Chapter 6: It Was Condescension in the Lord to Enter into Covenant with Man

Whether was God under an obligation, to make a covenant with man?

Hardly can any maintain the dominion and sovereignty of God, and also assert an obligation, on the Lord's part, of working upon the creature: The Lord is debtor to neither person nor things. He as Lord commands, but it is condescension that he commands covenant-ways, with promise of a reward to the obeyer. The Leviathan in strength is far above Job, he cannot command him. (Job 14:4) Will he make Berith a covenant with you, will you take him for a servant forever? That is, the Leviathan will not engage as a servant to obey Job as his master. A covenant speaks something of giving, and taking, work, and reward, and mutual engagements, between parties, though there be something in the covenant between God and man, that is, not in the covenants of men. The rational creatures owe suitable, that is, rational obedience to the Creator, but God is under no obligation to give life, especially so excellent a life as a communion with God, in glory, yet he does it. What a God must he be, who will come down and put himself in a lovely and gaining capacity to be a covenanting debtor to our feeble obedience, whereas he owes nothing, and to make heaven and glory so sure to us, that the heavens should sooner break and melt, like snow before the Sun, than his promise can fail.

Objection. True, but faith is fixed upon the new covenant-promise, if I believe. Answer. Indeed, but faith here is to believe, that the condition itself is promised, as well as the reward.

Objection: The condition of a new heart and of faith is promised, but not to all, not to me, but to some few chosen only. Answer: There are here a number of errors. 1. Unbelief foments proud merit, that we are to believe as much of God promised, as there is conceived, to be worth in self, and in me to fulfill the condition; but true faith, contrary to self-unworthiness, relies upon the truth of God, the excellency of Christ, and the absoluteness of the promise. 2. Satan like a Sophist draws the dispute to the weakest conclusion from the strongest, to wit, from the promise of God, that is surer than heaven to the state, against which there is a greater number of topic arguments, than there can be against the promise of God. As 1. What am I? 2. Am I chosen or not? So Satan to Christ, if you be the Son of God, command these stones to be made bread, in point of believing it is better that faith expatiate in viewing God, Christ, the Ransom of the blood of God-Man, the depth of free grace, than upon self, and the state: in point of repenting and humble down-casting, we would read self, and our own estate. 3. It is Satan and the unbelieving heart that would have our faith's greatness rising from self's holiness, and goodness. Whereas the greatest faith that Christ finds (Matthew 8:10) looks away from self (verse 8) — I am not worthy — and dwells much upon the Omnipotence of Christ in commanding diseases, as a Centurion his Soldiers. 4. When unbelief quarrels the Lord as untrue and weak, who faints and wearies, and one that is not the Creator of the ends of the earth, it alleges only and pretends self-guiltiness to justify unbelief: yet (Isaiah 40:28) though God be reproached as weak, we seem to resolve all in this; our own unworthiness, but we cannot get our faith strong enough; and the truth is here, we quarrel with God and his decrees, under pretense of this, what if he have not chosen me? And I have no right to covenant-mercies, except I take a law-way to earn them, by fulfilling the condition. 5. When we believe a conditional promise (if I believe, I am saved) faith relies not fiducially upon the (if I believe) or upon the condition, it is a weak pillar to a sinner to stay his unquiet heart upon, to wit, his own believing, but faith rests upon the connection (if you believe you shall be saved) and it stays upon the connection, as made sure by the Lord, who of grace gives the condition of believing, and of grace the reward conditioned, so that faith binds all the weight upon God only, even in conditional gospel-promises. 1. Man is to be considered as a creature. 2. As such a creature, to wit, endued with reason and the image of God, in either consideration, especially in the former all that are created, are obliged to do and suffer the will of God, though they never sinned. It is not enough to say, that sun, moon, trees, herbs, vines, earth, beasts, birds, and fishes, cannot suffer the ill of punishment, which is relative to the break of a law, for the whole creation is subject to vanity for our sins (Romans 8:20-21). The servant is smitten and sickened, for the master's sake, and God may take from them what he gave them, their lives without sense of pain and dolor, for all beings, yea defects and privations are debtors to the glory declarative of God (Proverbs 16:4; Romans 11:36), yea and non-beings are under this debt. God can serve himself of nothing, yea, that there are not created, locusts, caterpillars, more numerous, than that all the fruits of the earth can be food to them, preach the glory of the Lord's goodness to man, and what are never to be, no less than all things, that have futurition, or shall come to pass either absolutely or conditionally, are under the positive decree of God, else we should not owe thanks to the Lord for many evils that never fall out, that the Lord turns away violent death, violence of men, and wild beasts, and many possible mischiefs, contrary to (Deuteronomy 28:11-12; Leviticus 26:6; Psalm 34:20; Psalm 91:5-8). And all these beings or non-beings owe themselves to God to hold forth the glory of goodness, wisdom, mercy, justice, etc. suppose there had never been sin: far more now, who wants matter of meditation, or can write a book of all the pains, [reconstructed: achings], convulsions, pests, diseases that the Lord decreed to hold off? So that every bone, joint, limb, hair, member, should write a Psalm Book of praises (Psalm 35:10): all my bones shall say, Lord, who is like to you? Nor can any man write his debts of this kind. But we are little affected with the negatives of mercies, except we read them upon others, and little then also; self-pain preaches little to us, far more the borrowed experience of fallen angels, of Sodom, of the old world, etc. leaves small impression upon stony spirits. 2. Complain not, that you have not that share of grace, another has, if you (you think) had it, you would be as useful to glorify God, as they, but you know not yourself; swell not against him, that you have no grace, O vessel of wrath, you owe that bit clay, and all your wants to glorify his justice. 3. My sickness, my pain, my bands owe themselves to God, and are debtors to his glory, I, and every one of men should say, O that my pain might praise him, and my hell, and flamings of everlasting fire, might be an everlasting Psalm of the glory of his justice; that my sorrow could sing the glory of so high a Lord; but we love rather that he wanted his praise, so we wanted our pain. 3. God has made a sort of natural covenant with night and day (Jeremiah 31:35), for all are his servants (Psalm 119:91), that they should be faithful to their own natural ends to act for him (Jeremiah 5:22; Jeremiah 31:37; Psalm 104:1-4), and they are more faithful to their ends than men (Isaiah 1:3; Jeremiah 8:7). The ox and the donkey being more knowing to their owner, and the swallow and the crane being more discerning of their times, than men are. 2. They so keep their line, that there is more self-denial in their actings, than in man's way: as if fire were not fire, and nature in it denied, the fire devours not the three children (Daniel 3:27-28), the sun stands still, the moon moves not (Joshua 10:12-13), the hungry lions eat not Daniel (Daniel 6:22). When the Lord gives a counter-command to them, and that is a clause in the covenant, that the Lord entered with them, that they act or not act, as he shall be pleased to speak to them (John 2:10; Isaiah 50:2; Matthew 8:16). It is a most humbling theme, that a donkey is more in denying nature, and the crane and the fire, than man, yea than a renewed man in some cases. 4. But if man be considered, as such a man, endued with the image of God, and withal the covenant be considered as such a covenant, as is expressed in the Ten Commandments, in which one of seven is a Sabbath to the Lord, it will be found that many positive moral laws are in the Covenant of Works, that are not in natural covenants.

