Reply — Position 1

That the covenant made with Israel on Mount Sinai, is the very same Covenant of Works made with Adam in innocence, page 122, and in various other places of your book the very same.

Now, if I prove that this assertion of yours does naturally and regularly draw many false and absurd consequences upon you, which you are, and must be forced to own; then this your position cannot be true, for from true premises, nothing but truth can naturally and regularly follow. But I shall make it plain to you, that this your position regularly draws many false conclusions and gross absurdities upon you, some of which you own expressly, and others you as good as own, being able to return nothing rational or satisfactory in your own defense against them.

From this assertion, that the Sinai covenant was a pure Covenant of Works, the very same with Adam's covenant, it regularly and necessarily follows, that either Moses and all Israel were damned, there being no salvation possible to be attained by that first covenant; or else that there was a Covenant of Grace at the same time running parallel with that Covenant of Works. And so the elect people of God were at one and the same time under the first, as a covenant of death and condemnation; and under the second, as a Covenant of Grace and justification.

This dilemma pinches you, to assert, that Moses, and all the elect of God under that dispensation were damned, you dare not; and if you had, you must have expunged the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, and a great part of the New Testament, together with all your hopes of sitting down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven. The latter therefore (seeing you cannot avoid) you are forced upon, and in plain words yield it, pages 174–175: that Moses, and the whole body of the children of Israel, without exception of any, were under, yes absolutely under the severest penalties of a dreadful curse; that the covenant they were under could be no other than a Covenant of Works, a ministry of death and condemnation. When yet it is also evident from the same Holy Scriptures of truth, that at the same time both Moses, and all the elect among that people, were under a pure Covenant of gospel grace; and that these two covenants were just opposite the one to the other. But to this you have nothing to say, but with the Apostle in another case, O the depth!

Here, sir, you father a pure and perfect contradiction upon the Holy Scriptures, that it speaks things just opposite, and contradictory the one to the other, and of necessity one part or member of a contradiction must be false; this all the rational world knows. But so it is, say you, and you fly to the infinite wisdom to reconcile them; for you say, you know not what to say to it. Just so the papists serve us in the controversy about transubstantiation, when they cannot reconcile one thing with another, they fly to the omnipotent power to do it.

But sir, I wonder how you hold and embrace a principle that runs naturally into such gross absurdities. Do you see what follows from here by unavoidable consequence? You must, according to this principle, hold, that Moses, and all God's peculiar elect people in Israel, must during their life, hang midway between justification and condemnation, and after death, between Heaven and Hell.

During life they must hang midway between justification and condemnation. Justified they could not be, for justification is the soul's passing from death to life (1 John 3:14; John 5:24). This they could not possibly do, for the ministry of death and condemnation hindered. He that is under condemnation by the law, cannot, during that state, pass into life. And yet to be under condemnation is as impossible on the other side; for he that is justified, cannot at the same time be under condemnation (Romans 8:1; John 5:24). What remains then, but that during life they must stick midway between both, neither justified, nor condemned; and yet both so and so. Justification is our life, and condemnation our death in law: between these two which are privatively opposed, there can be no medium of participation, and yet such a medium you here fancy.

And then after death they must necessarily hang between Heaven and Hell; to Heaven none can go that are under the very rigor and tyranny of the law, a pure Covenant of Works, as you say they were. To Hell they could not go, being under the pure Covenant of Grace: what remains then, but some third state must be assigned them; and so at last we have found the Limbus Patrum, and your position leads us right to Purgatory — a conclusion which, I believe, you yourself abhor as much as I.

This hypothesis pinches you with another dilemma, namely: either there was pardon on repentance in Moses's covenant and the Sinai dispensation of the law, or there was none. If you say there was none, you directly contradict (Leviticus 26:40-46). If there were, then it cannot be Adam's Covenant of Works.

You answer, page 179: that God promises pardon for the breach of Moses's covenant and of Adam's covenant too, but neither Adam's covenant, nor the Jewish legal covenant promised any pardon upon repentance, but rather threatens and inflicts the contrary.

