Part 2 — Chapter 5: Of the Covenant of Redemption Between God and the Mediator Christ

Isaiah 49:8. "I will preserve you (says the Lord to Christ) and give you for a covenant of the people."

Hence, the 1. Question: How is Christ said to be given as a covenant of the people?

As Isaiah 49:6 says, "I have given you for a light to the Gentiles, that you may be my salvation to the end of the earth" — that is, as Acts 13:46-47, I have you, O Christ, to be the preached light and guide of the Gentiles, and the preached Savior, declared and proclaimed by the preaching of Paul, Barnabas, and the Apostles, and Pastors. So I will give you for the covenant, that is, the preached surety and Mediator of the Covenant (Hebrews 7:22; Hebrews 8:6). When the first covenant was broken, he makes with us an everlasting covenant, even the sure mercies of David (Isaiah 55:3). 2. I will give you as the only one who is the subject of the Gospel and covenant of grace, for to preach Christ and to preach the Gospel and New Covenant are all one. 3. I have given you to be the confirmer of the promises; they are all indeed, and Amen, in you (2 Corinthians 1:20; Galatians 3:16). And 4. by your death you confirm the covenant, and seal it with your blood (Hebrews 9:15-17, 22-24; Hebrews 13:20).

But Socinus denies that Christ is the purchaser or the obtainer by his blood (as it were) of the New Covenant, for he did not by his death procure or merit pardon to us; he is only the surety or Mediator of the Covenant. And Crellius and he say, the cause why the confirming of the Covenant is ascribed to the death of Christ, is because as by a slain beast and divided into two parts, covenants of old were established, so by the death of Christ the covenant of grace was solemnly confirmed and sealed.

Christ is so the surety as Mediator, as he is also the Author of this covenant, as God (Exodus 3:6). It was he who said, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (1 Corinthians 10:9). "Let us not tempt Christ, as some of them tempted him, and were destroyed by the serpents." And this is he who led them, and brought them out of Egypt (Numbers 21:6-7), whom they tempted in the wilderness (verses 5-7). And he ascribes to himself the covenant (Hebrews 8:9): "Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, etc." And it is clear that the pardon of sin promised in the covenant (Jeremiah 31; Hebrews 8) is never ascribed to the blood of martyrs, but everywhere to Christ's blood (Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 1:14; Romans 3:25; Revelation 1:5; 1 John 1:8; Hebrews 9:14-15, 22; Hebrews 10:16-18).

2. That he is the surety also of the covenant is expressly said (Hebrews 7:22), and the Mediator thereof (Hebrews 8). Nor can it be said that the death of the Testator does properly give faith and authority to the Testament, for the authority and justice of the just or unjust will of the Testator adds to, or diminishes from, the authority of the Testament; for the Testator's will is the principal efficient cause of the Testament, the death of the man is only a necessary condition, by which the right of the Testator to these goods is transferred from him (who now being dead, needs them not) into the hands of friends, to whom they are left in legacy; and so death is but an antecedent condition of the right to the goods. 3. Christ's dying to bear witness to his own Gospel is only the secondary end of his death, in so far as secondarily remission of sins is made known to us after the principal end of his death — to wit, reconciliation, remission, pardon, redemption, and life is purchased to us by way of merit. And surely the truth of pardon and redemption is far more confirmed and sealed by the whole company of the martyrs, and made known to the sons of men, than by the death of one single man, Mary's Son. Nor does Scripture ever commend Christ's love to us in sealing the Gospel with his blood as the only way to life, or making this the most strong argument to move us to believe in God, and obey Christ, because Christ died for sinners, and rose again to make the Gospel credible and worthy to be believed, as the martyrs do; but love shined in this, that in dying we have redemption and forgiveness and life in his blood. And since godly and sound believing martyrs died for this end, especially to glorify God, and seal the truth (John 21:19; Revelation 2:13; Matthew 10:32; Luke 12:8; Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26; 2 Timothy 2:12; Revelation 12:11), we must have most properly forgiveness of sins in the blood of Stephen, and Antipas, and the rest of the martyrs. And miracles do abundantly seal the truth of the Gospel, and so does the holiness of profession (John 20:32; Mark 16:20; John 5:35-36; Matthew 5:16); but never are we redeemed, justified, or saved by Christ's and the Apostles' miracles and holy life, for anything we read in Scripture; but we have life by Christ's blood as by a ransom, a price to buy us.

