Chapter 22: The Differences in the Promise of the Covenants

Quest. What is the special difference of the promise of the two Covenants?

Ans. It is known that only life eternal is promised in the Law, if a right to the things of this life was promised to Adam, it is like he was obliged to complete his course of obedience, and merit a right legal to the herbs and fruit of the earth, besides the right he had by gift of Creation, ex dono Creatoris, non jure operum.

2. There was no promise made to Adam of perseverance, and so no promise made to him of influences to work in Adam to will and to do; so the influences by which he obeyed was, purum donum Creatoris, a mere gift of the Creator, not a gift of either the grace of Christ, or a promised grace, though in a large sense, it may be called a grace, or donum gratis datum: For God gave that influence upon no obligation. Now that it was not a grace promised is evident by Adam's fall: for God, who is true, fulfills his promises. 2. Augustine and our divines teach, Dedit Deus posse ut vellet, non velle ut posset, a power to stand, but not the gift of actual perseverance. If any say that the Lord promised to Adam perseverance conditionally (which in one sense is true, in another false) if he pleased, in that he gave to him all necessaries required for actual standing. Ans. 1. This is to teach that perseverance was promised the same way, in the Covenant of Works, that Arminius says it is promised in the Covenant of Grace, and that the free-will was absolute lord of standing and falling, and to deny God to be the nearest cause of our standing and persevering in either, the one or the other, and to bid us first and last sacrifice to our own free-will. 2. Willing perseverance actual cannot be promised conditionally: for the question should be, Upon what condition does the Lord promise to work in Adam actual perseverance, if he should be willing to persevere? But the question shall remain, whether that willingness to persevere, since it is the greatest part, if not whole perseverance, be promised or not; If it be not promised, the contrary of which they hold, if it be promised conditionally, the question shall recur, what shall be the condition, and another condition than the willingness of the will to persevere cannot be given, and so the argument shall rise against itself, and the issue must be, God gave to Adam actual perseverance, if he should be willing to persevere, that is, he gives to Adam perseverance, if he give him perseverance; for willingness to persevere is perseverance, or a very large part thereof.

3. But persevering grace and so influence of grace to persevere is promised in the Covenant of Grace (Jeremiah 31:35), that they shall continue in Covenant, more sure than the night and the day. (Jeremiah 32:40) I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. The meaning cannot be, I will give them a power never to depart from me, if they will: For so nothing is more promised in Christ to the second Adam's heirs, than to Adam and the Angels that fell, for the like, say they, was promised to them. And 2. If notwithstanding of that fear both promised and put in the heart, and in the will, yet slippery free-will may stand or fall and remain indifferent to either, then the sense shall be thus, I will make an everlasting Covenant, I will put my fear in their heart, by which they may either depart from me, and turn apostates, or not depart from me, but persevere: But so the Covenant, made with Adam and the fallen Angels, should be an everlasting Covenant, and yet it was broken. For the image of God of itself inclined Adam and the fallen Angels never to depart from God: For sure, Adam's fear, being a part of that image, which sanctified his affections, inclined him (but not undeclinably and immutably) not to depart from God, and not to hearken to the lying Serpent's suggestions. But it is not that new Covenant-fear promised and given in the second Adam (Jeremiah 32:39-40).

4. That these influences were purchased by Christ's death is clear, because they are the nearest causes of our actual believing and coming to Christ, of faith and perseverance that are given freely, and repentance and faith are given of Christ (Acts 5:31; Zechariah 12:10; 2 Timothy 2:25; Philippians 1:29; Ephesians 2:1-3; Ezekiel 36:26-27; Ephesians 1:17-20; John 6:44-45).

5. So obedience to the Covenant of Works was Adam's own. (2.) And came from his innate self (the image of God that was his own) by a common influence, and neither was the image of God, nor the influences of God acts of free grace, or the purchase of grace properly so called.

(2.) Adam had a law-claim to the crown without sin, if he had continued in obedience, and did merit ex pacto life eternal, our new Covenant obedience in habitual and actual performance is so a duty, that it is also promised and a benefit merited to us by the death of Christ, whereas Adam's obedience was purum officium, non officium promissum, as our Gospel-obedience is.

