solemn a thought! What an appeal to perpetual watchfulness.

Why have I not made shipwreck of faith? Most emphatically may we reply, Because G.o.d has sustained my soul.--Ed.

[18] Bunyan's tongue and pen are here fired by his vivid imagination of eternal realities. With such burning words, we need no messenger from the invisible world to alarm the consciences of sinners. What angel could arouse more powerfully, alarmingly, convincingly, the poor sinner, than the whole of this chain of reasoning.--Ed.

[19] This picture is drawn by a master hand: the master is laid by for a season; or, as Bunyan quaintly expresses it, 'a little a to side': when raised from affliction earthly affairs absorb his attention, and he forgets his good resolves. According to the old rhyme:--

'The devil was sick, the devil a saint would be The devil to well, the devil a saint was he.'--Ed.