That You May Believe and Live

"Here is the design of those that wrote the gospel. Some write books for their diversion, and publish them for their profit or applause…others to instruct the world in arts and sciences for their secular advantage; but the evangelists wrote without any view of temporal benefit to themselves or others, but to bring men to Christ and heaven, and, in order to this, to persuade men to believe; and for this they took the most fitting methods, they brought to the world a divine revelation, supported with its due evidences. [Here is} The duty of those that read and hear the gospel. It is their duty to believe, to embrace, the doctrine of Christ, and that record given concerning him…First, That he is the Christ, the person…promised to, and expected by, the Old Testament saints…. Secondly, That he is the Son of God; not only as Mediator (for then he had not been greater than Moses, who was a prophet, intercessor, and lawgiver), but antecedent to his being the Mediator; for if he had not been a divine person, endued with the power of God and entitled to the glory of God, he had not been qualified for the undertaking - not fit either to do the Redeemer's work or to wear the Redeemer's crown." – Matthew Henry