N00302:426
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. Touching the necessity of the work in order to conversion, we may observe.
1. That conversion is the turning of a sinner from sin to God: Now Sin is properly the reliance of the creature upon something else which stands in competition with, and opposition to God, which therefore it must leave, or else it's ⟨p. 176⟩impossible that it should come to him: he that goes to one contrary, must in so doing go away from the other; the Apostle opposeth these two, I Tim. 6. 15. That they trust not in uncertain riches, but in the living God.
1. That conversion is the turning of a sinner from sin to God: Now Sin is properly the relyance of the creature upon something else which stands in competition with, and opposition to God, which therefore it must leave, or else it's ⟨p. 176⟩impossible that it should come to him: he that goes to one contrary, must in so doing go away from the other; the Apostle opposeth these two, I Tim. 6. 15. That they trust not in uncertain riches, but in the living God.
2. In Conversion the spirit of God comes into the Soul, and fills it with his Grace; in order to which filling it is needful that the Soul be first emptied, for as long as a Man is full of himself, of the World, of his carnal hopes, of his legal righteousness, there is no room for the spirit of God, hence he comes to the poor and needy,