Reply. Either this is a direct answer to my argument, to prove the Law at Sinai cannot be a pure Adam's Covenant, because it had a promise of pardon annexed to it (Leviticus 26:40), but Adam's Covenant had none. If your answer be direct, then it is a plain contradiction, in saying it had, and it had not a promise of pardon belonging to it; or else it is a mere evasion, and an eluding of the argument; and your only meaning is, that the relief I speak of, is not to be found in any promise belonging to the Sinai Dispensation, but in some other Gospel-Covenant or Promise. But, Sir, this will not serve your turn; you see I cite the very promise of grace made to the Israelites on Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses; wherein God promises, upon their humiliation, to remember his Covenant for their good. Now, Sir, you had as good have stood to your first answer, which is self-contradictory, as to this which is no less so, as will evidently appear by a nearer and more particular view of the place, and gathering up your own concessions about it; that this text (Leviticus 26:40) has the nature of a gracious Gospel-promise in it, no man can deny, except he that will deny, that God's remembering of his Covenant, for the relief of poor broken-hearted sinners, is no Gospel-promise pertaining to the Covenant of Grace. That it was made to the penitent Israelites upon Mount Sinai, and there delivered them by the hand of Moses for their relief, is as visible and plain as the words and syllables of the 46th verse are to him that reads them. Let the promise then be considered both ways: (1.) In your sense, as a plain direction to the Covenant of Grace made with Abraham for their relief; for so you say it was, p. 180. Or let it be considered absolutely, as that which contained relief in itself, for the penitent Israelites that should live towards the end of the world, after they should be gathered from all their dispersions and captivities as you there speak, and more fully explicate in your accommodation of a Parallel Promise, p. 111, 112, 113. First let us view it in your sense as a relative promise to the Covenant of Grace made with Abraham (Genesis 12), to which, say you, it plainly directs them; and then this legal Dispensation can never be the same with Adam's Covenant; for to that Covenant no such promise was ever annexed, which should guide and plainly direct them to Christ and pardon; as that star which appeared to the Wise Men directed their way to Christ. If there be any such relative promise belonging to Adam's Covenant in Paradise, as this which I plainly show you was made on Mount Sinai, be pleased to produce it, and you end the controversy; but if you cannot (as you know you cannot) then never say the legal Dispensation at Sinai, and the Covenant of Works with Adam in Paradise, are the very same Covenant. Secondly, let us consider this promise absolutely in itself, and then I demand, was there mercy, [reconstructed: relief,] and pardon contained in it for any penitent sinner present, or to come? Indeed, say you, it extends relief to penitents after God shall gather them from all their captivities at the end of the world; very good. Then it is a very vigorous promise of grace, which not only reaches 430 years backward, as far as the first promise to Abraham; but also extends its reliefs and comforts many thousand years forwards, even to the purest times of the Gospel, just before Christ's coming to judgment; and can such a promise as this be denied to be in itself a Gospel-Promise? Surely it can neither be denied to be such, nor yet to be made upon Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses. This dilemma is as pinching as the former.

Perhaps you will say, this promise did not belong to the Moral Law given at Sinai, but to the Ceremonial Law; if so, then I should reasonably conclude, that you take the Ceremonial Law (of which you seem to make this a branch, p. 181.) to be a Covenant of Grace, seeing one of its branches bears such a gracious promise upon it. No, that must not be so neither, for say you p. 151. the Ceremonial Covenant is of the same nature with the Covenant of Works, or Law written in tables of stone; where then shall we send this promise? To the Covenant of Grace we must not send it, unless only as an index or finger to point to it, because it was made upon Mount Sinai, and delivered to Israel by the hand of Moses; to the Gospel-Covenant we must not therefore annex it; and to the legal Dispensation at Sinai you are as loath to annex it, because it contains so much relief and grace in it for poor penitents; and that will prove, that neither the Moral nor Ceremonial Law (place it in which you please) can be a pure Covenant of Works as Adam's was.

Moreover, in making this the promise which must relieve and comfort the distressed Israelites in the purest Gospel-times, towards the end of the world, you as palpably contradict yourself in another respect; for we shall find you by and by stoutly denying, that the Gospel-Promises have any conditions or qualifications annexed to them; but so has this which you say relates to them that shall live at the end of the world. If their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and if they accept the punishment of their iniquities, then will I remember my Covenant, etc. But be this promise conditional or absolute, two things are undeniably clear: (1.) That it is a promise full of grace, for the relief of law-transgressors (ver. 40); (2.) That it was a Mount Sinai promise (ver. 46), and such a promise as you can never show in Adam's Covenant.

Besides, it is to me an unaccountable thing, that a promise which has a double comfortable aspect, 430 years back, and some thousands of years forward, should not cast one comfortable glance upon the penitents of the present age when it was made, nor upon any till near the end of the world. What think you, Sir, of the 3000 Jews pricked at the heart (Acts 2)? Had they no relief from it, because their lot fell not late enough in time? Were the penitent Jews in Moses and Peter's days, all born out of due time, for this promise to relieve? O what shifting and shuffling is here! Who can think a man that twists and winds every way, to avoid the force of an argument, can possibly have a moral assurance of the truth of his own opinion?

