A66106:798
Mercy magnified on a penitent prodigal, or, A brief discourse wherein Christs parable of the lost son found is opened and applied as it was delivered in sundry sermons / by Samuel Willard ...
printed by Samuel Green for Samuel Philips, 1684
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
God's pardoning and accepting Grace, sensibly apprehended, will make a soul more to loth his sins, accuse himself of them, and be ashamed at them. Though whiles God is kindling these resolves, he comes in with them and •rings his Salvation, yet this shall not extinguish those resolutions, but help them. This is the season to express and act. Godly sorrow humiliation and repentance. We have David in this for an exe[…]nt example; whom when ⟨p. 321⟩the Prophet had convinced for his great sin, he confesseth it; but when he had witnessed from God that his sin was pardoned, then he breaks forth in a penitential Psalm, viz. Psal. 51. wherein he humbleth himself into the very dust.
God's pardoning and accepting Grace, sensibly apprehended, will make a soul more to loth his sins, accuse himself of them, and be ashamed at them. Though whiles God is kindling these resolves, he comes in with them and •rings his Salvation, yet this shall not extinguish those resolutions, but help them. This is the season to express and act. Godly sorrow humiliation and •epentance. We have David in this for an exe〈…〉nt example; whom when ⟨p. 321⟩the Prophet had convinced for his great sin, he confesseth it; but when he had witnessed from God that his sin was pardoned, then he breaks forth in a penitential Psalm, viz. Psal. 51. wherein he humbleth himself into the very dust.
Reas. 1. From the nature of true Repentance, sound Humiliation, and Godly sorrow; which is such as, before grace received from God, cannot act kindly, no not at all. All that the man hath before he is converted, is legal: Take the force of the reason in these particulars.
1. All acts presume their habits. It is a principle in Logic, that no effect exceeds the virtue of the cause. The tree must first be made good before it can bring forth good fruit; the thorn turned into a fig-tree, if it bear figs. There must be an habit before there can be acts correspondent: there must be an eye before there can be any sight: So there must be habitual Repentance, or a principle of it in the soul, before there can be exertion of it. Now this principle or habit is not in the soul before conversion. Conversion is the turning of a Sinner from Sin to God; this is done by changing his heart and all his faculties; it is by making him a new creature, and he is thus made by the infusion of the body of spiritual graces into him, or laying the foundation of ⟨p. 322⟩Sanctification in his soul. Repentance is a grace, a special gift of God, and we in the former Doctrine observed, that all graces come at once, and then when God taketh a Sinner into favour, then he furnisheth him with his grace; hence, being in Christ, and being a new creature are convertible, 2 Cor. 5. 17.
1. All acts presume their habits. It is a principle in Logick, that no effect exceeds the vertue of the cause. The tree must first be made good before it can bring forth good fruit; the thorn turned into a fig-tree, if it bear figs. There must be an habit before there can be acts correspondent: there must be an eye before there can be any sight: So there must be habitual Repentance, or a principle of it in the soul, before there can be exertion of it. Now this principle or habit is not in the soul before conversion. Conversion is the turning of a Sinner from Sin to God; this is done by changing his heart and all his faculties; it is by making him a new creature, and he is thus made by the infusion of the body of spiritual graces into him, or laying the foundation of ⟨p. 322⟩Sanctification in his soul. Repentance is a grace, a special gift of God, and we in the former Doctrine observed, that all graces come at once, and then when God taketh a Sinner into favour, then he furnisheth him with his grace; hence, being in Christ, and being a new creature are convertible,
2. The act of Repentance is an actual turning from Sin, and unto God: and it hath both these parts in it, as was before hinted at verse, 18, 19. If it wants one, it wants all; for man, being a dependent creature, must have, will have some object: Now here the soul utterly and everlastingly relinquisheth all its Sinful objects, Hos. 14. 8. It freely and willingly parts with them, and it turns to God, closeth with him as the only object on whom it can rest for Salvation; this is the ultimate scope of Repentance, Jer. 4. 1. Now such an act of choosing and closing with God, which must needs accompany Repentance, necessarily supposeth faith; for a Sinner cannot close with God but by an act of faith, and if there be an act of faith in Repentance, then there was an habit, whence that act flowed.
2. The act of Repentance is an actual turning from Sin, and unto God: and it hath both these parts in it, as was before hinted at verse, 18, 19. If it wants one, it wants all; for man, being a dependent creature, must have, will have some object: Now here the soul utterly and everlastingly relinquisheth all its Sinful objects, Hos. 14. 8. It freely and willingly parts with them, and it turns to God, closeth with him as the only object on whom it can rest for Salvation; this is the ultimate scope of Repentance, Jer. 4. 1. Now such an act of chusing and closing with God, which must needs accompany Repentance, necessarily supposeth faith; for a Sinner cannot close with God but by an act of faith, and if there be an act of faith in Repentance, then there was an habit, whence that act flowed.
3. Inasmuch as Repentance is a change of the affections, which are the feet of the soul, carrying it from and to its object; and hence is a fixing them upon some other object than ⟨p. 323⟩they formerly dwelt upon; where also the prime affections mainly discover themselves viz. Love and hatred. It necessarily prerequires to this act, a gracious disposition infused into these affections. In Repentance the soul is made to hate Sin, which before it loved as its life; and it loves God, whom before it hated; and the one of these strengthens the other: He hates Sin, because he loves God, &c. Now the setting those affections on work, and moving them to their proper object, implies a sanctified change in them; and no other reason can be given of their so acting.
