N00302:495
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. If ever the perishing sinner hopes to be saved, he must rise again, and go to God.
As he formerly went away from him, so now he must return to him: Hence God in the proclamation of his Grace thus invites, Jer. 3. 12, 13. & 4. 1. Hos. 14. 1. In the Explication we may consider. 1. The import of this rising and going to his father. 2. The reasons of the Doctrine.
1. The import of this rising and going: we heard in general, that it denotes the act of Repentance, not as separated from, but as the first fruit of saving Faith, and therefore both implying and including of it: Faith and Repentance are propounded in the Gospel as conjunct, Mark 1. 15. Repent, and believe the Gospel. Because they are practically inseparable: Now this Repentance of Faith is suitably expressed by these two phrases, and if they be well pondered, they will give light to the nature of it: Repentance is of two sorts, Legal, and Evangelical; it is the latter of these we are now speaking of, which is a saving turning from sin to God. Of the motives and means of it: I shall not here speak, only of the act resembled by these allusions of rising an going.