N13864:419
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
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.
The histories that were written, as we have seen from what has been said under this proposition, do all contain those great events of providence, by which it appears how God has been carrying on the glorious divine work of redemption from age to age. Though they are histories, yet they are no less full of divine instruction, and those things that show forth Christ, and his glorious gospel, than other parts of the holy scriptures which are not historical.
To object against a book's being divine, merely because it is historical, is a poor objection; just as if that could not be the word of God which gives an account of what is past; or as though it were not reasonable to suppose, that God, in a revelation he should give mankind, would give us any relation of the dispensations of his own providence. If it be so, it must be because his works are not worthy to be related; it must be because the scheme of his government, and series of his dispensations towards his church, and towards the world that he has made, whereby he has ordered and disposed it from age to age, is not worthy that any record should be kept of it.
The objection that is made, That it is a common thing for nations and kingdoms to write histories and keep records of their wars, and the revolutions that come to pass in their territories, is so far from being a weighty objection against the historical part of scripture, as though it were not the word of God, that it is a strong argument in favour of it. For if reason and the light of nature teaches all civilized nations to keep records of the events of their human government, and the series of their administrations, and to ⟨p. 131⟩publish histories for the information of others; how much more may we expect that God would give the world a record of the dispensations of his divine government, which doubtless is infinitely more worthy of an history for our infmation? If wise kings have taken care that there should be good histories written of the nations over which they have reigned, shall we think it incredible, that Jesus Christ should take care that his church, which is his nation, his peculiar […], should have in their hands a certain infallible history of their nation, and of his government of them?