These Sections teach the following propositions :

1st. The duty which an intelligent creature owes its Creator is essential and inalienable from its being.

2d. The enjoyment of the Creator's fulness and love by the creature, however, is a matter of free and sovereign grace, depending solely on the will of the Creator.

3d. In the case of men and angels, God has been pleased to promise this transcendent benefit upon certain conditions, which conditional promise is called a covenant.

4th. In the first covenant that concerned mankind,

God dealt with Adam as the representative of all his descendants.

5th. The promise of this covenant was life ; the condition of it perfect and personal obedience.

1st. The duty which an intelligent creature owes to its Creator is inalienable, and springs necessarily (1) from the absolute imperative obligation which is of the essence of all that is morally right — which exercises authority over the will, but does not receive authority from it ; and (2) from the relation of dependence and obligation involved in the very fact of being created. To be a created, intelligent, moral agent is to be under all the obligation of obeying the will and of living for the glory of the absolute Owner and Governor.

2d. That, on the other hand, the enjoyment of the Creator's fulness and love by the creature is a matter of sovereign grace, depending alone upon the will of the Creator, is also self-evident. The very act of creation brings the creature under obligation to the Creator, but it cannot bring the Creator into obligation to the creature. Creation itself, being a signal act of grace, cannot endow the beneficiary with a claim for more grace. If God, for instance, has created a man with an eye, it may be eminently consistent with the divine attributes, and a ground of fair anticipation, that at some time he who has given eyes will also give light; but, surely, the creation of the first can lay the foundation of no right upon the part of man for the gift of the second. And, of course, far less can the fact that in creation God endowed men with a religious nature lay the foundation of any right on their part for the infinitely more precious gift of the personal communications of his own

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ineffable love and grace. God cannot be bound to take all creatures naturally capable of it into the intimacies of his own society. If he does so, it is a matter of infinite condescension and sovereign will.

3d. In the case of men and angels, God has been ])leased to promise "^his transcendent benefit upon certain conditions, which conditional promise is called a covenant. There can be no doubt that this amazing gift of God's personal love and life-giving society had been offered to angels, and at the beginning was offered to the first human pair, upon conditions. Some object that the conditional promise made to Adam in the garden is not explicitly called a covenant, and that it does not possess all the essential elements of a covenant, since it was a constitution sovereignly ordained by the Creator without consulting the will of the creature. It is a sufficient answer to these objections (1) that although Adam's will was not consulted, yet his will was unquestionably cordially consenting to this divine constitution and all the terms thereof, and hence the transaction did embrace all the elements of a covenant. (2.) That several instances of analogous transactions between God and men are expressly styled covenants in the Bible. If God's transactions with Noah (Gen. ix. 11, 12) and with Abraham (Gen. xvii. 1-21) were covenants, then was his transaction with Adam in the garden a covenant.

The analysis of a covenant always gives the following elements : (a.) Its parties. (6.) Its promise, (c.) Its conditions, (d.) Its penalty. As to its parties, our standards teach —

4th. In tlie first covenant that concerned mankind,

God dealt with Adam as the representative of all hisi descendants. The parties, therefore, are God and Adam, the latter representing the human race. That Adam did so act as the representative of his descendants, in such a sense that they were equally interested with him self in all the merit or demerit, the reward or the penalty, attaching to his action during the period of probation, has already been proved to be the doctrine both of our standards and of Scripture (Chapter vi., §§ 3, 4). As to the further nature of this covenant, our standards teach —

5th. The promise of it was life, the condition of it perfect obedience, and the penalty of it death. L. Cat., Q. 20; S. Cat., Q. 12.

This covenant is variously styled, from one or other of these several elements. Thus, it is called the " covenant of works," because perfect obedience was its condition, and to distinguish it from the covenant of grace, which rests our salvation on a different basis altogether. It is also called the "covenant of life," because life was promised on condition of the obedience. It is also called a " legal covenant," because it demanded the literal fulfilment of the claims of the moral law as the condition of God's favour. This covenant was also in its essence a covenant of grace, in that it graciously promised life in the society of God as the freely-granted reward of an obedience already unconditionally due. Nevertheless it was a covenant of works and of law with respect to its demands and conditions.

