CHAPTER 7; OF GOD’S COVENANT
Paragraph 1. The distance
between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures
do owe obedience to Him as their creator, yet they could never have attained
the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which
He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.1
1 Luke 17:10; Job
35:7,8
Paragraph 2. Moreover, man
having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased
the Lord to make a covenant of grace,2 wherein He freely offers
unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith
in Him, that they may be saved;3 and promising to give unto all
those that are ordained unto eternal life, His Holy Spirit, to make them
willing and able to believe.4
2 Gen. 2:17; Gal.
3:10; Rom. 3:20,21
3 Rom. 8:3; Mark
16:15,16; John 3:16;
4 Ezek. 36:26,27;
John 6:44,45; Ps. 110:3
Paragraph 3. This covenant
is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation
by the seed of the woman,5 and afterwards by farther steps, until
the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament;6
and it is founded in that eternal covenant transaction that was between
the Father and the Son about the redemption of the elect;7 and it
is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the posterity of fallen
Adam that ever were saved did obtain life and blessed immortality, man
being now utterly incapable of acceptance with God upon those terms on
which Adam stood in his state of innocency.8
5 Gen. 3:15
6 Heb. 1:1
7 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus
1:2
8 Heb. 11;6,13; Rom.
4:1,2, &c.; Acts 4:12; John 8:56