N00526:160
Unum necessarium awakenings for the unregenerate. Or, The nature and necessity of regeneration. Handled…
Unum necessarium awakenings for the unregenerate. Or, The nature and necessity of regeneration. Handled in a discourse designed for the service of any that may be thereby assisted in the grand concern of conversion unto God; but especially the rising generation. : With an addition of some other sermons relating to that important subject. / By Cotton Mather. ; [Five lines from Ezekiel]
Boston printed: printed by B.H. i.e for Duncan Campbell, 1693
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
II. Let a man Subscribe his Name to Gods Covenant, and he may be Assured, that he has his Name Written in the Book of God. It is said in Exod. 24.7. Moses took the Book of the Covenant, and Read in the Audience of the People, and they said, All that the Lord hath said, will we do, and be Obedient. You see, there was, The Book of the Covenant; Now if a man would see his Name in Gods Book, let him heartily Subscribe to the Covenant of God, and say, All that the Lord hath spoken in His Covenant, I Approve it, and I Embrace it all. I beseech you, Let your Hearts Accompany what I am going to say. There is an Offer of a New COVENANT, wherein the G•d of Heaven, demands of us, Whether we will have the Lord Jehovah for our God, Renouncing the Flesh, the World, and the Devil? with whatever Delights those Idols ⟨p. 119⟩propound unto us as our chief Good? And, Whether we are willing that the Lord Jesus Christ, as the only Mediator, should both procure for us the Favour of this God, and also remove all the Ignorance and Enmity in our Minds, that keeps us at a Distance from God? Give your serious and solemn Consent, unto the Terms of this Covenant: Consent, my Neighbours, Consent unto the Way of Salvation, in this Covenant provided for; with Conquered Souls, make this Answer, Lord, I am willing to be Thine, in thy Covenant of Grace; and it is thy Grace alone that has made me so. Thrice and Four Times Happy Souls, your Names are then undoubtedly in the Book of Life.
Yea, but that I may carry this matter a little further; what says the Prophet, in Isa 44.5. One shall say, I am the Lords, […] another shall subscribe with his hand unto […] Lord? There are some who Read it, […] shall give an hand-writing to be the Lords. It has been the Judgment and Advice of many Divines, That it would be a profitable Thing, for men to have the Covenant of Grace in a writing summarily laid before them, and for them with deep Resentments of Soul, to Sign it with their Hands as well as their Hearts, and to keep this Act forever by them, as a Perpetual Remembrancer