Prolegomena — Position 1

That the Sinai-Law is the same with [reconstructed: Adam's] Covenant of Works, made in [reconstructed: Paradise].

The difference between us here is not about whether both these be called covenants in Scripture. Nor (2.) whether there were no grace at all in both, or either of them: for we are agreed, it is grace in God to enter into covenant with man, whatever that covenant be. Nor (3.) whether the Sinai-law be not a Covenant of Works to some men, by their own fault and occasion. Nor (4.) whether the Scriptures do not many times speak of it in that very sense and notion wherein carnal justiciaries apprehend and take it, and by rejecting Christ make it so to themselves. Nor (5.) whether the very matter of the Law of Nature be not revived and represented in the Sinai Law. These are not the points we contend about. But the question is, whether the Sinai Law does in its own nature, and according to God's purpose and design in the promulgation of it, revive the Law of Nature, to the same ends and uses it served in Adam's Covenant, and so be properly and truly a Covenant of Works. Or whether God had not gracious and evangelical ends and purposes, namely, by such a dreadful representation of the severe and impracticable terms of the first Covenant, instead of obliging them to the personal and punctual observance of them for righteousness and life, he did not rather design to convince them of the impossibility of legal righteousness, humble proud nature, and show them the necessity of betaking themselves to Christ, now exhibited in the New Covenant, as the only refuge to fallen sinners. The latter I defend according to the Scriptures; the former Mr. Cary seems to assert, and vehemently argue for.

Second, in this controversy about the Sinai Law, I do not find Mr. Cary distinguishing (as he ought) between the Law considered more largely and complexly, as containing both the Moral and Ceremonial Law, for both which it is often taken in Scripture, and more strictly, for the Moral Law only, as it is sometimes used in Scripture. These two he makes one and the same Covenant of Works; though there be some that doubt whether the mere Moral Law may not be a Covenant of Works, yet I never met with any man before that dared affirm the Ceremonial Law, which is so full of Christ, to be so; and to this Law it is that Circumcision appertains.

Third, the Moral Law strictly taken for the Ten Commandments is not by him distinguished (as it ought to be, and as the Scripture frequently does) according to God's intention and design in the promulgation of it, which was to add it as an appendix to the promise (Galatians 3:19), and not to set it up as an opposite covenant (Galatians 3:21). And the carnal Jews mistaking and perverting the use and end of the Law, and making it to themselves a Covenant of Works by making it the very rule and reason of their justification before God (Romans 9:32-33; Romans 10:3), these things ought carefully to have been distinguished, since the whole controversy depends on this double sense and intention of the Law. Indeed, the very denomination of that Law depends hereon: for I affirm it ought not to be denominated from the abused and mistaken end of it among carnal men, but from the true scope, design, and end for which God published it after the Fall. And though we find such expressions as these in Scripture, "The man that does them shall live in them," and "Cursed is every one that continues not in all things," etc., yet these respecting the Law not according to God's intention, but man's corruption and abuse of it, the Law is not thereby to be denominated a Covenant of Works. God's end was not to justify them, but to try them by that terrible dispensation (Exodus 20:20), whether they would still hanker after that natural way of self-righteousness. For this end God proposed the terms of the first Covenant to them on Sinai, not to open the way of self-justification to them, but to convince them, and shut them up to Christ — just as our Savior (Matthew 19:17) puts the young man upon keeping the Commandments, not to drive him from, but to necessitate him to himself in the way of faith.

The Law in both these senses is excellently described in Galatians 4, in that allegory of Hagar and Sarah, the figures of the two covenants. Hagar in her first and proper station was but a serviceable handmaid to Sarah, as the Law is a schoolmaster to Christ. But when Hagar the handmaid is taken into Sarah's bed and brings forth children that aspire to the inheritance, then says the Scripture, "Cast out the bond-woman with her son." So it is here: take the Law in its primary use, as God designed it, as a schoolmaster or handmaid to Christ and the promise, and so it is consistent with them, and excellently subservient to them. But if we marry this handmaid and espouse it as a Covenant of Works, then are we bound to it for life (Romans 7), and must have nothing to do with Christ. The believers of the Old Testament had true apprehensions of the right end and use of the Law, which directed them to Christ, and so they became children of the free woman. The carnal Jews trusted to the works of the Law for righteousness, and so became children of the bond-woman; but neither could be children of both at once, no more than the same man can naturally be born of two mothers. This is the difference between us about the first position.