as our Owner: 2. To govern us as our King: 3. To love us, and do us good, and make us perfectly happy as our Benefactor and our End.

18. And here more particularly is to be considered. 1. How God had disposed of Adam when he had new made him: 2. How he began his government of him: And, 3. What benefits he gave him, and what he further offered or promised him.

19. And as to the second, we must 1. Consider the antecedent part of God's government, which is legislation, and then (hereafter the consequent part; which is, 1. Judgment, 2. Execution. And God's legislation is, 1. By making our natures such as compared with objects, duty shall result from this nature so related: 2. Or else by precept or revelation from himself, besides our natures. 1. The law of nature is fundamental and radical in our foresaid relations to God themselves, in which it is made our natural duty: 1. To submit ourselves wholly to God, and his disposal, as his own: 2. To obey his commands: 3. And to rereceive his mercies, and thankfully to return them, and to love him. But though (as God's essential principles, and his aforesaid relations, are admirably conjunct in their operations ad extra ;' so) our relative obligations are conjunct, yet are they so far distinguishable, that we may say, that these which conjunctly make our moral duty, yet are not all the results of our relation to a Governor, as such; but the second only; and therefore that only is to be called the radical law in the strict sense, the other two being the moral results of our rectitude. The duty of subjection and obedience in general, arising from our natures related to our Creator, is the radical governing law of God in us. But yet the same submission, and gratitude, and love, which are primarily our duty from their proper foundations, are secondarily made also the matter of our subjective duty, because they are also commanded of God. 2. The particular laws of nature are, 1. Of our particular duties to God; or of piety: 2. Or of our duties to ourselves and others: 1. Acts of justice, 2. And of charity. These laws of nature are, 1. Unalterable; and that is, where the nature of our persons, and of the objects, which are the foundations of them are unalterable, or still the same: 2. Or mutable, when the nature of the things which are its foundation, is mutable.

As it is the immutable law of immutable nature, that we love God as God, and that we do all the good we can, &c. because the foundation of it is immutable: but e. g. the law against incest was mutable in nature: for nature bound Adam's children to marry one another; and nature bindeth us since (ordinarily) to the contrary: 2. The revealed law to Adam was superinduced. The parts of God's law must also here be considered. 1. The introductive teaching part (for God's teaching us, is part of his ruling us) and that is, doctrines, history and prophecy. 2. The imperative part, commands to do, and not to do. 3. And the sanctions or motive parts in law and execution, which are, 1. Promises of beneficial rewards: 2. Threatenings of hurtful penalties.

20. God's laws being thus described in general, and those made to Adam thus in particular, the next thing to be considered, is man's behaviour in breaking those laws; which must be considered in the causes, and the nature of it, and the immediate effects and consequents.

21. And next must be considered God's consequent part of government as to Adam, viz. his judging him ac cording to his law.

22. And here cometh in the promise, or the first edition of the new covenant, or law of grace; which must be opened in its parts, original and end.

23. And then must be considered God's execution of his sentence on Adam, so far as he was unpardoned; and so upon the world, till the end.

24. And next must be considered God's enlargements and explications of his covenant of grace, till Christ's incarnation.

covenant.

25. And next, men's behaviour under that explained 26. And God's sentence and execution upon them thereupon.

27. Then we come to the fulness of time, and to explain the work of redemption distinctly. And, 1. Its original, the God of nature giveth the world a Physician or a Saviour: 2. The ends: 3. The constitutive causes: Where, 1. Of the person of the Redeemer, in his essence, as God and man, and in his perfections, both essential, and modal, and accidental.

28. And, 2. Of the fundamental works of our redemption (such as creation was to the first administration), viz. (his first undertaking, interposition, and incarnation, being all presupposed.) 1. His perfect resignation of himself to his Father, and submission to his disposing will: 2. His perfect subjection and obedience to his governing will: 3. His perfect love to him: 4. And the suffering by which he expressed all these. The three first meriting of themselves; and the last meriting as a satisfactory sacrifice, not for itself, but for its usefulness to its proper ends.

29. From this offering once made to God, Christ acquired the more perfect title of a Saviour, or Redeemer, or Mediator, which one contained this trinity also of relations towards man : 1. Their Owner: 2. Their Ruler: 3. Their Benefactor: The Father also as the first principle of redemption, acquiring a second title (besides the first by creation) to all these: and towards God, Christ continueth the relation of a Heavenly Priest.

