The parable of the prodigal. Containing, The riotous prodigal, or The sinners aversion from…

6. Lastly, Presumptuous Confidence is also an Impediment to the ¹present executions of good resolutions; whether it be of future time, hereafter shall serve the turn; it is not wisdom to be so forward; soft and fair will go far; we have day enough yet before us; a year, two or ten hence; after such a business is effected, or (which is worse) after the pleasures of such a sin is a little more tasted. Or of Future ability: This is a work which we will do at pleasure and at leisure: when we see the scouts, the forerunners of the army, then we will buckle on our armour: when we espy the harbingers of death approaching, old age, sickness, weakness, diseases, then we will think of heaven, and forsake hell: what need we be troubling our selves to be doing of that a long time, which we can dispatch at any time? if we have but time to say, Lord have mercy upon me, what would ye more? Or of Future Mercy: Wherefore hath God Mercy but for sinners? and he hath said, That if at any time a sinner convert he will have mercy: We have found him kind unto us all our days, and doubt not of his fatherly compassion at the last. Thus do men post of all penitential executions, and for ever endanger their souls. Alas! for future time, whose is it? Seneca the Heathen could see more truth then this: Solum tempus presence nostrum: No time is ours but the present. Thou carriest thy life in thy hands, thy breath in thy nostrils, and seest more Graves made for the young then for the aged. And as for thy future ability, why dost thou so grossly befool thy self? knowest thou not that present Neglects cause stronger Indispositions? Qui non est hodie, cras minus aptus erit, the Schoolboy will teach thee. Every man by more sinning grows more sinful, and therefore most unapt and averse to good. And then Future Mercy, it is of all things the most uncertain to pardon sin, where present mercy leaves us not to repentance from sin: it is all one as if thou shouldst thus argue, God will hereafter pardon me, and therefore for the present I will sin against him, disobey, dishonour, vex, and grieve, and abuse him. These are the principal impediments to a present ⟨p. 154⟩expectation of penitential resolutions, and are to be declined by us. I now proceed to the helps and furtherances to a present ²execution of penitential resolutions, which are these, amongst many.