N00302:197
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.
3. Though all mankind are (in some sense) trading for Salvation or Happiness, yet the greatest number are there trading for it where it is not to be found; they are seeking the living among the dead; they are seeking heaven ⟨p. 80⟩in hell, happiness among an heap of miseries: One man's wealth is his God, another's pleasures are his felicity, another climbs the Pinnacles of honour to seek for the seat of happiness: Nature leads men no higher than something under the Sun, and therefore such as see no higher must of necessity spend their time, their wit, their estate, their all.
3. Though all mankind are (in some sense) trading for Salvation or Happiness, yet the greatest number are there trading for it where it is not to be found; they are seeking the living among the dead; they are seeking heaven ⟨p. 80⟩in hell, happiness among an heap of miseries: One man's wealth is his God, anothers pleasures are his felicity, another climbs the Pinacles of honour to seek for the seat of happiness: Nature leads men no higher than something under the Sun, and therefore such as see no higher must of necessity spend their time, their wit, their estate, their all.
4. The best improvement that nature can make of Gods common favours, cannot bring them to find and enjoy blessedness: Let men use them never so frugally, and prudently, according to the measures which they take of prudence, and frugality, yet they will fall short: Nature could never by its own strength arrive at saving grace, nor by the outward help of all the common blessings of God: A man may have health, strength, understanding, ordinances, many advantages, but let him make his best of them, all will fall short: It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, Rom. 9. 16. these all are either but nature which is in a man, or but external things which he enjoyeth, and man cannot climb up to Heaven on the rounds of such a Ladder.