A Preface to the Reader. Verge, but have endeavoured to take the whole into con- fideration, ttudying to avoid two extreams, the one much prejudiciall to the Reader in Treatifes of this nature, to give us a bareskeleton of bones and finewes, leaving their Readers to clothe them with skin and flefh : Thefe ferve better to help their memories that are already feen in the fubjed,then to help thofe with fatisfadion that are not al- ready verft in it, Memorix mater ingenii noverca. I would learnedAmefius in his Medulla Theologi.e,Cafes of Confcience, and other learned Works,had not,affeding brevity, herein been defeótive. Sure I am, the Reader might well with,that learned Carnero's work De triplici frdere had by his own hand been more inlarged,& that he had fpoken more fully; where his Reader may fee caufe juftly to dole with him,and given in his Reafons efpecially in feveral differences (which he afligns between the Old ( which he calls the fubfervi- ent Covenant) and the Covenant of Grace, where many fuppofe they have caule to diffent from him. The other extream might be the Readers benefit, but would have been my burden, and that is an enlarged full difcourfe on every particular Divinity - head,that may occur in thehand- ling of this Subject, a waywhich reverend Mafter Ball in- tended, I have heard it from thofe that received it from his own mouth, that his purpofe was to fpeak on this Sub jed of the Covenant, all that he had to fay in all the whole t ody of Divinity ; a°work that the whole Church might with ( had not divine providence determined otherwife) that he had enjoyed life to finifh. That which he hath left behinde gives us a tafte of it, and the advantage the Church might have received by it. I have thought it e- nough to handle each particular, fo as might well anfwer expectation in reference to the prefentfubjet: To fpeak of Chrift as a Nediatour of the Covenant, and to fet forth the dittin& parts of his work in fuch mediation without handling
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