UNTO THE CHRISTIAN READer. I COMMEND here unto thy charity and godly love, Christian reader, the Ten Commandments of Almighty God (Exod. xx. and Deut. v.), the which were given to this use and end, diligently to be learned and religiously observed. My mind and commentaries in them I beseech thee to read with judgment, and give sentence with knowledge, as I doubt nothing at all of thy charity or good willing heart towards me and all well-meaning persons. But forasmuch as there can be no contract, peace, alliance, or confederacy between two persons or more, except first the persons that will contract, agree within themselves upon such things as shall be contracted, as thou right well knowest: also, seeing these Ten Commandments are nothing else but the tables or writings that contain the conditions of the peace between God and man, and declare at large how and to what the persons named in the writings are bound unto the other (Gen. xvii. 22. Jer. vii.), "I will be your God, and you shall be my people ;" God and man are knit together and united in one. Therefore it is necessary to know how God and man were made at one, that such conditions could be agreed upon and confirmed with such solemn and public evidences, as these tables be, written with the finger of God. The contents whereof bind God to aid and succour, keep and preserve, warrant and defend, man from all evil both of body and soul, and at the last to give him eternal bliss and everlasting felicity. (Exod. xix. 5, 6. Deut. iv. 20. Matt. xi. 28.) Man is bound on the other part to obey, serve, and keep God's commandments, to love him, honour 'him, and fear him above all things. Were there not love and amity between God and man first, the one would not bind himself to be master, neither the other to be servant in such a friendly and blessed society and fellowship, as these tables contain. Before therefore they were given, God commanded Moses to go down from the Mount Sinai to the people, to know of them whether they would confederate and enter into alliance with him or not. (Exod. xix.) Moses did the message, as God bade him, whereunto the people altogether consented. So that it was fully agreed upon, that God should be their God, and they his servants, with certain conditions, containing the office of them both: God to make them a peculiar people, to prefer them above all nations of the earth, to make them a princely priesthood and a holy people. And their office was to obey, and observe his holy will and pleasure. Here see we the alliance and confederacy made between God and man, and the writings given: likewise how it was made. But wherefore it was made, and for whose merits, yet by these texts we see not: or why God should love man, that so neglected his commandments, that favoured and loved, believed and trusted better the devil than God (Gen. iii.), and so far offended the divine majesty of God, and degenerated from grace and godliness by custom of sin and contempt of God, that he bewailed and repented that ever he had made man (Gen. vi. 6.), and decreed to destroy the creature man, that he created, as he did indeed. Not only thus destroying man, but also protesting openly, that better it had been for Judas never to have been born. (Matt. xxvi. 24.) And in 25th of Matthew, the displeasure of God is declared so great, that he appointeth man to another end, than he was created for, saying, " Depart, ye doers of iniquity, from me unto eternal fire prepared," not for man, but "for the devil and his angels," What is now more contrary one to the other, and farther at debate, than God and man, whom now we see bound in league together as very friends? Moses sheweth that only mercy provoked God unto this alliance (Deut. xix. 5-8), to receive them into grace, deliver them out of Egypt, and to possess the plenteous land of Canaan. Further, that God found just matter and occasion to expel the inhabitants of that land, and found no merits in the Israelites to give it them, for they were a stiffnecked people and intractable, as Moses layeth to their charge. Howbeit God, having respect only unto his promises made unto Adam (Gen. iii. 15), Abraham, and his posterity (Gen. xii. 3. xv. 5. xvii. 4), measuring not his mercy according to the merits of man, who was nothing but sin, looked always upon the justice and deservings, innocence and perfection of the blessed Seed promised unto Adam and unto Abraham, God put the death of Christ as a means and arbiter of this peace. "For the testament availeth not, except it be confirmed by the death of Him that maketh the testament." (Heb. ix. 17.) The which death in the judgment of God was accepted as a satisfaction for sin from the beginning of Adam's fall, as Paul saith (Heb. vii. 1)," Christ's priesthood was and is like unto Melchizedeck, that had neither beginning nor ending," bound neither to time or place, as the priesthood of Aaron. But as God accounted in Adam's sin all mankind, being in his loins, worthy of death: so he accounted in Christ all to be saved from death, as Adam declareth by the name of his wife, calling her Eve (Gen. iii. 20), "the mother of the living," and not of the dead. All these promises and others, that appertain unto the salvation of Adam and his posterity, were made in Christ and for Christ only, and appertained to our fathers and us, as we appertain to Christ. "He is the door (John, x. 9), the way, and the life." (John, xiv. 6.) He only is the mediator between God and man, without whom no man can come to the Father celestial. (John, i. 3, 6.) Because the promises of God appertained to our fathers, forasmuch as they likewise to Christ; hitherto and for ever they were preserved from hell and the pains due to Adam's sin in him, for whose sake the promise was made. The means of our peace and reconciliation with God is only in Christ, as by whose passion we are made holy. (Isa. liii. 4, 5.) Therefore Christ is called by John the Baptist (John, i. 29) "the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world." And as the devil found nothing in Christ (John, xiv. 30) that he could condemn, likewise so now he hath nothing in us worthy of damnation, because we be comprehended and fully inclosed in him, for we be his by faith. All those, that be comprehended under the promise, belong to Christ. And as far extendeth the virtue and strength of God's promise to save man, as the rigour and justice of the law for sin to damn man. "For as by the offence and sin of one man death was extended and made common with all men unto condemnation," as Paul saith (Rom. v. 17, 18), "so by the justice of one is derived life into all men to justification." The words of the promise made unto Adam and Abraham confirm the same: they are these: " I will put enmity and hatred between thee and the woman, between thy seed and the woman's seed, and her Seed shall break thy head." (Gen. iii. 15.) For as we were in Adam before his fall, and should, if he had not sinned, have been of the same innocence and perfection that he was created in; so were we in his loins, when he sinned, and participated of his sin. And as we were in him and partakers of the ill; so were we in him, when God made him a promise of |