30. In order to the works of these relations for the future, we must consider of Christ's exaltations; 1. Of his justification and resurrection: 2. Of his ascension and glorification: And, 3. Of the delivering of all power, and all things into his hands.

31. The work of redemption thus fundamentally wrought, doth not of itself renew man's nature; and therefore putteth no law of nature into us of itself, as the creation did: and therefore we must next proceed to Christ's administration of this office, according to these relations; which is, 1. By legislation or donation; enacting the new covenant where this last and perfect edition of it is to be explained; the perceptive, the promissory and the penal parts, with its effects, and its differences from the former edition, and from the law of nature and of works.

32. And, 2. By the promulgation or publication of this covenant or Gospel to the world, by calling special officers for that work, and giving them their commission, and promising them his Spirit, his protection, and their reward.

33. And here we come to the special work of the Holy Ghost; who is, 1. To be known in his essence and person, as the third in Trinity, and the eternal love of God: 2. And as he is the grand Advocate or Agent of Christ in the world, where his works are to be considered, 1. Preparatory, on and by Christ himself: 2. Administratory: 1. Extraordinary, on the apostles and their helpers: 1. Being in them a Spirit of extraordinary power, by gifts and miracles: 2. Of extraordinary wisdom and infallibility, as far as their commission-work required: 3. And of extraordinary love and holiness. 2. By the apostles, 1. Extraordinarily convincing and bringing in the world: 2. Settling all church doctrines, officers and orders which Christ had left unsettled (bringing all things to their remembrance which Christ had taught and commanded them; and guiding them in the rest.) 3. Recording all this for posterity in the Holy Scriptures. 2. His ordinary Agency, 1. On ministers, 2. By sanctification on all true believers is after to be opened.

34. And here is to be considered the nature of Christianity 'in fieri:' faith and repentance in our three great relations to our Redeemer, as we are his own, his (disciples and) subjects, and his beneficiaries; with all the special benefits of these relations as antecedent to our duty; and then all our duty in them as commanded: and then the benefits after to be expected (as in promise only).

35. Next must distinctly be considered, the preaching, and converting, and baptizing part of the ministerial office; 1. As in the apostles: 2. And in their successors to the end; with the nature of baptism, and the part of Christ, and of the minister, and of the baptized in that covenant.

36. And then the description of the universal church, which is the baptized constitute.

37. Next is to be considered the state of Christians after baptism: 1. Relative, 1. In pardon, reconciliation, justification, 2. Adoption. 2. Physical, in the Spirit of sanctification.

38. Where is to be opened, 1. The first sanctifying work of the Spirit: 2. Its after-helps and their conditions: 3. All the duties of holiness, primitive and medicinal towards God, ourselves and others.

39. Our special duties in secret: reading, meditation, prayer, &c.

40. Our duties in family relations and callings.

41. Our duties in church relations; where is to be described the nature of particular churches, their work and worship, their ministry, and their members, with the duties of each.

42. Our duties in our civil relations.

43. What temptations are against us, as be to be over

come.

44. Next is to be considered the state of Christians and societies in the world: how far all these duties are performed; and what are their weaknesses and sins.

45. And what are the punishments which God useth in this life.

46. And what Christians must do for pardon and reparation after falls, and to be delivered from those punish

ments.

47. Of death, and the change which it maketh, and of our special preparation for it.

48. Of the coming of Christ, and the judgment of the great day.

49. Of the punishment of the wicked impenitent in hell. 50. And of the blessedness of the saints in heaven, and

the everlasting kingdom.

These are the heads, and this is the method of true divinity, and the order in which it should lie in the understanding of him that will be complete in knowledge.

II. And as this is the intellectual order of knowledge; so the order which all things must lie in at our hearts and wills, is much more necessary to be observed: 1. That nothing but God be loved as the infinite simple good, totally with all their heart, and finally for himself: and that nothing at all be loved with any love, which is not purely subordinate to the love of God, or which causeth us to love him ever the less.

2. That the blessed person of our Mediator, as in the human nature glorified, be loved above all creatures next to God: because there is most of the Divine perfections, appearing in him.

3. That the heavenly church or society of angels and saints be loved next to Jesus Christ, as being next in excellence.

4. That the universal church on earth be loved next to the perfect church in heaven.

5. That particular churches and kingdoms be next loved;