An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

6. This property of God, of being gracious, though it hath always been to the Church since Adam's fall, yet it hath broken out by degrees: Insomuch that ⟨p. 102⟩the Gospel time is the time of grace in a more eminent manner. Abraham, and Noah, and David, these were all justified by grace, as well as we, though in Christs time this glorious light break out into its full lustre. God telleth Moses, Exod. 22. 27. He would hear the cry of the oppressed, for he was gracious. And David often, Psal. 86. 15. Psal. 111. 4. doth acknowledge this comfortable property in God, that he is gracious. So that in the old administration, though every thing was more covered and obscure, yet then it was the grace of God alone, that they made their refuge; yet this was so dark comparatively, that the Evangelist saith, John 1. 17. The Law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ; as if those former dispensations were not dispensations of grace. Hence the expression is, Tit. 2. 11. The grace of God hath appeared, viz. in a most visible, irradiant manner, that our eyes are dazzled with it, as when the Sun shineth in its full strength at noon-day. So that all those Doctrines, which in these Gospel times do obscure the grace of God, are more intolerable, than those who pleaded the Law, and the works of the Law in former times.

6. This property of God, of being gracious, though it hath alwayes been to the Church since Adam's fall, yet it hath broken out by degrees: Insomuch that ⟨p. 102⟩the Gospel time is the time of grace in a more eminent manner. Abraham, and Noah, and David, these were all justified by grace, as well as we, though in Christs time this glorious light break out into its full lustre. God telleth Moses,