(3.) You say, Page 134. That through Christ's satisfaction there is no repugnancy or hostile contrariety between the law and promise, but an agreement between them, and that they differ only in respect of strength and weakness, the gospel is able to go through stitch with it, which the law cannot do.

Reply. Well then, the law considered as a covenant of works, whose terms or condition is, do this and live, and the promise or gospel, whose condition is, Believe and you shall be saved, are not specifically different, but only gradually in point of strength and weakness; And the reason you give is as strange, that this comes to pass through the satisfaction of Christ. Good Sir, enlighten us in this rare notion. Did Christ die to purchase a reconciliation between the covenant of works as such, and the covenant of grace; as if both were now by the death of Christ agreed; and to be justified by works and by faith, should after Christ's death make no odds or [reconstructed: difference] between them? If it be so, why have you kept such a coil to prove Moses's and Adam's covenant, indeed, Abraham's too, being covenant of works can never consist or mingle with the gospel-covenant? And then I say, you contradict the Apostle, who so directly opposes the covenant of works as such, to the covenant of grace, and tells us, they are utterly inconsistent and exclusive of each other. And this he spoke after Christ's death and actual satisfaction: But

(4.) That which more amazes me is the strange answer you give to Mr. Sedgwick, Page 132, 133, in your return to his argument, that if the law and the promise can consist, then the law cannot be set up as a covenant of works. You answer, that the law and the promise having various ends, it does not follow from that, that there is an inconsistency between them, and that the law, even as it is a covenant of works, instead of being against the promise, tends to the establishment of it. And Page 133. That by convincing men of the impossibility of obtaining rest and peace in themselves, and the necessity of betaking themselves to the promise, etc., the law is not against the promise, having so blessed a subserviency towards the establishment thereof. Here you own a subserviency, indeed, a blessed subserviency of the law to the promise, which is that Mr. Sedgwick and myself have urged, to prove it cannot be so, as it is a pure Adam's covenant. But that therefore it must come under another consideration; only here we differ, you say it has a blessed subserviency to the promise, as it is the same with Adam's covenant, we say it can never be so as such, but as it is either a covenant of grace, though more obscure, as he speaks; or though the matter of it should be the same with Adam's covenant, yet it is subserviently a covenant of grace as others speak; and under no other consideration can it be reconciled to the promise. But will you stand to this, that the law has no hostile contradiction to the promise, but a blessed subserviency to it, as you speak, Page 173. where you say, that if we preach up the law as a covenant of life, or a covenant of faith and grace (which are equipollent terms) let us distinguish as we please, between a covenant of grace absolutely and subserviently such; then we make an ill use of the law; by perverting it to such a service as God never intended it for, and are guilty of mingling law and gospel, life and death together.

Reply. Here, Sir, my understanding is perfectly posed, and I know not how to make any tolerable orthodox sense out of this position: is the law preached up as a pure covenant of works (that is, pressing men to the personal and punctual obedience of it, in order to their justification by works) no way repugnant to the promise; but altogether so, when preached in subserviency to Christ and faith? This is new divinity with me, and I believe must be so to every intelligent reader. Don't I oppose the promise, when I preach up the law as a pure covenant of works, which therefore as such must be exclusive of Christ and the promise; and do I oppose either, when I tell sinners the terrors of the law serve only to drive them to Christ, their only remedy, who is the end of the law for righteousness, to every one that believes (Romans 10:4)? Are works and grace more consistent than grace with grace? Explain your meaning in this paradoxical expression, and leave not yourself and others in such a maze. I read (Galatians 3:19) for what end God published the law 430 years after the promise was made to Abraham, and find it was added because of transgression [illegible], it was put to, not set up by itself alone, as a distinct covenant, but added as an appendix to the covenant of grace. From where it is plain, that God added the Sinai law to the promise, with evangelical ends and purposes. If then I preach the law to the very same evangelical uses and purposes for which God added it to the promise, do I therein make an ill use of the law, and mingle life and death together? But preaching it as a pure covenant of works, as it holds forth justification to sinners by obedience to its precepts; do I then make it blessedly subservient (as you speak) to the promise, or covenant of grace? The law was added because of transgression, that is, to restrain sin in the world, and to convince sinners under guilt, of the necessity of another righteousness than their own, even that of Christ. And for the same ends God added it to the promise. I always did, and still shall preach it. And I am persuaded without the least danger of mingling law and gospel, life and death together, in your sense.

