A59035:1030
The bowels of tender mercy sealed in the everlasting covenant wherein is set forth…
The bowels of tender mercy sealed in the everlasting covenant wherein is set forth the nature, conditions and excellencies of it, and how a sinner should do to enter into it, and the danger of refusing this covenant-relation : also the treasures of grace, blessings, comforts, promises and privileges that are comprised in the covenant of Gods free and rich mercy made in Jesus Christ with believers / by that faithful and reverend divine, Mr Obadiah Sedgwick ... ; perfected and intended for the press, therefore corrected and lately revised by himself, and published by his own manuscript ...The bowels of tender mercy sealed in the everlasting covenant wherein is set forth the nature, conditions and excellencies of it, and how a sinner should do to enter into it, and the danger of refusing this covenant-relation : also the treasures of grace, blessings, comforts, promises and priviledges that are comprized in the covenant of Gods free and rich mercy made in Jesus Christ with believers / by that faithful and reverend divine, Mr Obadiah Sedgwick ... ; perfected and intended for the press, therefore corrected and lately revised by himself, and published by his own manuscript ...
London: printed by Edward Mottershed for Adoniram Byfield, 1661
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
1. That there is not in any sinner a self-sufficiency to close with God in a way 1of Covenant; for as the Covenant of grace is a truth of mere supernatural Revelation (no light of nature reveals it, or discovers it) so the bringing of the sinner into this Covenant, is a merely supernatural work. There is nothing in the sinner actively to contribute towards it; nay, all that is in the sinner, is naturally averse and contrary unto it; his natural judgement doth reason against it, and contradict it; and his natural will doth resist and oppose it, unbelief being predominant in both; and therefore the work being only the work of a God, the sinner hath no way to take but to go to God to work his own work in him, and for him.
1. That there is not in any sinner a self-sufficiency to close with God in a way 1of Covenant; for as the Covenant of grace is a truth of meer supernatural Revelation (no light of nature reveals it, or discovers it) so the bringing of the sinner into this Covenant, is a meerly supernatural work. There is nothing in the sinner actively to contribute towards it; nay, all that is in the sinner, is naturally averse and contrary unto it; his natural judgement doth reason against it, and contradict it; and his natural will doth resist and oppose it, unbelief being predominant in both; and therefore the work being only the work of a God, the sinner hath no way to take but to go to God to work his own work in him, and for him.
- 1There is not in any sinner a self-sufficiency to close with God in Covenant.
2. The heart of a sinner, how ever it be naturally averse to God, and to fall 1in with him, yet the disobedience and resistance of it, is conquerable and subuable by the Almighty power of God, with whom nothing is impossible, and for whom nothing is too hard; He can quicken the dead, and give sight to the blind, and ears to the deaf, and deliver from the power of darkness, and take away the heart of stone, and give an heart of flesh; And as it is in his liberty to form creatures into what kind of being he pleaseth, so it is in his power to make any creature yielding unto any part of his Will as he resolveth: he can abase the pride of mans heart, and break the hardness of mans heart, and heal the stoutness and the stubbornness of mans will, and turn it which way soever he pleaseth, and fashion it (by a Commanding Power) into the obedience of his own Will.