N00302:771
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. God manifests his choice and incomparable love to a sinner, then when he converts him to himself.
Here it is that God's special grace is made to appear, and such love as all comparisons are but dark shadows and resemblances of. God indeed shows a great deed of common favour to the world, the goodness they taste of is called his hid treasures: But all this falls incomparably short of that which he confers upon an elect person in his conversion. This love of God was from eternity, sealed up in his own breast: It began generally to be published and made known in the world, as soon as man had by his fall brought ruin and misery upon himself, ⟨p. 310⟩and his progeny; as was whispered in that first Gospel promise, Gen. 3. 15. He shall break thy head. And more abundantly shone forth when the Lord Jesus Christ had laid down his life at the foot of Justice: but these were more general demonstrations of it. It more especially and particularly first begins to appear to the sinner himself, then when he is regenerated, and eternal life begun in him. The manner and nature of this work, was then opened when we considered the Prodigal's return; that which is here to be observed, is the greatness of this love, and how or wherein it expresseth its self, according to the spiritual meaning of these phrases. I might here expatiate, but I shall confine this discourse to the words in our text, by a reduction of them to a spiritual sense.
Here it is that God's special grace is made to appear, and such love as all comparisons are but dark shadows and resemblances of. God indeed shews a great deed of common favour to the world, the goodness they tast of is called his hid treasures: But all this falls incomparably short of that which he confers upon an elect person in his conversion. This love of God was from eternity, sealed up in his own breast: It began generally to be published and made known in the world, as soon as man had by his fall brought ruine and misery upon himself,