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

Reasons why I thus advise are these. 1. Despair is a very heinous sin; It is one of the highest impeachments of Gods greatest glory and delight: there is nothing wherein God doth more magnify himself in the eyes of the world, or more glory in, then to sit upon his mercy-seat: Now despair is not every diminution, and eclipse of mercy, but it is (in its kind) a very extinction of all the love, and kindness, and mercifulness in God; it gives, 1. The lye to the promises. 2. Reproach to Gods nature; and particularly to the attribute of mercy, that it is not, 1. Kind enough. 2. Willing enough. 3. Full enough. 4. Free enough. 2. It is a sore enemy to Repentance; of no hope of mercy, then no care to repent, I can but be damned. 2. And ¹then it is the most uncomfortable sin: Other sins afford some (though ungrounded and poor) contentment either in profit or pleasure: But despair being the grave of mercy, it is also the very night, and funeral of all comfort; and, as S. Austin spake of an evil conscience, that is true of despair, It is its own torment; for taking the soul off from all remedy, it must necessarily afflict it with the most exquisite sense of fear and horror. 3. Satan is very apt to fall in with an awakened conscience, and there to aggravate ²sin above all measure, thereby to incline it to despair of mercy; ⟨p. 175⟩if he cannot make us dye in a senseless Ca•m, his next aim is to make us perish in an unquiet and despairing storm; either to undervalue our sins, and so to slay us with security; or else to undervalue mercy, and so sink us with distrust. 4. Yea, and no ³conscience is more propense to suspect divine •avour, and to credit false suggestions, then a newly awakened conscience: Indeed while our hearts are totally seared, and past feeling (much sin being not at all felt) here is an easy ground to delude our selves, that mercy will quickly bend unto us, who do take our selves to be good enough, and not much to need it; but when many sins shall be laid to our charge, and great ones too, with that wrath which a just and holy God hath threatened, and we feel the burnings of the wrath begun with us; I assure you, it will be most difficult to withhold that Soul from despairing of mercy, which at once sees much guilt, and feels much wrath. 5. There is infinite