N00302:198
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.
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.
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 frugallity, 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.
5. Hence when the natural man hath done his utmost, and taken the greatest pains in laying out his time, strength and estate, he loseth his soul: Nay, it is very certain, that though a man be never so proud and confident in those ⟨p. 81⟩many blessings God which he hath conferred upon him, yet sooner or later, he shall have a through and sensible conviction of his poverty; that he hath nothing which is saving, that he hath wasted and misimproved that which he had to unprofitable mispense