N00302:159
Mercy magnified on a penitent prodigal, or A brief discourse, wherein Christs parable of…
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 teacher of a church in Boston in New-England. ; [Two lines from Luke]
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.
USE, 2. It may be a warning to men, especially young men, to beware of the first steps of sin: carefully avoid the first temptations of giving way to loose and vain courses: You may think to stop at pleasure, but it is a cheat, and if you are drawn in, you thereby step into a way which leads far from God, and will, in a while, arrive to such an high degree of profaneness, as you would at present abominate the very thought of, if wonderful mercy do not hedge up your way, and give check to your progress.
USE, 2. It may be a warning to men, especially young men, to beware of the first steps of sin: carefully avoid the first temptations of giving way to loose and vain courses: You may think to stop at pleasure, but it is a cheat, and if you are drawn in, you thereby step into a way which leads far from God, and will, in a while, arrive to such an high degree of prophaness, as you would at present abominate the very thought of, if wonderful mercy do not hedge up your way, and give check to your progress.
2. But I pass to the next particular, or the consideration of the improvident and unfrugal expense which the young man employed his Estate in; And there he wasted his substance ⟨p. 63⟩with riotous living. In which take notice: 1. What he did with his Estate, He wasted it: 2. What it was he wasted, his substance: 3. Where he wasted it, there, viz. in that far Country: 4. how he consumed it, in riotous living.
2. But I pass to the next particular, or the consideration of the improvident and unfrugal expense which the young man imployed his Estate in; And there he wasted his substance ⟨p. 63⟩with riotous living. In which take notice: 1. What he did with his Estate, He wasted it: 2. What it was he wasted, his substance: 3. Where he wasted it, there, viz. in that far Country: 4. how he consumed it, in riotous living.