Out of His boundless goodness, our God the most kind revealed, from the secret abyss of His divine counsels, the doctrine of the Gospel to men who had already fallen into sin and eternal destruction. He also repeated the doctrine of the Law, still known in some way by nature, by His solemn promulgation on Mount Sinai. These things He has done to this end: that through the preaching of the Law and Gospel He might gather the church to Himself out of a ruined human race, destined to the eternal fires of hell, that such a church might rightly acknowledge, worship, and praise Him in this life and in eternal life, and that He might snatch it out of the jaws of sin, death, devil, and hell, and lift it up to share in His eternal happiness and glory. -- Blessed Johann Gerhard, On the Church, p. 3.
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