6. Hence in obedience distinguish two: 1. The nature of obedience; 2. The worth and excellence of obedience. The more the obedience be from ourselves, the more it partakes of the nature of obedience. Hence four kinds of obedience are to be considered. 1. Christ's obedience was the most legal obedience, and also the most perfect, for he obeyed most of his own, of any, from his own will purely (John 10:18; Matthew 26:39, 42, 44). His own blood (Hebrews 9:14; Revelation 1:5). My blood, says he (Matthew 26:28). He gave his life a ransom (Matthew 20:28). He gave himself a ransom (1 Timothy 2:6). By himself he purged our sins (Hebrews 1:3). Gave himself for his Church (Ephesians 5:25). Offered himself (Hebrews 9:14). And therefore the satisfaction that he made was properly his own. It is true the life, flesh and blood which he offered to God, as common to the three Persons, was equally the life, flesh, blood of God by way of creation and efficiency: for God as God created his manhood, and gave him a body, but that manhood, in abstracto, was not the offering, but all these, in concreto, and the self, including the value and the dignity, was not the Father's, not the Spirit's, but most properly his own, and the Son's only by way of personal termination and subsistence. 1. There are contradictory terms affirmed of this holy self the Son, and of the Spirit and the Father. The Son was God incarnate. 2. The Son offered himself, his own life, his own blood to God for our sins. Neither the Father nor the Spirit at all is God incarnate, neither Father nor Spirit offered his own life, his own blood to God; neither the Father nor the Spirit has (to speak so) a personal or terminative dominion over the flesh and blood of Christ. 2. Christ was in no sort obliged to empty himself, and cannot be under a jus or obligation to the Creator or the creature. Of free love and his own will he became [reconstructed: Mediator] God Man, and being created man, and having said (here am I to do your will) having stricken hands with God as Surety of the Covenant, none more obliged, being holy and true; and therefore though Christ-Man was most strictly tied to give the Father obedience, yet he was not obliged to give him such and such obedience, so noble, so excellent, from a personal union: for Christ God cannot properly come under any obligation. Hence the obedience of Christ is most meritorious, because maximè indebita, in regard of the Godhead most undebtful, and yet obedience most debtful in regard of the Man Christ. 3. Most from his own will personally considered, the affection, love, the bended will, highest delight to obey, lay personally near to the heart and holy will of Christ God: With desire have I desired to eat this Passover. He went foremost in the journey to Jerusalem, when he was to suffer. Much of the internal propension of the will makes much and (as it were) heightens and intensifies the nature of obedience, so that Christ's and our obedience have scarce a univocal definition. 4. He gave and restored more glory to offended justice, by such a noble, incomparably excellent death, than Adam and all his sons took of glory from God: therefore against impure Socinus it is a most real satisfaction and compensation, where glory by obeying and suffering is restored in lieu of the glory taken away. All that Socinians say, that God cannot be a loser, and needs not glory, and nothing can be taken from him, and nothing can be given to him, proves nothing but that it is not such a satisfaction as one creature performs to another, nor is it a satisfaction that brings profit to God: for can a man be profitable to the Almighty? Nor such a satisfaction as eases a disquieted mind; which proves not Christ to be a Savior painted in a mere copy to us, and only a godly Martyr who saves only by preaching and witnessing, and not by a most real and eminently clear satisfaction.

2. The elect angels next to Christ gave obedience in their law course, but not so properly of their own as Christ, for some discriminating and strengthening grace they had from Christ Mediator their head (Colossians 2:10), that they should not fall, and something from the election of grace, which do not necessarily agree to the Covenant of Works, which they performed without sin, and the more extrinsical help from grace, the less merit, so far is grace from being, as Jesuits say, the essential requisite of merit, that the work is less ours, and so the less meritorious, that it has grace. Let not any say then Christ's obedience that came from the fullness of the Spirit without measure [illegible], must so be less meritorious, which is absurd, for the reason why grace in angels, and men who are mere creatures diminishes the nature of merit, is, because grace is not their own, nor their proper due, but supernatural or preternatural, and so hurts the nature of the merit, but to the meriting person Christ-God-Man nothing is supernatural, nothing extrinsical, nothing not his own: grace is his own as it were by a sort of personal dominion, not to say that the Man Christ as man did not merit, yet as man he was born sinless and with the full image of God.

