N00302:700
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.
Mercy Magnified ON A PENITENT Prodigal. › Sermon 19 › DOCT. True Repentance is practical Repentance.
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. These are resolutions not to be neglected or repented of: they are the best purposes that ever you made in your lives; they have a right object before them, and there lies a necessity on you, if you will ever do well to practise them: For 1. Something must be done, or else you perish: there is no lying still where you are, where there is nothing but Famine and misery. 2. If your return to your old ways and courses, it is but to act over your old miseries: the World will never be better than a desolate Wilderness; if you go to it, you do but return to Famine and destruction. 3. Jesus Christ, and no other, can save you; and he is willing to save you, and is grieved to see you ⟨p. 283⟩halting so long between two Opinions, faintly resolving, and dubiously promising: he waits to see you do at last as you have often said. For Help,
3. These are resolutions not to be neglected or repented of: they are the best purposes that ever you made in your lives; they have a right object before them, and there lies a necessity on you, if you will ever do well to practise them: For 1. Something must be done, or else you perish: there is no lying still where you are, where there is nothing but Famine and misery. 2. If your return to your old wayes and courses, it is but to act over your old miseries: the World will never be better than a desolate Wilderness; if you go to it, you do but return to Famine and destruction. 3. Jesus Christ, and no other, can save you; and he is willing to save you, and is grieved to see you ⟨p. 283⟩halting so long between two Opinions, faintly resolving, and dubiously promising: he waits to see you do at last as you have often said. For Help,
1. Beware of Delays: men say they will, but when? Satan is politic, our hearts are deceitful, and these seek to while off the work, and make us believe it is enough to promise now, and practise at leisure: rise and go while your resolutions are hot, they will else cool by degrees, till they have no heat nor motion in them.