N00302:356
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.
DOCT. 1. The natural man, whiles he is wandering from God, is beside himself.
DOCT. 1. The natural man, whiles he is wandring from God, is beside himself.
As long as a man seeks happiness and soul-satisfaction any where else but in God, he is spiritually distracted, out of his wits, a mere mad-man: Hence the Scripture call every natural man, a fool, Psal. 14. 1. a mad-man, Eccl. 9. 3. one that is without knowledge, Jer. 4. 22. It is the natural, habitual, and hereditary distemper of all Adam's posterity. Man got a fall in the Cradle of his infancy, which hath not only lamed his feet, but crazed his brain, which craziness runs in the blood, and is propagated to his Children. Folly, dotage, and madness, are but the divers degrees of one distemper and are indifferently used in Scripture to hold forth the same thing. Now the evidence of the Doctrine will appear, when we have considered what are the symptoms and notes whereby a fool and frantic are to be known, and have seen the like to be in the unregenerate and secure sinner, and they are such as these.
As long as a man seeks happiness and soulsatisfaction any where else but in God, he is spiritually distracted, out of his wits, a meer mad-man: Hence the Scripture call every natural man, a fool, Psal. 14. 1. a mad-man, Eccl. 9. 3. one that is without knowledge, Jer. 4. 22. It is the natural, habitual, and hereditary distemper of all Adam's posterity. Man got a fall in the Cradle of his infancy, which hath not only lamed his feet, but crazed his brain, which craziness runs in the blood, and is propagated to his Children. Folly, dotage, and madness, are but the divers degrees of one distemper and are indifferently used in Scripture to hold forth the same thing. Now the evidence of the Doctrine will appear, when we have considered what are the symptoms and notes whereby a fool and frantick are to be known, and have seen the like to be in the unregenerate and secure sinner, and they are such as these.