4. The affections being hand-maids of the will, hence a change in them implies a change in the will, and evidenceth that that is turned: it signifies that the heart is altered from what it was; for the will exerts it self in and by the affections: When therefore we see a man truly to hate Sin and love God, we know that his will is set, fixed, his choice is certainly made: and where the will is changed, there is conversion wrought: where the soul hath indeed chosen God, there is saving grace. David therefore asserts his grace from this evidence, Psal. 73. 25.
4. The affections being hand-maids of the will, hence a change in them implies a change in the will, and evidenceth that that is turned: it signifies that the heart is altered from what it was; for the will exerts it self in and by the affections: When therefore we see a man truly to hate Sin and love God, we know that his will is set, fixed, his choise is certainly made: and where the will is changed, there is conversion wrought: where the soul hath indeed chosen God, there is saving grace. David therefore asserts his grace from this evidence, Psal. 73. 25.
5. Repentance is the exercise of the grace of Sanctification: It is practical holiness, which consists in this, to be going from Sin ⟨p. 324⟩to God. Sanctification hath two parts in it, Mortification, and Vivification; Repentance comprehends them both, brings them in to use, and continues them in practice. Now Sanctification is a benefit of the new Covenant, and a fruit of conversion, one of the things for which Christ is given to us, 1 Cor. 1. 30. and is wrought at conversion, as hath been cleared.
Reas. 2. Because, as in Conversion the soul receives a principle and power of acting repentance, so by this effect of God's wonderful love, there are given to the soul abundant advantages, for the helping forward the more kindly exercises of it. The truth is, all Evangelical motives to it, are hence derived: For,
1. Converting grace makes sin appear in its own colours. The sun-light of saving grace makes Sin look more ugly than ever: Beauty and deformity are not discerned in the dark; the candle-light of common conviction made but obscure discoveries: Now he sees it Sin, before he did not: he had two discoveries of it before; viz. 1. That it was displeasing to God, his Law being against it. 2. That it was a procuring cause of misery, by reason of the curse: These two he saw in the Glass of the Law. But now grace discovers Sin to him. 1. As contrary to the nature of God, opposite ⟨p. 325⟩to his holiness, Hab. 1. 13. 2. Hence to be in it self an odious thing, and that separate from the hell that follows. He now sees the beauty of grace, and that shows him the deformity of Sin.
1. Converting grace makes sin appear in its own colours. The sun-light of saving grace makes Sin look more ugly than ever: Beauty and deformity are not discerned in the dark; the candle-light of common conviction made but obscure discoveries: Now he sees it Sin, before he did not: he had two discoveries of it before; viz. 1. That it was displeasing to God, his Law being against it. 2. That it was a procuring cause of misery, by reason of the curse: These two he saw in the Glass of the Law. But now grace discovers Sin to him. 1. As contrary to the nature of God, opposite ⟨p. 325⟩to his holiness, Hab. 1. 13. 2. Hence to be in it self an odious thing, and that separate from the hell that follows. He now sees the beauty of grace, and that shews him the deformity of Sin.
2. God's love manifested in Conversion, discovers Sin under divers aggravations, which before were not seen. 1. That it was against that God who had loved him with an everlasting love, Jer. 31. 3. 2. Against Jesus Christ who had shed his blood for his redemption from hell. 3. Against the Holy Ghost that had so often striven with him, had waited so long, and left not till he had turned him, and now sin appears sinful, which before appeared only sorrowful.
USE, 1. For information;
1. We have here a note of distinction between a legal and a saving Repentance. The Scripture makes mention of both; it tells us of Ahab's repentance as well as of David's: It puts one name upon things vastly different; and if we would know how to distinguish them, here is it to be discerned: The one is effected by a spirit of Bondage, the other by the spirit of Adoption; the one is produced by te••ours, the other by love: the one confesseth […] Sin, vomits up his morsels, takes upon him a profession of holiness, driven to it by the dismal reflections of his own Conscience, and apprehensions ⟨p. 326⟩of the wrath to come: the other is taken into embraces of amity, confirmed with a kiss of favour; and by this his heart is melted into Godly sorrow, in his fathers arms he bemoans himself. The truly broken heart, is an heart broken with love.
1. We have here a note of distinction between a legal and a saving Repentance. The Scripture makes mention of both; it tells us of Ahab's repentance as well as of David's: It puts one name upon things vastly different; and if we would know how to distinguish them, here is it to be discerned: The one is effected by a spirit of Bondage, the other by the spirit of Adoption; the one is produced by te••ours, the other by love: the one confesseth 〈…〉 Sin, vomits up his morsels, takes upon him a profession of holiness, driven to it by the dismal reflexions of his own Conscience, and apprehensions ⟨p. 326⟩of the wrath to come: the other is taken into embraces of amity, confirmed with a kiss of favour; and by this his heart is melted into Godly sorrow, in his fathers arms he bemoans himself. The truly broken heart, is an heart broken with love.
