N00302:566
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. That the utmost of the wrath and curse of God is duly and truly his merit: that he hath done things worthy of Death, and that it belongs to him as his wages, Rom. 8. ult. Dan. 9. 8. he sees Hell to be a place proper for him, and confesseth that it is mere patience that hath hitherto kept him out of it, else he had been there ere this: he sees weight enough in his Sin, to sink him down into the nethermost Hell, and that he is not there as well as others, undergoing endless, easeless, remediless torments, is not because he is better, but because God is more merciful to him.
Now when the humbled Soul is thus made sensible of his own worthlessness, hereupon these further fruits of it discover themselves.
1. He is really taken off from all confidence in himself: he now dares to rest no longer upon any thing that is his, whether of nature or grace, to give him favour with God, and plead for him in his presence. He now dares not to rely upon his duties, though done with never so much seriousness and sincerity; no, they are Loss, Dung, Rags to him; they are not to be trusted in, or accounted of.