5. So man must come under a threefold consideration.

- 1. As a creature. - 2. As a reasonable creature. - 3. As such a creature reasonable, endued with the image of God.

In the first consideration, man comes under the covenant natural, common to all creatures; So is Peter's body carried above in the water as iron swims.

2. As a reasonable creature, he owes himself to God, to obey so far as the law written in the heart carries him, to love God, trust in him, fear him. But this can hardly bear the name of a Covenant, except it be so called, in a large sense, nor is there any promise of life, as a reward of the work of obedience here.

3. But man being considered as endued with the image of God, so the Holy God made with him a Covenant of life, with commandments, though positive and moral, yet not deduced from the law of nature, in the strictest sense, as to observe such a Sabbath, the seventh from the creation, the not eating of the forbidden tree, and with a promise of such a life. And therefore though divines, as our solid and eminent Rollock, call it a covenant natural, as it is contradistinguished from the supernatural Covenant of Grace, and there is good reason so to call it; yet when it is considered in the positives thereof, it is from the free will of God, and though it be connatural to man, created according to the image of God, yet the Covenant came so from the Lord's wisdom and free will, as he might have cast it in a new and far other frame. And it cannot be denied, though it be most suitable to man's entire nature to love God, yet to love him so and so, by obeying the command of not eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and some other commands, is not so connatural, but God might have commanded the contrary, without anything done contrary to man's nature. Yet from this it follows, no more that these are two Covenants, than that there be two Covenants of Grace, because faith in God, and the Moral Law in an evangelical way are therein commanded, and also some duties touching the seals by a positive law are therein contained.