It is plain to me, that in the publication of the law on Sinai, God did not in the least intend to give them a direction how to obtain justification by their most punctual obedience to its precepts, that being to fallen man utterly impossible. And besides, had he promulgated the law to that end and purpose, he had not added it, but directly opposed it to the promise. Which it is manifest he did not (Galatians 3:21): "Is the law then against the promise of God? God forbid." And verse 18 makes it appear, that had it been set up to that end and purpose, it had utterly annulled the promise; for if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more by promise. What then can be clearer, than that the law at Sinai was published with gracious Gospel-ends and purposes, to lead men to Christ; which Adam's Covenant had no respect nor reference to? And therefore it can never be a pure Adam's Covenant, as you falsely call it; neither is it capable of becoming a pure Covenant of Works to any man, but by his own fault, in rejecting the righteousness of Christ, and seeking justification by the works of the law, as the mistaken carnal Jews did (Romans 10:3), and other legal justiciaries now do. And upon this account only it is, that Paul, who so highly praises the law in its subserviency to Christ, thunders so dreadfully against it, as it is thus set by ignorant mistaken souls in direct opposition to Christ.

(Fifth.) And further, to clear this point, the Apostle tells us (Romans 10:4), that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes. From this I argue, that if Adam's Covenant had one end, namely, the justification of men by their own personal obedience; and the law at Sinai had a quite contrary end, namely, to bring sinners to Christ by faith for their righteousness; the one to keep him within himself, the other to take him quite out of himself, and bring him for his justification to the righteousness of another, even that of Christ; then the Sinai law cannot possibly be the same thing with Adam's Covenant of Works. But the antecedent is true and plain in the forecited text, therefore so is the consequent.

Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. Take the law here, either more strictly for the Moral Law, or more largely, as it comprehends the Ceremonial Law; still Christ is the end of the law. The Moral Law shuts up every man to Christ for righteousness, by convincing him (according to God's design in the publication of it) of the impossibility of obtaining justification in the way of works.

And the Ceremonial Law many ways prefigured Christ, his death and satisfaction by blood, in our room, and so led men to Christ, their true propitiation; and all its types were fulfilled and ended in Christ. Was there any such thing in Adam's Covenant? You must prove there was, else you will never be able to make them one and the same Covenant.

(Sixth.) It seems exceeding probable from Acts 7:37-38, that the Sinai Covenant was delivered to Moses by Jesus Christ, there called the Angel. "This is he that was in the church in the wilderness, with the Angel that spoke to him in Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, who received the lively oracles to give to us." Now, if Christ himself were the Angel, and the precepts of the law delivered by him to Moses were the lively oracles of God, as they are there expressly affirmed to be, then the law delivered on Mount Sinai cannot be a pure Adam's Covenant of Works. For it is never to be imagined that Jesus Christ himself should deliver to Moses such a covenant, directly opposite to all the ends of his future incarnation. And that those precepts — which if they were of the same nature, and revived to the same end, at which Adam's Covenant directly aimed — should be called the lively oracles of God. When on the contrary, upon your supposition they could be no other than a ministration of condemnation and death. But that they were lively oracles, namely, in their design and intention, is plain in the text; and that they were delivered to Moses by Jesus Christ, the Angel of the Covenant, seems more than probable, by comparing it with the former verses.

(Seventh.) Neither is it easy to imagine how such a covenant, which by the fall of Adam had utterly lost all its promises, privileges, and blessings; and could retain nothing but the curses and punishments annexed to it, in case of the least failure, could possibly be numbered among the chief privileges in which God's Israel gloried; as it apparently was (Romans 9:4): "Who are Israelites, to whom pertains the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises."

These things considered, with many more (which the intended brevity of this discourse will not now admit) I am fully satisfied of the falsity of your position, and so may you too, when you shall review the many gross and palpable absurdities with which I have clogged and loaded it. With many more regularly and fairly deducible from it, which I could easily produce, did I not suspect these I have produced have already pressed your patience a little too far. But if ever I shall see (which I never expect) a fair and Scriptural solution of these weighty objections, you may expect from me more arguments against your unsound position, which at the present I judge needless to add.

To conclude, those premises (as before I noted) can never be true, from which such, and so many gross and notorious absurdities are regularly and unavoidably deducible. For Ex veris nil nisi verum, from true premises nothing but truth can regularly follow.

Had you minded those things which I seasonably sent you, you had avoided all those bogs into which you are now sunk, and been able fairly to reconcile all those seeming contradictions in Paul's Epistles, with respect to the law at Sinai. But however, by what has been said, your first position, that the Sinai Covenant is the same Covenant of Works with Adam's in Paradise, vanishes before the evidence of Scripture truth and sound reason.

But yet, though what I have said destroys your false position, I am not willing to leave you, or the reader, ignorant wherein the truth lies in this controverted point between us; and that will appear by a due consideration of the following particulars.

