The Christian's Great Interest - Part Two - How to Attain a Saving Interest in Christ - Booklet 3 - Chapters I & II

Extract

The Christian’s Great Interest

Part Two: How to Attain a Saving Interest in Christ
Booklet Three — Chapters I & II
William Guthrie

Having, in the former part of this Treatise, put every man’s state to the trial, it now remains that, in this following part, we give advice to those who neither can nor dare lay claim to the marks formerly mentioned.

Question 2. What shall they do who want the marks of a true and saving interest in Christ, already spoken of, and neither can nor dare pretend unto them?
Answer. If men do not discover in themselves the marks of a saving interest in Christ, spoken of before, then it is their duty, and the duty of all that hear the gospel, personally and heartily to close with God’s device of saving sinners by Christ Jesus, and thus to secure their state.

Chapter I

Some Things Premised for the Information of the Ignorant For the better understanding of this, we shall premise some things for the information of those who are more ignorant, and then speak more directly to the thing. As for the things to be premised: – 1. The Lord did, at the beginning, out of His bounty, make a covenant with man in Adam – “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree in the garden thou mayst freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:16, 17). And He gave the man ability to abide in that covenant – “God hath made man upright” (Eccl. 7:29); but man, by eating of that forbidden fruit, did break that covenant – “They, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant” (Hos. 6:7); and made it void forever, and involved himself in misery thereby – “By the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in His sight” (Rom. 3:20); “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). …