Hence, 1. case: May not the conscience be quiet by the way of Socinus, which lays aside a ransom given to justice?

Ans. The experience of the godly man wakened in conscience says to this, when he is chastened with pain in his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain, and the man's soul draws near to the grave, and his life to the destroyers, and the man stands in need of an Interpreter, one among a thousand to show to man his righteousness (Job 33:19-23). Then God is gracious to him, and says, deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found him a ransom: He is not quiet while God says, my Prophet, deliver him from hell and the pit, which he so much fears, for my offended justice has found a ransom in Christ, and I am [reconstructed: satisfied] with him. Indeed, and the conscience must be purged from [reconstructed: dead] works, by his blood who offered himself without spot to God through the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14). Indeed, and there is no remission of sins without shedding of blood (Hebrews 9:22). Not of bulls or goats, for the blood of beasts still leaves conscience of sin (Hebrews 10:1-2). Then it must be the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:5, 10), who was crucified and made a curse for us (Galatians 3:10), such a curse as we must have eternally, according to divine justice, suffered. Indeed, if works done by the exemplary grace of a Martyr, such a holy man as Christ, who was never wounded for our transgressions, nor bruised for our iniquities, then Christ died in vain, and there was no ransom of blood given for our sins, only God of free-will made an innocent man a curse, and would have him crucified neither for his own sin, nor for ours; well then, may good works without the blood of sinner or surety, take away sin: And the conscience sprinkled with good works may well calm a guilty conscience, indeed, and according to the measure of good works is the measure of assurance of peace with God. Now we see the most tender David, Job, Hezekiah, Heman, who walked most with God, have not always most assurance of peace and righteousness with God, but most dreadful doubtings of conscience, according as by faith they apprehend the ransom of full satisfaction, or were dazzled and darkened in their apprehension; indeed sure, without the ransom of blood, of free-will, all receive a dry and unbloody pardon by doing the Commandments of Jesus Christ. The Socinian faith which looks to an exemplary Martyr whom God of no justice, but in vain, and for no cause, delivered to death, but of mere free pleasure, whereas there might be, and is forgiveness without shedding of blood: contrary to Hebrews 9:22, Romans 3:24-25, etc. — even good works done in imitation of Christ.

Q. 2. Another case is here: Is Christ on our side of the Covenant, and on the Lord's side? This would seem no satisfying of justice. Ans. It is true the case would seem no quieting of conscience, if 1. Christ-God were not the same offended God, who out of sovereignty of free grace does condescend to make a Covenant of grace, and so is upon God's side. 2. If Christ were not a Person different from offended God, as the Godhead is common to all the three, so in a voluntary and admirable dispensation and economy the King's Son, a Person different from the Father, takes upon him our nature; And 3. having man's nature which offended, and so being fit therein to satisfy wrath, and fit therein to merit, to sanctify the people with his own blood, might well be upon our side: and there's no scenic, no seeming, but a most real satisfaction here, in that there is a most full and real compensation made to offended justice, and our faith laying hold on this, the conscience is quieted. As I sinned in the first Adam legally, so I satisfied in the second Adam. Objection. But justice says, The same person that sinned, the same must suffer and satisfy, and no other.