It is plain and uncontroverted, that Adam's Covenant in Paradise contained in it a perfect law and rule of natural righteousness, founded both in God's nature, and in man's, which in its perfect state of innocence was every way enabled perfectly to comply therewith. For the Scripture tells us (Ecclesiastes 7:29), that God made man upright, and his punctual complying therewith was the righteousness by which he stood.

(2.) This covenant of works being once broken, can never more be available to the justification and salvation of any fallen man. There was not now a law found that could give righteousness; the broken covenant of works lost immediately all the blessings and privileges which before it contained, and retained only the curse and punishment. In token of which, Cherubims with flaming swords turning every way, were set to keep the way of the tree of life (Genesis 3:24).

(3.) Soon after the violation of the covenant of works, God was graciously pleased to publish for the relief of mankind, now miserable and hopeless, the second covenant, which we call the covenant of grace (Genesis 3:15), which is the first opening of the grace of God in Christ to fallen man. Though this first promise of Christ was but short and obscure, yet it was in every age to be opened clearer and clearer, until the promised seed should come. After the first opening of this new covenant in the first promise of Christ, the first covenant is shut up forever, as a covenant of life and salvation. All the world are shut up to the only way of salvation by Christ (Galatians 3:23), it being contrary to the will of God, that two ways of salvation should stand open to man at once, and they so opposite one to another, as the way of works and the way of faith are (Acts 4:12; John 14:6; Galatians 2:21).

(4.) It is evident however, that after the first opening of the promise of Christ (Genesis 3:15), God foreseeing the pride of fallen man, who naturally inclines to a righteousness of his own in the way of doing, was pleased to revive the law of nature, as to its matter, in the Sinai dispensation, which was 430 years after the first promise had been renewed, and further opened to Abraham, of whose seed Christ should come. This he did not in opposition to the promise, but in subserviency to it (Galatians 3:21). Though the matter and substance of the law of nature be found in the Sinai covenant, strictly taken for the Ten Commandments, yet the ends and intentions of God in that terrible Sinai dispensation were twofold. (1.) To convince fallen man of the sinfulness and impotency of his nature, and the impossibility of obtaining righteousness by the law, and so by a blessed necessity to shut him up to Christ, his only remedy. And (2.) to be a standing rule of duty both towards God and man, to the end of the world. But if we take the Sinai covenant more largely, as inclusive of the ceremonial with the moral law (as it is often taken, and is so by you, in the New Testament), then it did not only serve for a conviction of impotency, and a rule of duty, but exhibited and taught much of Christ, and the mysteries of the new covenant in those its ceremonies, wherein he was prefigured to them.

(5.) From which it evidently appears that the Sinai covenant was neither repugnant to the new covenant in its scope and aim. The law is not against the promise (Galatians 3:21), nor yet set up as co-ordinate with it, with a design to open two different ways of salvation to fallen man, but was added to the promise, in respect of its evangelical purposes and designs. On which account it is called by some a covenant of faith or grace, in respect of its subserviency to Christ, who is the end of the law for righteousness (Romans 10:4), and by others a subservient covenant, according to Galatians 3:23-24. Accordingly we find both tables of the law put into the ark (Hebrews 9:4), which shows their consistency and subordination with, and to the method of salvation by Christ in the new covenant.

(6.) This design and intention of God was fatally mistaken by the Jews, ever since God promulgated that law at Sinai, and was by them notoriously perverted to a quite contrary end to that which God promulgated it for, even to give righteousness and life in the way of personal and perfect obedience (Romans 10:3). For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. Hence Christ came to be slighted by them, and his righteousness rejected; for they rested in the law (Romans 2:17), were married to the law as a husband (Romans 7:2-3), and so might have no conjugal communion with Christ. However, Moses, Abraham, and all the elect discerned Christ as the end of the law for righteousness, and were led to him thereby.

(7.) This fatal mistake of the use and intent of the law is the ground of those seeming contradictions in Paul's Epistles. Sometimes he magnifies the law, when he speaks of it according to God's end and purpose in its promulgation (Romans 7:12, 14, 16). But as it was fatally mistaken by the Jews, and set in opposition to Christ, so he thunders against it, calls it a ministration of death and condemnation, and all its appended ceremonies weak and beggarly elements. By this distinction, whatever seems repugnant in Paul's Epistles may be sweetly reconciled. It is a distinction of his own making (1 Timothy 1:8): We know that the law is good, if we use it lawfully. There is a good and an evil use of the law. Had you attended these things, you had not so confidently and inconsiderately pronounced it a pure covenant of works.