An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

In the fourth place, when he is said to be the Father of mercies, there is implied, The real and lively working of it. The father though he pity his child, yet cannot give him the mercy of health, much less the mercy of grace. Ministers, ⟨p. 143⟩though they be spiritual Fathers, they can only pray for mercy, preach of mercy, but to give you pardon of sin, to give you comfort of conscience, and assurance that they cannot do; but God is the Father of these mercies, he can give joy to the soul, and neither Devil or sin can discomfort. As the whole creation came out of the womb of nothing at first; when God said, Let there be light, immediately there was light; and as God is called, The Father of rain, Job 38. 28. because he can open the bottles of Heaven, and refresh the parched earth when he pleaseth; so also he is the Father of mercies, because he can turn thy darkness into light, thy hell into Heaven; yea he doth it, that so what many Sermons, many Ordinances could not do, that God suddenly and insuperably doth, he comforts irresistibly, as well as converts irresistibly. But of this more in the next property, viz. A God of all consolation.

In the fourth place, when he is said to be the Father of mercies, there is implied, The real and lively working of it. The father though he pity his child, yet cannot give him the mercy of health, much less the mercy of grace. Ministers, ⟨p. 143⟩though they be spiritual Fathers, they can only pray for mercy, preach of mercy, but to give you pardon of sinne, to give you comfort of conscience, and assurance that they cannot do; but God is the Father of these mercies, he can give joy to the soul, and neither Devil or sinne can discomfort. As the whole creation came out of the womb of nothing at first; when God said, Let there be light, immediately there was light; and as God is called, The Father of rain, Job 38. 28. because he can open the bottles of Heaven, and refresh the parched earth when he pleaseth; so also he is the Father of mercies, because he can turn thy darkness into light, thy hell into Heaven; yea he doth it, that so what many Sermons, many Ordinances could not do, that God suddenly and insuperably doth, he comforts irresistibly, as well as converts irresistibly. But of this more in the next property, viz. A God of all consolation.