Ans. Justice says so, but that part of justice by the graciousness and mercifulness of the just God is, and may be dispensed with: So as justice as justice seeks payment, the creditor as the creditor seeks recompense and restitution: But by whom, justice determines not, whether payment and satisfaction be made by the same very person who offended, or by a fit surety in the person and place of the offender, as it determines not whether as much or far more be restored than was taken away, so there be a compact and voluntary agreement between the satisfier and the satisfied. Hence, justice being 1. offended, is not (to speak so) the interposing and the mediating attribute of God; but sovereignty of free-grace and mercy interposes. 2. Justice may seek payment from the only offending party, and from no other, from Adam and his posterity only; but justice does not indispensably, and by necessity of nature exact payment from the only offender and from no other. 3. The conscience of the believer may with sweetness of admiration and peace rest upon satisfied justice, and adore interposing grace, and be quickened from looking to, and loving interposing grace, to obey and take on the labor of Gospel-love to run the ways of his Commandments. 4. It is not an act of law, nor of justice, to give, or find out a satisfier, but an act of love, grace, and infinite wisdom.

Q. 3. A third case is, how can the believer look upon life eternal as a gift, if it be sold at so worthy a price as Christ's blood?

It is not fit to speak of this mystery, but with holy reverence, eternal life is bought for us, and we are said to be bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19; 1 Peter 1:18; 1 Timothy 2:6; Matthew 20:28). Now it is unworthy of Christ, that the fruit of his death should be only grace, not glory, and such a grace as is slippery, uncertain, renders us indifferent, but much weaker to believe or not believe — that is, as Socinians say, to earn and win the wager of Glory by a new Gospel-working, which is our righteousness, and merit to glory: for surely Pagans are more sinfully weak in the Second Adam who died for them, as Socinus will, than mankind were in the first Adam. The Scripture says that Christ gave himself for his Church, that he might present her a glorious Church (Ephesians 5:25-27; 1 Thessalonians 5:9). For God has not appointed us for wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us (2 Timothy 2:10). Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory (Jude 21). Looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life (Revelation 5:9). You have redeemed us to God by your blood, etc. (Acts 20:28). Feed the Church of God, which he has purchased with his own blood (Ephesians 1:7). In whom we have redemption through his blood; in whom also we have obtained an inheritance (Ephesians 1:7, 11). We are not afraid to call eternal life a fruit of Christ's death, that is, of the merit of his death: see (John 10:10; John 11:28; John 3:14-16).

Question 4. A fourth case: Many stumble, some in that God permitted sin to enter, which he might have hindered, knowing he should be thereby under a necessity either to torment men in hell, or torment on earth his most innocent Son Christ?

Socinians, Arminians, yes Pagans, and all enemies to Christian Religion, are burdened with the same seeming reason: for if God, or their gods may hinder wickedness, and yet do not hinder it, they bring themselves, or the true God, that they must be necessitated to torment the sinners.

2. There are reasons unanswerable, why if we yield (and it is a shame to deny) that God is able to hinder sin from entering the world, or that he is not infinitely wise, and so that he has not most weighty reasons why he allows sin to be: as, first, if sin comes freely into the world without the will of God, either the Lord's dominion over sin must be none at all, or the creature's dominion of free will must be dependent upon the dominion of grace and sovereignty. 2. The outgoings of free grace must eternally be hidden, if sin had never been. As there had been no field for the expressions and blossoms of eternally flourishing, revenging justice: also, the creature's arms are short, and could not reach the eminent degree of manifesting the glory of free grace and pardoning mercy, but the Lord aimed at this. And first, the relation of a Savior and a sinner, of the Physician and the sick must be known; now a Physician has not actual relation to all sick people all the world over, but only to his own patients, his own sick ones, who by Covenant, feeling their danger, have laid the weight of life and death, of righteousness, of salvation over upon that one only Savior, and live, diet, apply salves, medicine, only by the direction of this Physician, and receive medicine and prescriptions from no other.

