Mercy magnified on a penitent prodigal, or A brief discourse, wherein Christs parable of…

1. We hence learn that the soul is passive in vocation: I do not mean as it is a Rational, but as it is a spiritual Agent. If God had not come to the sinner, he had never come to God, nor could he have done it: As well might the widows son lying upon the bier, and carrying ⟨p. 315⟩to the grave, have fetched back his departed soul' as a sinner dead in trespasses and sins, recover the lost Image of God. Hither every Regenerate man owes his spiritual original, viz. Not to the strength of his nature, or flexibility of his will, but to God, who came to him there where he lay a dying, and whence he was not able so much as to lift up his eyes towards heaven, without God put the ability into him by reviving Grace. And this proclaims the wonderful condescendency of the great God to undone men and women, in that he is not only ready and willing to receive them when they come to him, but he runs forth to meet them, and to do them good: The condition that all men are lying in, at such time as he speaks that happy word to them, live; tends mightily to enhance or illustrate the unspeakable kindness, of God, and hence deserves an ingemination, Ezek. 16. 5,6. None eye pitied thee, thou wast cast into the open field; I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, live; yea, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, live.

1. We hence learn that the soul is passive in vocation: I do not mean as it is a Rational, but as it is a spiritual Agent. If God had not come to the sinner, he had never come to God, nor could he have done it: As well might the widows son lying upon the bier, and carrying ⟨p. 315⟩to the grave, have fetcht back his departed soul' as a sinner dead in trespasses and sins, recover the lost Image of God. Hither every Regenerate man ows his spiritual original, viz. Not to the strength of his nature, or flexibility of his will, but to God, who came to him there where he lay a dying, and whence he was not able so much as to lift up his eyes towards heaven, without God put the ability into him by reviving Grace. And this proclaims the wonderful condescendency of the great God to undone men and women, in that he is not only ready and willing to receive them when they come to him, but he runs forth to meet them, and to do them good: The condition that all men are lying in, at such time as he speaks that happy word to them, live; tends mightily to enhaunce or illustrate the unspeakable kindness, of God, and hence deserves an ingemitiation,