N00801:52
A remedy against despair. Or Brief discourse wherein great sinners are encouraged, and directed…
A remedy against despair. Or Brief discourse wherein great sinners are encouraged, and directed how to improve the consideration of the greatness of their sins in praying to God for pardon. Being the substance of two sermons preached at the lecture in Boston, 1699. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church there. ; [Four lines of Scripture texts]
Boston: printed by B. Green and J. Allen. Sold by S. Phillips, 1700
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.
Quest. Of what use the consideration of the greatness of our sin is, in our pleading with God for forgiveness?
A. This Case being practical; and because the Children of God have daily occasion to make use of it in their addresses to him in prayer, I shall endeavour to give a distinct account of it; and to make way to the thing it self, let me offer the following Conclusions.
1. That pardon of sin is an act of Gods free grace. As a pardon supposeth a sin whereby the person hath made himself Guilty, else there would be no occasion for it; so it is a special way whereby the Guilt comes to be removed. It finds the person insolvent, utterly unable to repair the wrong he hath done to the Declarative Glory of God▪ and so make satisfaction for his Guilt, and thereupon it delivers him from it frankly; thus our Saviour Christ expresseth it in that Parable, Luk. 7 42. When they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Nor could ⟨p. 37⟩sin have ever been remitted to the Sinner in any other way but this; for, neither could he for himself, nor yet could the whole Creation for him, make a due compensation to injured Justice on his account: So dear is their Redemption, and it must have ceased for ever, Psal. 49 8. and that God would thus forgive him, is an act of mere grace, to which he was not at all obliged by any natural necessity, but was altogether free in it; and the Sinner had given him sufficient provocation righteously to have destroyed him for ever.