Gospel-revelation in three treatises, viz, 1 The nature of God. 2 The excellencies of…

First, If you would have your souls saved, do you join with God in what he hath revealed to you concerning your lost condition, labouring to understand those truths clearly, that are delivered in the Word concerning the lost condition of souls by nature, and to work those truths upon your hearts, to be sensible of them: Those whom God ⟨p. 307⟩intends to save, he shows unto them what this salvation is; he shows them from what it is they are to be saved, that so they may not run away with (the mere word (Salvation) and saving of souls) now God reveals this in his Word, and when he intends to save a soul, he doth by his Spirit stir it up to join with the Word of God, and work those things upon its self, so as to be made sensible of them.

First, If you would have your souls saved, do you joyn with God in what hee hath revealed to you concerning your lost condition, labouring to understand those truths clearly, that are delivered in the Word concerning the lost condition of souls by nature, and to work those truths upon your hearts, to bee sensible of them: Those whom God ⟨p. 307⟩intends to save, hee shews unto them what this salvation is; hee shews them from what it is they are to bee saved, that so they may not run away vvith (the meer word (Salvation) and saving of souls) now God reveals this in his Word, and when hee intends to save a soul, hee doth by his Spirit stir it up to joyn with the Word of God, and work those things upon its self, so as to bee made sensible of them.

As thus, the soul being solicitous how it should come to be saved, it searches the Scripture, and there it finds how we are by nature the children of wrath; there it finds that God had made man according to his own Image at first, but man hath sinned against God, and broken the covenant upon which his eternal state did depend, and in the sin of the first man all men have sinned, and are deprived of the glory of God, and now are conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity, so that there is a most dreadful breach between God and the soul, and that man by nature is become an enemy to the Infinite God: That now he hath the seeds of all kind of sin in him, and that all his life, while he continues in his natural estate here, is nothing else but a fighting against God, a flying in the very face of God: He finds that by sin he is brought under a most dreadful curse, the curse of the Law, and that he is bound over by the bonds of the Law, even to death, to eternal death, as the wages of sin; these things the soul finds in Scripture; now if thou wouldest be saved, when thou findest God revealing such things, labour thoroughly to convince thy soul of the truth of them; and are these things so indeed? is this my condition? am I thus and thus naturally? Oh what good then will it do to me to have all the world, and be in such a condition as this is? Oh my soul! when wert thou sensible of this condition? dost thou walk as it becomes one that is sensible of such a lost estate as this is? Oh! labour to drink in these truths, and to work them upon thy heart, and cry to God to set them home upon thy spirit, to make thy soul thoroughly sensible of them, as he uses to make those whom he hath a purpose to save. Here's the first thing.