Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews

Now our Apostle vehemently thirsting after the salvation of the Hebrews in general, Rom. 9.1. Chap. 10.1. having all these several sorts, or parties to deal withal, he so frames his Epistle unto them, that it might be suited to all their Good, in their Conversion, Instruction, Edification, and Establishment, as their several conditions did require: the latter sort only excepted, who being under judicial blindness were cast out of the care of God, and his, Acts 13.46, 51. Hence in part is that admirable contexture of this Epistle, which Peter ascribes unto his eminent wisdom, 2 Pet. 3.18. As it is indeed evident from the story, that he did excel, in applying himself to the various Principles, Capacities and prejudices of them with whom he had to do. The Lord Christ having set him forth as a great example of that diligence, zeal and prudence, which he requires in the dispensers of the Gospel. Divine reasonings, instructions, exhortations, promises, threats, arguments are so interwoven in this Epistle from the beginning to the end, that all to whose hands or hearing it should come, might every where meet with that which was of especial and immediate concernment to themselves, unto which of the sorts before mentioned soever they did belong. And this Principle we must have respect unto, in that intermixture of Arguments to prove the Truth of the Gospel, with Exhortations to constancy in the profession of it, which we shall meet withal. The several conditions of those to whom the Apostle wrote, required that way of procedure; Hence no one Chapter in the Epistle is purely dogmatical, the first only excepted, nor purely Paraenetical. For though the design that lies in view, and is never out of sight, be Exhortation, yet far the greatest part of the Epistle of taken up in those doctrinals, wherein the foundations of the exhortations do lye, both interwoven together, somewhat variously from the method of the same Apostle in all his other Epistles, as hath been observed, that to the Galatians, which is of the like nature with this, only excepted.

Now our Apostle vehemently thirsting after the salvation of the Hebrews in general, Rom. 9.1. Chap. 10.1. having all these several sorts, or parties to deal withal, he so frames his Epistle unto them, that it might be suited to all their Good, in their Conversion, Instruction, Edification, and Establishment, as their several conditions did require: the latter sort only excepted, who being under judicial blindness were cast out of the care of God, and his,