Sermon 8

The condition of the covenant is Faith: holiness and sanctification is the condition of Covenanters (Galatians 4:21-24; Romans 10:4-7). This do was the condition of the Covenant of Works: This believe, is the condition of this Covenant; because Faith sends a person out of himself, and takes him off his own bottom, that in Christ he may have his righteousness: works is a more selfy condition, and gives therefore less glory to God. Faith holds forth God in Christ in the most lively and lovely properties of Free-grace, mercy, love transcendent; hence a believer as such cannot possibly glory in himself; all that Faith has, is by way of receiving, and begging wise.

But some teach, that this Covenant has no condition at all: So Doctor Crispe and other Libertines; For this is an everlasting Covenant, Man is not now so confirmed in grace, but he may fail in believing, and so soon as the Condition fails, the Covenant fails, as we see in the first Covenant. Answer 1. That we have no confirming grace to establish us to the day of Christ, is to teach with some Familists, that There is no grace in sound Believers, different in kind and nature, from that grace which is in many Hypocrites. Indeed, but the pure in spirit are blessed, and shall see God, Hypocrites are not so. And what else is this but the King's Road way to the Apostasy of the Saints, if believers have not Christ for their undertaker to bring them to glory? To intercede for them (Hebrews 2:10; Luke 22:32-33). 2. And though they believe not at the first hour, yet this Gospel-Covenant is not frustrated, even if poor souls believe at the eleventh hour; the former Covenant leaves sinners for the first breach without remedy, or hope of life, by the tenor of the Law, not so this Covenant. Christ knocks while his locks are wet with night rain.

Objection 2. (I will put my Law in your inward parts) is no condition to be performed by us, but by God only, and so all the tie lies upon God, if God does not this as he promises (Jeremiah 31), must not the fault or failing be his who is tied in a covenant to perform his part, and does it not? Now this God promises (Jeremiah 31; Hebrews 8:10; Ezekiel 36:26-27). Answer. Either does God promise to give us Faith, and to cause us to walk in his ways (Ezekiel 36:26-27), and to circumcise our hearts to love the Lord (Deuteronomy 30:6), which Arminians deny, contrary to the clear day-light of Scripture, or then, whenever we sin who are under the Covenant of Grace, by committing and acting works of the flesh, and omitting to believe, pray, praise, humble our souls for sin, God is to be blamed, who works not in us by his efficacious Grace to will and to do, as he has promised (Philippians 2:13; Ezekiel 36:26-27), and the regenerate cannot sin at all, because it is the Lord's fault (God avert blasphemy) that we sin, for without his giving of a new heart, and his efficacious moving us to walk in his way (to which God is tied by Covenant; Ezekiel 36:27; Deuteronomy 30:6) we cannot choose but sin; hence they teach we are not obliged to pray, nor do we sin in not believing, in not praying, when the breath of the wind of the Holy Ghost does not blow, and act us to those holy duties. Hence also it is taught, That none are exhorted to believe, but such whom we know to be the elect of God, or to have his spirit in them effectually working.

Objection 3. To do anything in conscience to a commandment is to be under the Law, and contrary to the Covenant of Grace. Answer. The Law of Grace or Gospel has Commandments, as (Romans 6:12): Let not sin reign therefore in your mortal bodies, And this is backed with a reason taken from the promise of Grace, verse 14: For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the Law, but under Grace, so (Philippians 2:12): Work out etc. for verse 13: It is God who works in you. Though we have no Physical dominion over the assisting grace of God so as I can forcibly command the wind of the Spirit to blow, when I please, yet have we a certain Moral Dominion by virtue of an Evangelical promise, so as faith is to have influence in all acts of sanctification, and to look to the promise of assistance, which he who cannot lie has promised, though he be not tied to my time and manner of working; yet do I sin in not praying, and in not believing, even when his wind blows not: God's liberty and freedom of grace does not destroy the Law of either works, or grace, and free me from a duty.