3. Adam gave more faintly obedience, more indeed of his own, but it was less obedience, and less will in it, than the obedience of angels, and had he continued, his obedience had been proper obedience; but this is to be observed, none did ever, actu secundo, and by the only help of simple nature attain justification and salvation by the simple Covenant of Works, but men and evil angels fell under both, though that was a possible Covenant and holy and spiritual, yet God set it up to be an inlet to pure justice in the reprobate angels, and so to free grace in elect men.

4. The obedience of faith, or Gospel-obedience, in the fourth place, has less of the nature of obedience, than that of Adam, or of the elect angels, or that of Christ's. It's true we are called obedient children, and they are called the commandments of Christ, and Christ has taken the moral law and made use of it in an evangelical way, yet we are more (as it were) patients, in obeying Gospel-commands, not that we are mere patients, as Libertines teach — for grace makes us willing, but we have both supernatural habits and influences of grace furnished to us from the grace of Christ, who has merited both to us, and so in Gospel-obedience we offer more of the Lord's own, and less of our own, because he both commands, and gives us grace to obey. And so to the elect believer the law is turned into Gospel, he by his grace fulfilling (as it were) the righteousness of the law in us by begun new obedience (Romans 8:4), and to the reprobate the law remains the law, and the Gospel is turned into the law, for all conditional promises to the reprobate, though in terms evangelical, yet are law to them (if Cain do well he shall be saved) (if Judas believe he shall be saved) because God by grace fulfills not the promise in them. Obj. 1. Then shall Gospel-obedience be of less worth than law-obedience, which flows not from grace, which Christ has merited by his death? Ans. It's not denied, but it is obedience, so the Scripture (Hebrews 5:9; Romans 1:5; Romans 6:17; Romans 16:19; 2 Corinthians 10:5; 1 Peter 1:5; Acts 6:9; Acts 5:32, 37). But (2.) it has less of the nature of obedience, but more excellency. Who would say Peter laboring in the vineyard of John for wages, properly obeys, if we suppose that Peter has from John, not only soul, will, body, arms, and legs, but the inward infused principle of willingness, the habit and art of dressing vines, the nearest propensity and determination of will to work, so have we in the Gospel, but in the law, though the Lord who gives being, does also give his image to Adam, and his influence to obey, yet the image of God is concreated, and Adam's own, grace especially merited by Christ is supervenient and a mere stranger to us, and the influence, though it did predetermine Adam's will, yet it is connatural as it were, naturae debita, not merited by Christ's death, and so we give more of our own, when we give the fruit of creation which God has bestowed on the pismire and the worm, than when we give the obedience of grace. 2. The obedience of Adam though rational and persuasive, there being a lamp of light in the mind, yet came from the feared authority of the lawgiver under the pain of damnation, the Gospel-obedience is by the word (Acts 2:37), is by way of persuasion: Christ says not, Peter, you are afraid of hell, feed my lambs, but, Peter, do you love me, feed my lambs: for a law-obeyer is not to believe life eternal but in so far as he shall keep the law perfectly, the Gospel obeyer so obeys as he believes deliverance from wrath and life eternal, but his believing is not reckoned to him, [illegible], of law-debt, but of love and grace-debt: See (Romans 4:4; Matthew 6:12) these promises (1 Timothy 4:8; Luke 12:31; Matthew 19:29) are expounded by the promises made to the overcomer (Revelation 2; Revelation 3), which is by faith (1 John 5:4, 5). 3. But it is most true, Gospel-obedience has these excellencies. 1. It is a plant of a more noble vine coming from the merit of blood, yet is not our obedience comparable to Christ's; for a work of law or Gospel grace has a necessary reference to no wages of its own nature, but only by the intervening of the free pleasure of God. But Christ's obedience intrinsically from the excellent dignity of the person has a meriting virtue. 2. It works more eminently than nature: it is a pillar to support [reconstructed: swooning] nature, and acts in more excellent subjects, in Christ, in the elect angels, in the redeemed ones and makes them stones of another nature, and this is the handiwork of Christ (Isaiah 54:11): I will lay your stones with fair colors, and lay your foundations with sapphires. Isaiah 54:12: I will make your windows of agates, and your gates of carbuncles, and all your borders of pleasant stones. What do moral men that work on clay and make clay pots all their life and know nothing of the actings of saving grace? Fairest civility is but rusty iron the basest of metals: and they sweat and hammer upon law-works being strangers to Christ, and his gold. O! what a difference between praying and hearing out of discretion, and by necessity of the office, and praying in the Holy Spirit, and hearing in faith.