The truly blessed man

6. The gracious design of Gods revealing this way, with respect to the Elect, is to bring them into and keep them in it. All do not experience this efficacy. These discoveries are made wherever the word of God comes, and the business of the Ordinances is to point out to man the way of life, to tell miserable man where Salvation is to be had, but how few embrace it and comply with it? how much cause of that complaint, Isa 53.1. Who hath believed our report? Yea this is the very Article of Condemnation in places where Christ is Preached, Joh. 3 19 But this was not the prime reason of Gods making known this way to man, though it prove so eventually to many: but it was because God had a number, whom he had chosen according to his purpose of Grace, to be made partakers of life, and so to be put in the way of it, for which he would treat them according to their nature. And because these live scattered among others, these proclamations are made for their sakes; and it always hath this event sooner or later on these, Act. 13.48.

7. Hence the primary end of all the Gospel Ordinances is to help men in this. And though eventually they prove a Savour of Life to some, and of Death to others, yet but for the former they had not been promulgated. Though Christ proves a corner stone to some, and a stumbling stone to others, yet the direct end of his coming into the world was the former, 1 Tim. 1.15. There is a powerful providence in ordering the coming of the Gospel in regard both of times, and places, and we find not that God suffered it to come any where but where ⟨p. 451⟩he had some to bring in to Christ; it was that they might so come to know God, and the way to life. Besides, the very nature of the Gospel Ordinances, and of the work allotted to the Gospel Ministry show what is the business thereof: God tells us what Pastors after his own heart are to do,