The Mystery and Marrow of the Bible, God’s Covenants with Man Abridged and Modernized – by Francis Roberts (1609–1675)

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The Mystery and Marrow of the Bible, God’s Covenants with Man Abridged and Modernized by Francis Roberts (1609–1675)

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Francis Roberts (1609–1675) was a faithful Puritan pastor at Wrington, Somerset, and a learned scholar of Scripture whose life’s work was to show Christ as the very marrow of God’s covenant.

In 1657 Francis Roberts published in London a massive folio, “Mysterium & Medulla Bibliorum: The Mysterie and Marrow of the Bible.” In its original form it runs to 1,721 numbered pages with 13,000+ footnotes, besides its preface and index, and every page is given to one subject: God’s covenants with man. It is a treasure, and it is a book almost no church member will ever read. Its long sentences, its seventeenth-century English, and its margins crowded with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew have kept it in rare-book rooms, where only scholars go looking for it. The plowman, the young pastor, and the father who wants to teach his household the faith are never going to open it.

That is why this abridgment matters. Here he is in seventeen chapters, in his own order: God’s covenants in general, the covenant of works with Adam and its breach, the covenant of faith, and then each administration of that one covenant of grace, from the first promise in Eden to Noah, Abraham, Sinai, David, and the captives in Babylon, and at last the new covenant sealed in the blood of Christ.

This work is for the busy mother, the teenage daughter, the young man, a new church member, the father who is leading family worship, the seminary student, all those who need covenantal refreshing, and for pastors and teachers who want to boil down Robert’s (boil down the bible) into a manageable form. It is for anyone who wants to understand the “marrow” of the biblical covenant in Jesus Christ.

This abridgment also brings into the light what Roberts most wanted to do. He wrote to magnify Christ in his covenant. “Jesus Christ,” he says, “is the very marrow and kernel of the covenant of faith.” For Roberts the covenant of grace is the marrow of the whole Bible, and Christ is the marrow of the covenant. He shows you Christ as the promised Seed who bruises the serpent’s head, the true Noah, the seed of Abraham, the substance behind every shadow at Sinai, the Son of David on an everlasting throne, the righteous Branch promised to the exiles, and finally the Mediator, Testator, and Surety of the new covenant.

Roberts was a scholar first so he could be a good pastor. In his will he left his own folio works, his book on God’s covenant among them, to the church and parishioners of Wrington.

Read this book slowly, with your Bible open, and close it more in love with Jesus Christ than when you opened it.

Table of Contents
Introduction by C. Matthew McMahon
Meet Francis Roberts by C. Matthew McMahon
Chapter 1: The Nature of God’s Covenants in General
Chapter 2: The Covenant of Works with the First Adam
Chapter 3: The Breach of the Covenant of Works
Chapter 4: The Covenant of Faith in the Last Adam
Chapter 5: Consequences of the Covenant of Faith
Chapter 6: The First Promise: From Adam to Noah
Chapter 7: God’s Covenants with Noah
Chapter 8: God’s Covenant with Abraham: Its Nature, Parties, and Matter
Chapter 9: God’s Covenant with Abraham: Its Form, End, and Excellencies
Chapter 10: The Sinai Covenant: The Law, Its Nature, and Its Parties
Chapter 11: The Sinai Covenant: Its Matter, Form, and End
Chapter 12: God’s Covenant with David
Chapter 13: God’s Covenant with the Captives in Babylon
Chapter 14: The New Covenant: Its Time, Names, Author, and Parties
Chapter 15: The Matter of the New Covenant
Chapter 16: Christ, the Mediator, Testator, and Surety of the New Covenant
Chapter 17: The Form and End of the New Covenant, with Concluding Inferences
Other Books on Covenant Published by Puritan Publications