N00302:314
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.
2. They are husks; i. e. they are the object of low, mean, and vile spirits, they are only carnal and sensual appetites, that place their contentment in them; the basest spirited men are they that do most prize and pursue them.
3. They are husks, i. e. a truly illuminated, and savingly informed mind puts a low and inconsiderable account upon them, in comparison of those better things which the soul finds in Jesus Christ: and they plainly discover themselves in all these respects to be but husks.
1. Because they are not fitted to the soul of man; they are too mean for it: that is a spirit, but these are carnal things, that is a durable substance, but these are things that perish in the using, Col. 22. 22.
2. Because they are unsatisfying: The soul of man is of a large reach, and the desire of it aspire after more and greater things than this lower world compriseth in it; many men complain of too much of the world: i. e. Of the cares, and burdens, and perplexities that it brings upon them, but no man was ever yet satisfied with it: They are poor empty things,