Mercy magnified on a penitent prodigal, or A brief discourse, wherein Christs parable of…

We must carefully distinguish between the reality of a mans state, and the sense that he bears of that state: The famine was all over that land, but none feels the destructiveness of it but this poor Prodigal: All mankind, whiles in a state of nature are famishing creatures, but it is but some few among, them that feel it, the rest perish insensibly.

We must carefully distinguish between the reality of a mans state, and the sense that he bears of that state: The famine was all over that land, but none feels the distructiveness of it but this poor Prodigal: All mankind, whiles in a state of nature are famishing creatures, but it is but some few among, them that feel it, the rest perish insensibly.

The work we are here speaking of, is that which Divines call a lost state, and it comprehends in it the first part of preparatory humiliation, which is properly the beating of a sinner wholly off from himself, and all that is in himself, in point of sufficiency. In the Explication of the Doctrine we may consider, 1. Some ⟨p. 172⟩thing of the nature of this work. 2. The necessity of it in order to Conversion.

1. Concerning the nature of this work, or what it is for a Soul to be sensibly perishing with hunger, and how he is brought unto this sense, observe; The Spirit of God raiseth in him a manifest and irresistible conviction of three things, which laid together do reduce him to this exigency or distress; and all this is the work of the Spirit in the means, for; all mens conditions being really one and the same by nature, why else should not all that enjoy the same means of Conviction, be alike apprehensive of it, but the spirit imprints it upon some and not others? Now the things are these;