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

1. It is such a Garment, that of all other thou needest most: Our ¹best Garments are many times superfluous, we need them not, we can attire our selves, well enough without them; but this best Robe is the most needful; thou canst not live without it, nor mayst thou dye without it: How naked art thou with thy filthiness, before the eyes of a pure God? And how at once may his wrath pour out it self like fire, and consume thee, having no covering at all to shelter thee? Friend (said he) to that intruder in the Gospel, How camest thou in here without ⟨p. 210⟩thy Wedding Garment? When thou goest to Prayer, or steps to the Sacrament, or art giving up thy Soul into the hands of God, and hast no covering for any of thy sins; may not God in the same way of judgment say unto thee, and bespeak thee: How dost thou present thy self before me with all this sinfulness? thou knowest that I am a God of purer eyes then to behold sin, and there is no communion twixt light and darkness: I tell thee, that there is, No acceptance of thy person without this Robe; the Lord cannot abide the sight of thee without it, for thou canst not but provoke him, as oft as thou appears before him in thy nakedness and vileness: No respect unto thy services; not that the Lord doth dislike any duty, but that the person must be first covered with the righteousness of Christ, if he would have his offering to be accepted. 2. By nature we are born naked, utterly destitute of this ²precious Robe. As for the nativity (said God to Jerusalem) in the day that thou wast born, thy Navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in Water to supple thee, neither wast thou salted at all, nor swaddled at all. Ezek. 16. 4. Or as Christ to the Church of Laodicea, Thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: So we by nature, clothed only with rags of corruption (with filthy rags, Isa. 64. 6.) and, as Joshua in Zach. 3. 3. Clothed with filthy Garments, destitute of God, of Christ, of all righteousness: as if you should see a naked child, born with Sores, and Boils, and Plagues, and Leprosies, running and spreading from top to toe. 3. You are of