Excerpt from The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock, B. D, Vol. 3: Containing: The Necessity the Nature the Efficient and the Instrument of Regeneration; God the Author of Reconciliation; The Cleansing Virtue of Christ's Blood The quick sale of this excellent author's former volume, viz., his Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God, as well as that of Divine Provi dence, considering how heavily the works of some others on such like sub jects have gone off in our decrepit age, may be abundant evidence what acceptance they have found with the judiciously pious, who converse with books, and thereupon afford persuasive hopes that more of the genuine and useful issue of the same father, not less like to him than those born before, will yet be more favourably entertained. Wherefore, presuming we have not any way impeached our reputation by anything we wrote in the fore going Prefaces, if thou wilt (without any repetition of the same with respect to these) but give us credit till thou hast took a distinct view by a due pro portion of the several well-made parts and features here presented to thine eye by us, who were desired to perform this office of love to our deceased worthy friend, we doubt not but thou wilt easily say, As those treatises were, so these are, Judges viii. 18; yea (as Joseph's brethren said, Gen. Xlii. 11, All sons of one man in the land of Canaan above, each one resembling the children of him that now rests from his labours, and his works do follow him, ' Rev. Xiv. 13, being made a king and priest unto God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ' Rev. I. 5, whom he served with his spirit in the gospel, Rom. I. 9, which the choice heads of evangelical truths, clearly opened and practically applied in this volume, may largely attest, and so give a supersedeas to any further recommendation of ours. The rather, when thou mayest be fully assured that a considerable part, namely, the learned and spiritual Discourses of Regeneration, were carefully Oopied out by onet of the former happy undertakers; and though another, who attained to the skill of perfectly reading his manuscripts, was chiefly employed in transcribing the major part of this great work from the author's own copy, yet the transcript hath been diligently compared with the original by the otheri of the former transcribers before we read it each of us separately, and afterwards those passages conjunctly, in consultation to gether, wherein either of us conceived any little scruple might arise concerning the author's genuine sense, we saw re-examined, being studious to do him all the right we could, and give his own meaning in his own words unto the world, without adventuring to interpose our own conceptions. Yet after our utmost care, and the vigilant supervisal of the press by an in genious person, who did much honour the author, we doubt not but had he himself survived the publication of what now appears, he would have sweetened and given grace to some lines that we presume not to alter. If. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.