The law unsealed

TO THE CHRISTIAN READER.

THE subject matter of this Treatise must without all controversy be passing excellent, it being not only a portion of Divinely-inspired Scripture, but such portion of it as is the Moral Law; the most straight infallible, perfect, an perpetually▪binding rule of life and manners, that short summary and abridgement of all called▪for duties and forbidden sins (whatever S••inions (with whom Anabaptists and Arminian-Remonstrants on the matter join hands (on a woeful design to transform the Gospel into a new Law or Covenant of Works, that thereby in place of the righteousness of Faith, and righteousness of Works may be established, by their alleged Supplements and Amendments of, and Addi•aments to it, to be made in the New Testament; and Papists by their vainly boasted-of Works of Super-e•ogation and Counsels of Perfection, whereby they would have the Law out done by doing more than it requireth, audaciously aver to the contrary;) even these Ten-words (afterward contracted by the Lord Christ into two Words or Commandments) immediately pronounced by God himself, and twice written with his own finger on Tables of stone, comprising a great many various matters and purposes; so that it may without any the least hesitation or Hyperbole be asserted, There was never so much matter and marrow, with so much admirably-holy, cunning, compended, couched, and conveyed in so few words, by the most Laconic concise, sententious and singularly significant spokesman in the World: And no wonder, since it is He that gave men tongues, and taught them to speak, that speaketh here, who hath infinitely beyond the most expert of them, (being all but Battologists and Babblers, beside Him) the art of speaking much, marvellously much in few words; and would even in this have us according to our measure humbly to imitate him: And no doubt it is one of the many moe, and more gross evidences of the declension of this Generation from the ancient, lovely, and laudable simplicity, that many men forgetting that God at first appointed words to be the external signs of the internal conceptions of their minds, and foolishly fancying that because they love and admire to hear themselves talk, others do or are obliged to do so; affect to multiply, words, if not without knowledge, yet without necessity, and with vast disproportion to the matter;