N00302:60
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.
3. We come to consider the demand it self: Give me the portion of Goods that falleth to me. This I call his unreasonable demand: for though at first blush it may look as if it were rational, he asks but his Portion, his Share, that which falls to him by the right of Sonship, and […] saith give, seeming […] acknowledge his Fathers power, and that it is his bounty which he depends upon: although the word [Give] doth not always intimate a free favour, but sometimes a delivering of a thing out of our hands to another, which is his by right: but the unreasonableness of the demand appears in these things.
3. We come to consider the demand it self: Give me the portion of Goods that falleth to me. This I call his unreasonable demand: for though at first blush it may look as if it were rational, he asks but his Portion, his Share, that which falls to him by the right of Sonship, and 〈…〉 saith give, seeming 〈…〉 acknowledge his Fathers power, and that it is his bounty which he depends upon: although the word [Give] doth not alwayes intimate a free favour, but sometimes a delivering of a thing out of our hands to another, which is his by right: but the unreasonableness of the demand appears in these things.
1. The positiveness of it: Though he calls him Father, yet he asks in a way of challenge, as though his father had stood obliged to do it upon his asking; as though the Estate were his during his fathers life: he doth not beg, but as it were command.
2. His asking is under the notion or consideration of an interest in it, he calls it therefore the Portion falling to him: the word [Greek or Hebrew] signifies, quod contingi•, that which befell him of it self, q. d. that which providence hath made mine, as if he were not beholden to his fathers courtesy; yea, as if it would have been an injury in his father to have denied him.