A Christian instruction, containing the law and the Gospel Also a summary of the…A Christian instruction, conteyning the law and the Gospell Also a summarie of the…

To the Christian Reader.

Seeing that the chief cause for the which God created man, is to be served and honoured by him, our duty is then to seek to understand how to honour and serve him: and we cannot know how to serve, honour, nor obey him, but by his word: and albeit his word be such as it is able to give instruction both to learned and unlearned, having in it milk for children and strong meat for men, yet is it necessary to use for our better instruction, the help of the worthy fathers in the study of the same, whereby we may the better and more certainly judge of that which we shall read, by the which mean we may the more easily know our good God his benefits unspeakable presented to ⟨image 4⟩us in his dear Christ, and what we are by our Lord Jesus Christ, & what we are of our selves, without which knowledge none can be a true Christian. For if we know not that our only salvation is founded by God in Jesus Christ, & that our eternal life proceedeth only from the free mercies of god without any jot of our deservings, surely we cannot be saved. For if we will be accepted at the hands of God for his faithful and obedient children, we may not present unto him any works of ours for satisfaction for our sins, either in part, or in all, albeit we ought and are bound to do good works. For if we have in us a lively faith, we cannot but do good works. For as faith is a fruit of our election, so are good works a fruit of our charity towards our neighbour, which charity is a fruit of our ⟨image 4⟩lively faith, which worketh thorough charity, as S. Paul saith: but if we will be acceptable unto God, we must utterly cast down our selves before him, acknowledging our selves worthy of eternal damnation a thousand times, and embrace Jesus christ wholly with all his merits, who hath satisfied the justice of God for us, fulfilled the law, paid our debt, carried away with him captives in unspeakable triumph, Satan, sin, death, and Hell, and hath taken possession for us of the heavenly inheritance, and there sitteth at the right hand of God the father, making intercession for us continually. And to the end we may well know how we do obtain these inestimable benefits by Jesus Christ, I have turned into our natural language this work, in the which are sufficiently and excellently