N00302:174
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.
1. God is hereby dishonoured, and so greatly provoked against us. It is the highest affront which we can offer to God to serve his enemies ⟨p. 68⟩with his favours, and hither do all the corrupt inclinations of our hearts lead, so much as we allow to them, so much we rob God of, we take it from him when we give it to them, and this he will not bear at our hands: it is the great quarrel which God hath with the world of sinful men, that he is forgotten and disregarded while they seek and serve themselves, Hos. 1. 16, 17.
2. Man's happiness and everlasting wellbeing is no way promoted or furthered by it. A man is never the nearer happiness by all that he bestows upon himself, he may bless himself, and others may bless him, Psal. 49. 18. But he is not in the way to true blessedness: He may swim in pleasure boast himself in his delicacy, and count himself an happy man, but he is not nearer Heaven and Glory. Nay,
3. Hereby he obstructs and woefully hinders his own salvation; in stead of helping it forward, it is the great obstacle to it; it sets him further off from true good: When once the Prodigal is gotten into his far Country, and is now fallen to wasting his Estate in riot, he is in the most hopeless condition of all. A sinner settled in any course of sin, is most unlikely to return to God, whiles he is gratifying his lust, and tasteth a great deal of sweetness in his beloved sin, now he cannot endure so much as ⟨p. 69⟩to think of the state of his soul, & thus his heart is hardened; he is in his heaven already, & regards not any other, his stakes are pitched down, and his pleasant ditty is, Soul take thine ease: Every sacrifice offered to his lusts sets God further from him, and him at a greater distance from God; nay, his account is increased, and his reckoning will be so much the more dreadful; what he thought should have done him good, doth him the greatest hurt; treasures of wrath are heaped up, out of the treasures of abused goodness, and all that which is so abused for the gratifying of his lusts, is turned into so much fuel for hell: And therefore may all that which is used in a way of sin be well called wasting and spending,