(1.) That the proniise of the covenant was life is proved — (a.) From the nature of the penalty, which is recorded in terms. If disobedience was linked to death,

obedience must have been linked to life. (6.) It is taught expressly in many passages of Scripture. Paul says, Rom. X. 5 : " Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, that he which doeth these things shall live by them." Matt. xix. 16, 17; Gal. iii. 12; Lev. xviii. 6 ; Neh. ix. 29.

That the life promised was not mere continuance of existence is plain — (a.) From the fact that the death threatened was not the mere extinction of existence. Adam experienced that death the very day he ate the forbidden fruit. The death threatened was exclusion from the communion of God. The life promised, therefore, must consist in the divine fellowship and the excellence and happiness thence resulting. (6.) From the fact that mere existence was not in jeopardy. It is the character, not the fact, of continued existence which God suspended upon obedience, (c.) Because the terms life and death are used in the Scriptures constantly to define two opposite spiritual conditions, which depend upon the relation of the soul to God. John v. 24 ; vi. 47; Rom. vi. 13; xi. 15; Eph. ii. 1-3; v. 14; Rev. iii. 1.

(2.) That the condition of the covenant was perfect obedience is plain from the fact (a) that the divine law can demand no less. It is of the essence of all that is right that it is obligatory. James says, that " whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all." James ii. 10 ; Gal. iii. 10 ; Deut. xxvii. 26. (6.) That the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, relating to a thing indifferent in itself, was plainly designed to be a naked test of obedience, absolute and without limit.

(3.) That the penalty of this covenant was death is distinctly stated. '^In the day thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die." Gen. ii. 17. This denoted a most lamentable state of existence, physical and moral, and not the cessation of existence or the dissolution of the union between soul and body, because (a) it took effect in our first parents hundreds of years before the dissolution of that union. (6.) Because the Scrij)tures constantly describe the moral and spiritual condition into which their descendants are born, and from which they are delivered by Christ, as a state of death. Rev. iii. 1 ; Eph. ii. 1-5; V. 14; John v. 24.

This death is a condition of increasing sin and misery, resulting from excision from the only source of life. It involves the entire person, soul and body, and continues as long as the cause continues.

Man is naturally and necessarily under a law to God. This results from the necessary and unalterable relation subsisting between God and man, as the one is the Creator, and the other his creature. God might, therefore, if he had pleased, demanded all possible obedience of man, without making any promise securing his establishment in a state of innocence and enjoyment, and his advancement to a state of still higher felicity, as the reward of his obedience. And though man had gone tlirough a long course of obedience, without a single failure, he could not have laid his Creator under any obligation to him, or been entitled to any recompense. But God graciously condescended to deal with man by way of covenant, and thus gave him an opportunity to secure his happiness by acquiring a right to it — a right founded upon stipulation, or upon the promise. " Man," says the celebrated Witsius, " upon his accepting the covenant, and performing the condition, does acquire some right to demand of God the promise ; for God has, by his promises, made himself a debtor to man ; or, to speak in a manner more becoming God, he was pleased to make his performing his promises a debt due

SKCT. 1, 2.] OF god's covenant WITH MAN. 85

to himself, — to his goodness, justice, and veracity. And to man, in covenant, and continuing stedfast to it, he granted the right of expecting and requiring that God should satisfy the demands of his goodness, justice, and truth, by the performance of the promises." *

A covenant is generally defined to be an agreement between two parties, on certain terms. In every covenant there must be two parties, and consequently two parts — a conditionary and a promissory ; the one to be performed by the one party, and the other to be fulfilled by the other party. If either of the parties be fallible, a penalty is often added; but this is not essential to a covenant.

There are two important truths to which our attention is here directed. First, That God entered into a covenant with Adam, promising him life upon condition of his perfect and personal obedience. Secondly, That this covenant was made with Adam, not only for himself, but for all his natural posterity.

