N00766:56
The everlasting Gospel. The Gospel of justification by the righteousness of God; as 'tis…
The everlasting Gospel. The Gospel of justification by the righteousness of God; as 'tis held and preached in the churches of New-England: expressed in a brief discourse on that important article; made at Boston in the year, 1699. / By Cotton Mather. ; And, asserted with the attestations, of several Reverend and eminent persons, now most considerable in those churches.The everlasting Gospel. The Gospel of justification by the righteousness of God; as 'tis held and preach'd in the churches of New-England: expressed in a brief discourse on that important article; made at Boston in the year, 1699. / By Cotton Mather. ; And, asserted with the attestations, of several Reverend and eminent persons, now most considerable in those churches.
Boston: printed by B. Green for Nicholas Buttolph, 1700
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.
To the Reader.
Though man's fearful Apostasy hath not extinguished in him his eager cravings after Happiness; yet it hath not only involved him in Infelicity, but also left him in the dark, and utterly at a loss about the true way of his recovery: And, whereas Life and Immortality are brought to light by the Gospel, and men are pointed by it how to obtain deliverance from Misery, and secure to themselves Eternal Blessedness; yet such is the folly of the greatest part of them that sit under the external dispensation of it, that they pervert it to their own Destruction, and make it to them a Savour of Death, whiles, instead of being directed by it to the Grace of God, on which alone their Salvation depends, they seek to turn it into a New Covenant of Works; or else abuse the Grace of it to encourage themselves in an Ungodly Life. How few there are that do at this day Doctrinally hold the Truth as it is in Jesus, but do verge, either to Pelagian or Arminian tenets on the one hand, o• Antinomian and L•b•••ine on the other, is lamentably obvious. And if ever there was a peculiar necessity of ⟨image ?⟩endeavouring to state the Truth right between these, and call upon Christians to see to their principles and practices in this regard, it is now. It is certain, that there is but One way for fallen man to be Saved, and that is by Christ: It is equally certain, that they who would be Saved by Christ, must be entitled to his Righteousness; and that they may so be, they must utterly forgo their own: and Christs Righteousness becomes ours only by Faith on our part, which is thus derived to us by Gods gracious Imputation, according to the tenor of the New-Covenant. There was a Righteousness required of man, by the first Covenant, under the penalty of Death on defect; his failing in it brings him under Condemnation: If he be Justified, it must be consonant to the Law that Condemns him; he must then be found Righteous, else he cannot be Justified. That he may be so, there must be a Righteousness that answers all the demands of that Law; and this Righteousness must be his, else it will not stand for him: he hath none such Personal, nor is capable of it, as the case at present stands, since there is not only the Command to be perfectly obeyed, but the forfeiture to be Satisfied for, which he is every way incapable of complying with in himself.