A discourse of the true nature of the Gospel demonstrating that it is no…

This is strange indeed (it will be said) to deny the Gospel to be a Law commanding Faith and Repentance, when nothing is more frequently inculcated and earnestly urged in the Sermons of Christ, and the Writings of the Apostles, than that Sinners should repent, and should believe on him. 'Tis readily confessed; but yet from what hath been argued, it must be owned, that these are Precepts of the Law made use of by the Gospel, and encouraged by its Promises. We are not presently to fasten every thing on the Gospel, strictly taken, as it is the Word of Salvation which we find in the Books of the New Testament; and because Christ and his Apostles give us Rules of Holiness, immediately name the Gospel a New Law. For after this rate of Reasoning, we may infer too that it is a Book of Lives, because the Life and Death of our Saviour, and the Acts of the Apostles, are recorded in it; that it is the Levitical Law, because the Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, insists on so many Particulars of it. That it is the Ceremonial Law, because the said Apostle circumcised Timothy, Act. 16. 1. That it is a Sacred Chronicle, and the Annals of the Church, because it contains the History of the Beginnings and first Progress of Christianity. Thus if we frame Arguments by these Measures, we may make the Gospel any thing that we please, or would fancy it to be.

This is strange indeed (it will be said) to deny the Gospel to be a Law commanding Faith and Repentance, when nothing is more frequently inculcated and earnestly urg'd in the Sermons of Christ, and the Writings of the Apostles, than that Sinners should repent, and should believe on him. 'Tis readily confess'd; but yet from what hath been argued, it must be own'd, that these are Precepts of the Law made use of by the Gospel, and encourag'd by its Promises. We are not presently to fasten every thing on the Gospel, strictly taken, as it is the Word of Salvation which we find in the Books of the New Testament; and because Christ and his Apostles give us Rules of Holiness, immediately name the Gospel a New Law. For after this rate of Reasoning, we may infer too that it is a Book of Lives, because the Life and Death of our Saviour, and the Acts of the Apostles, are recorded in it; that it is the Levitical Law, because the Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, insists on so many Particulars of it. That it is the Ceremonial Law, because the said Apostle circumcis'd Timothy, Act. 16. 1