2. Infinite wisdom made choice, beside other infinite possible ways, of this only way of redeeming: and here glorious sovereignty shines — he selects out Judas, Magus, Pharaoh, to be firewood and coal to the river of fire and brimstone, and made so many sinful pieces of sick, brittle clay, overgilded with the habit of grace, of free righteousness, of glory, to be the eternal harpers and proclaimers of the glory of his grace; whereas he might have made these stones, and worms, for he created Angels and worms, and all out of the Mother Nothing, by his good pleasure. And it must be a wonder of unsearchable sovereignty, that should not for eternity have been concealed, such a number of Angels and men whom he set up in the heaven of heavens as heirs of glory, to be everlasting heralds and trumpeters to sound out experienced grace and mercy, might have been, if so it had pleased him, lumps of everlasting vengeance in the eternal lake, and all that are condemned, and suffer the vengeance of eternal fire — both devils and men are chips and pieces of beings hewn out of the same rock (if so we may speak) of that huge and vast Nothing, and might have been up before the throne filling the chairs and rooms of the now heirs of glory. You, believer, might have been in the seat of Judas, scorched in his furnace in hell, and Judas might have had your throne and your crown up with him eternally who sits on the throne, and with the Lamb.

3. He might have kept all the sons of men, and all the Angels, in a sinless condition, to be courtiers to proclaim the glory of law-goodness, and of the never broken Covenant of Works, but then there should never have been such a thing known to the generations to come, as that Ark of glory, that huge and boundless, all-fullness of the indwelling Godhead in the Man Christ. Surely, had there been none sick, such a suffering Physician to heal us had never been; none lost would have said there is no Savior; none dead in sin would say, there is no need of such a Lord and Prince of life, by whose swelling wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53).

4. Nor was it fit that this should never be known to Angels and men, that the Lord honors so many redeemed sinners with a grant and license to love so high, so precious a Redeemer, and as it were to mar and blacken his fairness and desirable excellency with our feeble and sinfully weak love, he being so far above our love or faith or praises.

5. The Gospel-wonders should not be an eternally sealed book to men and Angels, as (Revelation 12:1), that wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars, should be known. And what was showed to John was to be shown to the Churches (Revelation 21:10): And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great City, the holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God. 11. Having the glory of God. I mean here the wonders of grace, mercy, declared justice: as that the most High should empty Himself and the Godhead be united to clay: that there should be such a high Bridegroom, so low and sinful a Spouse: that death should conquer death: that nothings of clay should sing their debts, eternally cast down their crowns, being made of sinners glorified kings, and not be ashamed to cast down their crowns before him that sits on the throne. Nor should the gifts and graces of God be hidden (Romans 8:32): He that spared not his own Son — how should he not with him, ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩, give us all things, begrace to us all? How should he not make heaven and earth free grace to us, and all a mass of grace to us? Ephesians 1:6, ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩, He has begraced us all over in Christ. 1 Timothy 1:13: But I obtained mercy, as dipped in a sea of mercy. Luke 1:28: Hail Virgin, ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩, filled with free grace. Let us forgive one another (Colossians 3:13), as Christ begraced pardon to us, ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩. That we might know (1 Corinthians 2:12), ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩, the things that are freely given us. And what a debt must that be, the forgiving of ten thousand talents, more than to forgive millions and tons of gold?

Hence the question, whether Law-innocency and never sinning or Gospel-repentance and rising again in Christ, be most excellent? It is answered. 1. Simply to us: It is better and morally more excellent never to fall, never to be sick, than to rise in Christ and be healed by such a Physician. But sinning and falling being considered in relation to a more universal good, there is more excellency in Gospel-rising than in Law-standing: as, 1. There is more feeling deeper sense in the woman which did wash Christ's feet with her tears, and wipe them with the hair of her head, than in some who never so fell. And Christ may hold forth something of this (Luke 15:7): Likewise I say to you (says Christ) there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents, more than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance. True it is our Savior's scope is not to compare repentance and Law-innocency together, or to show that the Pharisees needed no repentance, as if they were not in a lost condition: but to show what joy was in heaven with the Lord the father of the forlorn son, and in the Angels, at the home coming of repenting sinners. And is not a jewel of ten thousand millions of more worth than a diamond that is not worth the eighth part of that sum? Adam's innocency and never sinning should have been by the common influences of Law-love, and the same may be said of Angel-innocency. But Gospel-repentance is the gift procured at a dearer rate, Christ was exalted a Prince to give repentance (Acts 5:31). Neither should there be sense and such loving sense of free grace in the forlorn son, had he never fled away from his father, and never been so received with a welcome of grace which he believed, before he felt it.