N13864:422
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.
If it had not been for the history of the Old Testament, how woefully should we have been left in the dark about many things which the church of God needs to know! How ignorant should we have been of God's dealings towards mankind, and towards his church, from the beginning! and we would have been wholly in the dark about the creation of the world, the fall of man, the first rise and continued progress of the dispensations of grace towards fallen mankind! and we should have known nothing how God at first set up a church in the world, and how it was preserved; after what manner he governed it from the beginning, how the light of the gospel first began to dawn in the world; how it increased, and how things were preparing for the coming of Christ.
If it had not been for the history of the Old Testament, how wofully should we have been left in the dark about many things which the church of God needs to know! How ignorant should we have been of God's dealings towards mankind, and towards his church, from the beginning! and we would have been wholly in the dark about the creation of the world, the fall of man, the first rise and continued progress of the dispensations of grace towards fallen mankind! and we should have known nothing how God at first set up a church in the world, and how it was preserved; after what manner he governed it from the beginning, how the light of the gospel first began to dawn in the world; how it increased, and how things were preparing for the coming of Christ.
If we are Christians, we belong to that building of God that has been the subject of our discourse from this text: but if it had not been for the history of the Old Testament, we should never have known what was the first occasion of God's going about this building, and how the foundation of it was laid at first, and how it has gone on from the beginning. The times of the history of the Old Testament are mostly times that no other history reaches up to; and therefore, if God had not taken care to give and preserve an account of these things for us, we should have been wholly without them.