N00302:435
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. What need there is of preaching the Law, or legal truths in the days of the Gospel: It is true, Christ is the end of the Law, and Christ only ought to be preached: i.e. as the ultimate scope of all Divine truths: But, as the Law was of old, so it is still, a School-master to Christ, i. e. to make men see and feel their need of Christ: And truly, without it men will never give him that true welcome which he deserves in their souls: This is the right class in which man is made to see his own condition, and to understand his misery; this is it that discovers man to be a bank-rupt, the world an empty, hungry place; this displays man's sin, Gods Justice, and our own utter inability, and all this is the very ground-work of bringing us to feel our selves perishing: God will humble sinners before he will save them; he will make them come to Christ for need, and not in complement. They are therefore strangers from the methods of God's grace, that brand this with the aspersion of legal and opposite to the Gospel, whereas it is necessarily introductive.
2. What need there is of preaching the Law, or legal truths in the dayes of the Gospel: It is true, Christ is the end of the Law, and Christ only ought to be preached: i.e. as the ultimate scope of all Divine truths: But, as the Law was of old, so it is still, a School-master to Christ, i. e. to make men see and feel their need of Christ: And truly, without it men will never give him that true welcome which he deserves in their souls: This is the right class in which man is made to see his own condition, and to understand his misery; this is it that discovers man to be a bank-rupt, the world an empty, hungry place; this displayes man's sin, Gods Justice, and our own utter inability, and all this is the very ground-work of bringing us to feel our selves perishing: God will humble sinners before he will save them; he will make them come to Christ for need, and not in complement. They are therefore strangers from the methods of God's grace, that brand this with the aspersion of legal and opposite to the Gospel, whereas it is necessarily introductive.
3. The usefulness of affliction in order to the conversion of sinners, and the reason why God is many times pleased to lay these chains upon