A call to the unconverted, to turn and live

I pray you read over this leaf again, and mark it, for in these few words you have a true description of our natural state, and consequently of a wicked man; for every man that is in this state of corrupted nature is a wicked man, and in a state of death.

By this also you are prepared to understand what it is to be converted; to which end you must further know, that the mercy of God, not willing that man should perish in his sin, provided a remedy, by causing his son to take our nature, and being, in one person, God and man, to become a mediator between God and man, and by dying for our sins on ⟨p. 20⟩the cross, to ransom us from the curse of God, and the power of the devil; and having thus redeemed us, the Father hath delivered us into his hands as his own. Hereupon the Father and the mediator do make a new law and covenant for man, not like the first, which gave life to none but the perfectly obedient, and condemned man for every sin; but Christ hath made a law of grace, or a promise of pardon and everlasting life to all that, by true repentance, and by faith in Christ, are converted unto God; like an act of oblivion, which is made by a prince to a company of rebels, on condition they will lay down arms and come in, and be loyal subjects for the time to come.

But, because the Lord knoweth that the heart of man is grown so wicked, that, for all this, men will not accept of the remedy if they be left to themselves, therefore the Holy Ghost hath undertaken it as his office, to aspire the apostles, and seal up the scriptures by miracles and wonders, and to illuminate and convert the souls of the elect.