N00302:72
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. II. Sinful man counts all those natural and acquired favours which God bestows upon him, to be his own, and would have them at his own dispose.
DOCT. II. Sinful man counts all those natural and acquired favours which God bestowes upon him, to be his own, and would have them at his own dispose.
There are two assertions contained in this Doctrine.
1. He reckons upon them to be his own: the Son claims a Portion as due to him, he pretends such a right thereto as by the rule of equity ⟨p. 24⟩he may challenge, and though upon Sovereignty he may withhold it, yet he deems it injustice if he deny him: Thus, whatsoever God is pleased to do for sinful men, they are so far from acknowledging his immerited beneficence therein, that they account it a debt. I know there is something Connectively or Hypothetically belongs to the Creature, but still the whole depends upon God's good pleasure. If God will have such a Creature, serve to such an end, there must be a capacity and suitableness put in to it unto this service and end, else it can never reach it, but all this is only Hypothetical, for God properly owes to the creature neither its being nor its end: & yet vain man thinks he holds all in capite, that he is a natural and rightful heir to all the Wit, Wisdom, Wealth, &c. that he hath. Thus Nebuchadnezzar, boasts of his Babylon, he made it, and for his glory,