I. That God entered into a covenant with Adam in his state of innocence, appears from Gen. ii. 16, 17: " The Lord God commanded the man, saying. Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat : but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Here, indeed, there is no express mention of a covenant; but we find all the essential requisites of a projier covenant. In this transaction there are hco parties; the Loj'd God on the one hand, and man on the other. There is a condition expressly stated, in the positive precept respecting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which God was jjleased to make tlie test of man's obedience. There is a ^^ewa^ij/ subjoined : " In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." There is also a 2^i'07nise, not distinctly expressed, but implied in the threatening ; for, if death was to be the consequence of disobedience, it clearly follows that life was to be the reward of obedience. That a promise of life was annexed to man's obedience, may also be inferred from the description wdiich Moses gives of the righteousness of the law : " The man that doeth these things shall live by them," — Rom. x. 5 ; from our Lord's answer to the young man who inquii-ed what he should do to inherit eternal life : " If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments," — INIatt. xix. 17; and from the declaration of the apostle, that " the commandment was ordained to life." — Rom. vii. 10. We are, therefore, wai-ranted to call tlie transaction between God and Adam a covenant. We may

» Witsiuson tke Economy of the Covenants, book i., ch. I. sect. 14

HG CONFESSION OF FATTII. QcilAP. VIT.

even allege, for the use of this term, the language of Scripture. In Hos. vi. 7 (margin), we read, " They, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant." This necessarily implies that a covenant was made with Adam, and that he violated it.

II. That this covenant was made with Adam, not only for himself, but also for all his natural posterity, is a doctrine which has met with much opposition. It is denied by Pelagians and Socinians, who maintain that he acted for himself alone, and that the effects of his fall terminated upon himself. Arminians admit that the whole human race is injured by the first sin, but at the sametime controvert the proposition, that Adam was their proper representative. This truth, however, may be easily established. The Scripture represents Adam as a figure or type of Christ, — Rom. v. 14 ; and wherein does the resemblance between them co;isist ? Simply in this, that as Christ was a federal head, representing all his spiritual seed in the covenant of grace, so Adam was a federal head representing all his natural seed in the covenant of works. In 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, the one is called i\\Q first Adam, the other, the last Adam; the one the first man, the other the second man. Now, Christ was not the second man in any other sense, but as being the federal head or representative of his seed ; and, therefore, the first man must have sustained a similar character, as being the federal head or representative of all his natural posterity. The extension of the effects of Adam's first sin to all his descendants, is another sti'ong proof of his having represented them in the covenant made with him. That he has transmitted sin and death to all his posterity, is clearly taught in the 5th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans ; and unless his public character, as a representative in the covenant, be admitted, no satisfactory reason can be assigned why we are affected by his first sin in a way that we are not affected by his subsequent transgressions, or the transgressions of our more immediate progenitors. We know that " the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father" (Ezek. xviii. 20); and had Adam been merely a private person, his sin could have affected us no more than that of our immediate parents. The conclusion is ine\dtable, — that, in the covenant of w^orks, our first parent not only acted for himself, but represented all his natural posterity.

Often has this part of the divine procedure been arraigned by presumptuous man. The supposition that God called Adam to represent us in a covenant, into which he entered with him long before we had a being, and to the making of which we could not personally consent, is, it has been alleged, inconsistent with the divine goodness, and

contrary to moral justice and equity. To this it might be sufficient to reply, that this transaction being the proposal and deed of God, it must be fit and equitable, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " " He is a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he." But though we ought to acquiesce in the propriety of this transaction, simply because it was the will of God, yet it might be evinced, by various considerations, that it was not only consistent with equity, but manifested much of the divine goodness. If Adam had fulfilled the condition of the covenant, and thus secured happiness, not only to himself, but also to all his posterity, no one, certainly, would have complained that Adam was constituted his representative; and why should that thausaction, which, in this event, would have been deemed just, be pronounced imjust on the contrary event ? Adam, being made after the image of God, was as capable of keeping the covenant as any of his posterity could ever be supposed to be; that he should fulfil it was as much his personal interest as that of any of his descendants, his own felicity, no less than theirs, being at stake ; and he was intimately related to the persons whom he represented, and had the strongest inducement to take care of his numerous ofispring, as well as of himself. Adam having such peculiar advantages and inducements to perform the demanded obedience, it may be fairly presumed, that, had it been possible for us to be present when the federal transaction was entered into, we would have readily agreed that it was more eligible and safe for us to have our everlasting felicity insured by the obedience of our first parent, as our covenant head, than that it should depend upon our own personal behaviour. And who would complain of his being represented by Adam in the covenant of works, since God has opened up a way for our recovery from the consequences of the breach of that covenant, by another and a superior covenant ?