N13864:1012
A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…
A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of divinity, in a method entirely new. / By the late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards, president of the College of New Jersey[.]
Boston: printed by Draper & Folsom, 1782
A HISTORY Of the WORK of REDEMPTION. › IMPROVEMENT OF THE WHOLE.
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.
Reason shows, that it is fit and requisite, that the intelligent and rational beings of the world should know something of God's scheme and design in his works: for they doubtless are beings that are principally concerned. The thing that is God's great design in his works, is doubtless something concerning his reasonable creatures, rather than brute beasts and lifeless things. The revolution by which God's great design is brought to pass, are doubtless revolutions chiefly among them, and which concern their state, and not the state of things without life or reason. And therefore surely it is requisite, that they should know something of it; especially seeing that reason teaches, that God has given his rational creatures reason, and a capacity of seeing God in his works; for this end, they see God's glory in them, and give him the glory of them. But how can they see God's glory in his works, if they do not know what God's design in them is, and what he aims at by what he is doing in the world?
Further, it is fit that mankind should be informed something of God's design in the government of the world, because they are made capable of actively falling in with that design, and promoting of it, and acting herein as his friends and subjects; it is therefore reasonable to suppose, that God has given mankind some revelation to inform them of this: but there is nothing else that does it but the Bible. •o the Bible this is done. Hence we may learn an account of the first original of things, and an orderly account of the scheme of God's works from the first beginning through those ages that are beyond the reach of all other histories. Here we are told what God aims at in the whole, what is the greater end, how he has contrived the grand design he drives at, and the great things he would accomplish by all. Here we have a most rational excellent account of this matter, worthy of God, and exceedingly ⟨p. 291⟩showing forth the glory of his perfections, his majesty, his wisdom, his glorious […], and grace, and love, and his exaltation above al•, showing how he is the first and the last.