N00302:378
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.
SERMON XI.
2. WE are to take a view of the things deliberated, which are two.
1. Motives and encouragements to return to his father, in the rest of the verse, 17. in the which we have both the motives themselves, and the way in which they became beneficial to him. The general truth contained in these motives was before a matter of conviction to him, it was that which made him to be in want, but it wrought not kindly upon him, till he came, by serious consideration, to apply it more closely to his own condition. Before I speak to the motives themselves, we may a little consider how he came to improve them, intimated in that word, he said: there is a speech of the tongue, and a speech of the heart: the young man had none to discourse with in that far country, he therefore communes with his own heart: the meaning is, he pondered of the matter, considered and weighed in his mind, concluded of the truth, and made application of it to his own condition. Hence,