A92856:627
The parable of the prodigal. Containing, The riotous prodigal, or The sinners aversion from…
The parable of the prodigal. Containing, The riotous prodigal, or The sinners aversion from God. Returning prodigal, or The penitents conversion to God. Prodigals acceptation, or Favourable entertainment with God. Delivered in divers sermons on Luke 15. from vers. 11. to vers. 24. By that faithful servant of Jesus Christ Obadiah Sedgwick, B.D. Perfected by himself, and perused by those whom he entrusted with the publishing of his works.The parable of the prodigal. Containing, The riotous prodigal, or The sinners aversion from God. Returning prodigal, or The penitents conversion to God. Prodigals acceptation, or Favourable entertainment with God. Delivered in divers sermons on Luke 15. from vers. 11. to vers. 24. By that faithfull servant of Jesus Christ Obadiah Sedgwick, B.D. Perfected by himself, and perused by those whom he intrusted with the publishing of his works.
London: printed by D. Maxwel for Sa. Gellibrand, 1660
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.
The Use which I desire to make of this Point, I shall reduce unto, 1. Information, 2. Trial, 3. Instruction.
1. For Information. Is every natural and unconverted man a 1spiritually dead man? Hence we may be informed of several 2Truths. 1. That the unconverted man is, of all men on the earth, in the saddest, vilest, miserablest condition: Why? Because ⟨p. 259⟩he is spiritually dead, dead, spiritually dead. A wounded man is in a tedious condition, and a diseased man is in a languishing condition; but what is a wound to death? what is a disease to death? Me morienti mori; Death is the Sun-set of all comfort; Death is the drowning of a little world; Death is the very Hermitage of forgetfulness and loathsome corruption: Death is the lowest and vilest condition; what then is a spiritual Death? No Death like the spiritual Death. O my friends, consider spiritual Death, either in comparison, in its proper complexion, 3or in the consequents of it, surely, no Death, no condition is so dismal as it. 1. In comparison with any other 4Death: This is the worst, this is the heaviest. There is the Death of our Goods and Estate, (into which Job fell;) of our Name and Reputation, (into which David fell;) of our Bodies and natural Life, (into which Lazarus fell;) of the Soul, the immortal soul of man, into which every unconverted sinner is fallen: Now what is a dead Estate to a dead Soul? Or what is a dead Name to a dead Soul? Or what is a dead Body to a dead Soul? It is not so much as the death of a Dog to the death of a Man. Every unconverted man hath a dead soul; a converted man may have a troubled soul, but the unconverted man hath a dead soul, sin hath slain his precious soul; If the soul be dead, what is alive? What is that man whose soul is dead? In all other deaths, something is alive; if Goods be gone, the Name lives; if the Name be gone, the Body lives; if the Body be gone, the Soul lives: But if the Soul also be gone, what lives? 2. In it self: Why spiritual Death is a total privation of God,