Objection 4. Believing and obedience of Faith, is but a consequent of the Covenant, not an antecedent, so I must believe upon other grounds, but not in way of the condition of the Covenant, for in that tenor I am to do nothing. Answer. The Apostle (Romans 10) expressly distinguishes between the righteousness of the Law, verse 5, which requires doing as a condition; and the righteousness of faith, verse 6, which requires believing, verse 10, and (Galatians 5:5): We through the spirit wait for the hope of righteousness through Faith: nor can any have claim to the Covenant but such as believe.

Objection 5. The covenant is God's love to man, to take him to himself, and that before the children do good or ill, and to him that works is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. Answer. The covenant is a fruit and effect of God's love, but it is not formally God's love, for because God loved Israel, therefore did he enter in covenant with them (Deuteronomy 7:7-8; Ezekiel 16:8), and Arminians expound, that of Jacob's embracing of the covenant by Faith, and of Esau's rejecting of it through unbelief: Whereas Paul speaks of Jacob and Esau, as they lay stated in the eye and view of God from eternity, before they were born, and had as yet neither done good nor ill. Now the covenant of Grace or Gospel manifested to Jacob and Esau, is not eternal, but proposed to them after they are born, and when the offer of Christ in the Gospel is made, and how could Esau before he was born refuse the Gospel, except you say he did evil before he did evil? Which is nonsense. 2. Paul says plainly, To him that believes is the work reckoned.

Object 6. Our act of believing is a work, and no work can be a condition of the covenant of Grace; indeed Christ alone justifies, faith is not Christ, nor any partner with him in the work; indeed we are justified before we believe, and faith only serves for the manifestation of justification to our conscience, for we believe no lie, when we believe we are justified, but a truth, then it must be true that we are justified, before we believe. Answer 1. Christ alone as the meritorious cause justifies, and his imputed righteousness as the formal cause; and this way Christ alone justifies the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles and all believers, before they are born, but this is but the fountain ready to wash: but believe it, Christ washes not, while we are foul, he clothes us not, while we are naked, he gives not eye-salve, while we are blind, nor gold while we are poor, nor is his name our righteousness, while we are sinners. 1. Men not born cannot be the object of actual righteousness, the unborn child needs no actual application of Christ's eye-salve, of his gold and righteousness; now justification is a real favor applied to us in time, just as sanctification in the new birth (1 Corinthians 6:11). And such were some of you, but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified; then they were sometimes not washed. 2. Poverty puts beauty, worth, and a high price on Christ; sense of sin says, O what can I give for precious Jesus Christ? But his Father cannot sell him. 2. Yet is faith a palsy hand under Christ to receive him (John 1:11). It is an evangelical act, and not a mere passion, but of grace deputed to be a receiver, a certain innkeeper to lodge Christ; and so Christ his alone does not justify us, being mere patients, this is not to put faith in the chair and throne of estate with Christ, faith gives glory to Christ, and takes grace as alms, but takes no glory from him (Romans 4:20). But he was strong in the faith giving glory to God. We cannot be justified before we believe. 1. We are damned before we believe, he that believes not is condemned already (John 3:2). He that is justified is glorified (Romans 8:30), and saved (Mark 16:16). 3. We are born, and by nature the sons of wrath (Ephesians 2:2). We ourselves were sometimes disobedient, etc., but he has saved us. Verse 7. That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Romans 7). Paul makes clearly two different times and states of the saints, on verse 5. When we were in the flesh, and the motions of sins which were by the law did work in our members, to bring forth fruit to death, then our first husband the law was living, and we under a mother and father that begat children to death, and so we were not yet justified. Verse 6. But now we are delivered from the law, and (Romans 6:14) indeed are not under the law, but under grace, when Christ our second husband marries the widow freed from her first husband the law, then are we under grace and justified, and then new Lord, new law. 4. By faith we are only united to Christ, possessed of him, Christ dwelling in us (Ephesians 3:17), living in me by faith (John 11:26), (Galatians 2:20), receiving Christ (John 1:11), having Christ (1 John 5:12), married to Christ (Ephesians 5:32), eating and drinking Christ by faith (John 6:35, 47, 45), coming to him as to a living stone (1 Peter 2:4), abiding in him as branches in the tree (John 15:4, 5). Now if we were justified before we believe, we should have a union by the vital act of faith, before we are justified, and so we should live before we live, and be new creatures, while we are yet in the state of sin, and heirs of wrath. 5. This justification without faith casts loose the covenant. I will be your God: but here a condition. God is not bound and we free, therefore this is the other part: And you shall be my people. Now it is taught by Libertines: that there can be no closing with Christ in a promise that has a qualification or condition expressed, and that conditional promises are legal. It is true if the word 'condition' be taken in a wrong sense; the promises are not conditional. For, 1. Arminians take a condition for a free act, which we absolutely may perform by free will, not acted by the predeterminating grace of Christ, so jurists take the word, but this makes men lords of heaven and hell, and puts the keys of life and death over to absolute contingency. 2. Conditions have a Popish sense, for doing that which by some merit moves God to give to men wages for work, and so promises are not conditional. But Libertines deny all conditions. But taking condition for any qualification wrought in us by the power of the saving grace of God: Christ promises soul ease but upon a condition which (I grant) his grace works — that the soul be sin-sick for Christ; and he offers wine and milk (Isaiah 55:1), and the water of life freely (Revelation 22:17), upon condition, that you buy without money; no purse is Christ's grace-market, no hire and sense of wretchedness, is a hire for Christ, and the truth is, it is an improper condition, if a father promise lands to a son so he will pay him a thousand crowns for the lands, and if the Father of free grace can only, and does give him the thousand crowns also, the payment is most improperly a hire or a condition, and we may well say the whole bargain is pure grace; for both wages and work is free grace. But the ground of Libertines is fleshly laziness, and to sin, because grace abounds; for they print it, that all the activity of a believer is to sin: so to believe must be sin; to run the ways of God's commandments, with a heart enlarged by grace, must be no action of grace, but an action of the flesh.

6. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans and to the Galatians, takes for granted that justification is a work done in time, transient on us, not an immanent and eternal action remaining either in God from eternity, or performed by Christ on the Cross before we believe; and so never takes it upon himself to prove that we are justified before we either do the works of the Law or believe in Jesus Christ — but that we are justified by faith, which certainly is an act performed by a regenerate person, for a new creature only can perform the works of the new creature, and faith is not the naked manifestation of our justification, so as we are justified before we have faith. Satisfaction is indeed given to justice by Christ on the Cross for all our sins before we believe, and before any justified person who lived these fifteen hundred years was born; but alas, that is not justification, but only the meritorious cause of it — that is, as if one should say this wall is white since the creation of the world, though this very day only it was whitened, because whiteness was in the world since the creation. Justification is a forensic sentence in time pronounced in the Gospel, and applied to me now, and never until the instant now that I believe; it is not formally an act of the understanding to know a truth concerning myself, but it is a heart-adherence of the affections to Christ as the Savior of sinners; at the presence of which a sentence of free absolution is pronounced. Suppose the Prince has it in his mind to pardon twenty malefactors — his grace is the cause why they are pardoned, yet are they never in law pardoned, so as they can in law plead immunity, until they can produce their Prince's royal sealed pardon.

5. The properties of the Covenant I call: 1. The freedom of it consisting in persons; 2. Causes; 3. Time; 4. Manner of dispensation. 1. Men, and not condemned angels, are capable of this covenant. 2. Among men, some nations and not others (Psalm 147:19-20). 3. So many, not any other. 4. The Father, not the Son; the poor, not always kings; the fool, not the wise man; the husband, not the wife; not those who were bidden to the supper, but beggars, halt, withered, lame. 2. Causes: in the first covenant there was grace not deserving, and therefore now as the Law is propounded, it is a herald of grace, and the Gospel's servant to stand at Christ's and the believer's back, as an attending servant. 2. Indeed, mercy to thousands, toward those who have but evangelical love to Christ, comes into the Law, Christ having (in a sort) married the two covenants. 3. 'I am the Lord your God' (Exodus 20) — is grace standing at the entry of the door to those that are under the Law, to bring them out; but in the Gospel all is unmixed grace. 1. Not personal obedience is my heaven, but I stand still, and another does all that may merit glory. Christ says, 'Do you but stand still, behold me, and see, friends, my garments rolled in blood; I bind for you, only consent, put your hand to the pen, but I am the only undertaker to fight it out for you.' 3. For time, the first breach of the Law is wrath, and no place by Law for repentance; but here — come to Christ, who will, and when you will, after you have played the harlot with many lovers: bring hell and sins red as scarlet and crimson, come and be washed, come at the eleventh hour and welcome; fall and rise again in Christ; run away, and come home again and repent. 4. The manner is: 1. That so much as would have bought ten thousand worlds of men and devils was given for so many only — an infinite surplus of love, so (as I may say) Christ did more than love us. Egypt and Ethiopia were not given for our ransom. 2. A sure and eternal covenant, founded upon infinite love: why may not the link be broken, and the sheep plucked out of his hand? Why — the Father that gave them to me is greater than all. Where does he dwell? In what heaven? Who is stronger than the Father? The covenant with night and day is natural, and cannot fail; confirming grace in the second Adam is more co-natural. 3. Well ordered — Christ keeping his place, the Father his place, faith its place, the sinner his place.

