The Open Door of the House of Mercy
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In the original transaction of the new covenant, all the promises bear a special and particular direction to the elect,—all their names being, as it were, severally recorded therein; so that the promises, as there laid, are an expression of God’s gracious purpose concerning each of them particularly, and them only: But the matter is far otherwise, in the administration of that Covenant by the Gospel. For the Gospel, as it were, brings forth an extract from that glorious original,—in which extract, the promises bear only an indefinite direction; a blank being left, where the names of the elect are recorded in the original; So that these promises, as laid out to men in the Gospel, do abstract from all regard to any as elect,—to any, more than others; or they have a respect to them only as sinners, mankind sinners.