Conditionality of the New Covenant — Argument 3

If all the promises of the gospel be absolute and unconditional, requiring no restipulation from man, then they cannot properly and truly belong to the New Covenant.

But they do properly and truly belong to the New Covenant: therefore they are not all absolute and unconditional.

The sequel of the major is only liable to doubt, or denial, namely, that the absoluteness of all the promises of the New Testament cuts off their relation to a covenant; but that it does so, no man can deny, that understands the difference between a covenant and an absolute promise. A covenant is a mutual compact, or agreement between parties, in which they bind each other to the performance of what they respectively promise: so that there can be no proper covenant, where there is not a restipulation, or re-obligation of one part, as well as a promise on the other. But an absolute promise binds only one party, and leaves the other wholly free, and unobliged to anything in order to the enjoyment of the good promised. So then if all the New Testament promises be unconditional and absolute, they are not part of a covenant, nor must that word be applied to them; they are absolute promises, binding no man to whom they are made, to any duty, in order to the enjoyment of the mercies promised: but those persons that are under these absolute promises, must and shall enjoy the mercies of pardon and salvation, whether they repent, or repent not; believe, or believe not; obey, or obey not. Now, to what licentiousness this doctrine leads men, is obvious to every eye. Yet this absoluteness of the covenant (as you improperly call it) is by you asserted, page 229, 230. There is (say you) no condition at all, 'tis wholly free and absolute, as the covenant with Abraham (Genesis 12:2-3; Genesis 17:2-3). Thank you, Sir, for making them so; for by cutting off the first verses, where the duty required on Abraham's part is contained, you make them what God never intended them to be. And the same foul play [illegible] in Deuteronomy 30, where you separate the plain condition contained in verse 1-2 from the promise, verse 6. Or if the condition, verse 1-2, be not plain enough, [illegible] you will make it part of the promise, I hope that after in verse 10 is too [illegible] plain to be denied. As to the other texts more anon: in the meantime see how [illegible] you destroy the nature of a covenant.

Objection: But, say you, page 233: to impose new conditions, though never so mild, is a new covenant of works with mere mercy, but not a covenant of grace, properly so called.

Solution: It is true, if those works or acts of ours, which God requires, be understood of meritorious works in our own strength and power to perform, it destroys the free grace of the covenant; but this we utterly reject, and speak only of faith wrought in us by the Spirit of God, which receives all from God, and gives the entire glory to God (Ephesians 2:5, 8).

Objection: But you will say, if faith be the condition, and that faith be not of ourselves, then both the promise and the condition are on God's part; (if you will call faith a condition) and so still on our part the covenant is absolute.

Solution: This is a mistake, and the mistake in this leads you into all the rest; though faith which we call the condition on our part [illegible] be the gift of God, and the power of believing be derived from God; yet the act of believing is properly our act, though the power by which we believe be of God. Otherwise it would follow when we act any grace, as faith, repentance or obedience, that God believes, repents, and obeys in us and it is not we, but God that does all these. This, I hope, you will not dare to assert: they are truly our works though wrought in God's strength (Isaiah 26:12). Lord, you have wrought all our works in us — that is, though they be our works, yet they are wrought in us by your grace, or strength.

As for Doctor Owen, 'tis plain from the place you cite in the Doctrine of Justification, page 156, he only excludes conditions as we do, in respect of the dignity of the act, and is more plain in his Treatise of Redemption, pages 103-104, in which he allows conditions in both the covenants, and makes this the difference, that the old required them, but the new effects them in all the federates.

I know no orthodox divine in the world that presumes to thrust in any work of man's into the covenant of grace, as a condition, which in the Arminian sense he may, or may not perform, according to the power and pleasure of his own free will, without the preventing or determining grace of God; which preventing grace is contained in those promises (Ezekiel 36:25-27). Nor yet that there is any meritorious worth, either of condignity or congruity in the Popish sense, in the very justifying act of faith, for which God justifies and saves us. But we say, that though God in the way of preventing grace works faith in us, and when it is so wrought, we need his assisting grace to act it; yet neither this assisting nor preventing grace makes the act of faith no more to be our act. 'Tis we that believe still, though in God's strength, and that upon our believing or not believing, we have, or have not the benefits of God's promises; which is the very proper notion of a condition.