1. Use: All without this covenant are miserable; Christ undertakes not for them. The Lord deals with them by law — read Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26, Job 20, chapters 18 and 27. They have bread, but it is not sure; not so the believer (Isaiah 33:16): 'His bread shall be given him, his waters shall be sure.' The believer has all by the free holding of grace — his bread by covenant, his sleep by promise, safety from the sword, to lie down and no man shall make them afraid by covenant; his land is tilled by the Covenant of Grace (Ezekiel 36:34). The man not in this covenant has all by tenor of the condemning law; the weapon of steel shall go through bones and liver by virtue of the curses of the Law.

2. Men never try their standing, whether they be under the first husband of the Law, or if they be married to the better husband Christ and under grace — where are you, O sinner, in Christ or no? They live at random, and by chance not knowing that the two covenants have influence on eternity; a man is judged according to his state, rather than his actions.

3. No state is so stable and sure as the covenant of grace. Christ is surety for the believer that he fall not away: Christ's honor is engaged; he shall not have shame of his tutorship (Isaiah 50:7). 'I know I shall not be ashamed,' says Christ: it is his honor to raise me when I fall.

4. We may use arguments of faith, challenging God (Jeremiah 31:18): "Turn me, and I shall be turned" — and why? "For you are the Lord my God." The covenant is faith's Magna Carta, the grand mother-promise; all prayers must be bottomed on this (Jeremiah 14:21): "Do not abhor us" — why? (verse 22): "Are you not he, the Lord God?" (Isaiah 64:9): "Remember not our iniquity forever; behold, see we beseech you" — why? "We are all your people." Every one does for its own: the prince for his own people, the father for his own children; indeed, the dam for her own young ones, the shepherd for his own sheep, and God for his own in covenant with him. An offensive and defensive covenant of peace and war takes in the believer, and all that serves him — the stones of the field (Job 5:23) — and in covenant with the horse you ride on, that it shall not cast you and crush you; in covenant with the sword, with the cannon and musket, with the spear and bow; indeed, with death as a boat to carry you over the water to your father's land. So the covenant: "I'll bless them that bless you, and curse them that curse you" (Isaiah 54:16): "I have created the water to destroy" — creation is a work of omnipotency only; no creature can do it. Therefore fire cannot consume, water cannot drown the saints, except by a dispensation of the Lord.

5. Christ is not fastened as a loose nail, or as one broken or rotten wedge in the covenant: he is there as a nail in a sure place (Zechariah 10:4; Isaiah 22:23). Hang all the vessels of the father's house on Christ — he cannot break. O sweet! we are given to the surety of the covenant (John 17:3): "Son, answer for him, your life for his life, your glory for his glory; and render account of him, when the kingdom shall be given up to the Father." Adam was surety in the first covenant, and so it fell out; free will holds all sure in the Arminian covenant.

6. In desertion, to swim upon the covenant keeps from sinking; so Christ in his sad and dark hour: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"