The Covenant of Life Opened, Part 1 · Chapter 6
CHAP. VI. It was condescension in the Lord to enter in Covenant with man. 2. Temptations in fearing we are not chosen, discovered. 3. Beings and not beings are debtors to God. 4. Self denyall required in sinlesse nature, as in sinfull. 5. Man considered three wayes.
WHither was God under an obligation, to make a Covenant with man?
Hardly can any maintain the dominion and Soveraigntie of God, and also assert an obligation, on the Lords part, of working upon the creature: The Lord is debtor to neither person nor things.Gods Covenanting with us, is a gracious condiscension. He as Lord commands, but it is condescension that he commands Covenant-wayes, with promise of a reward to the obeyer. The Leviathan in strength is far above Job, he cannot command him. Job 14.4. Will he make Berith a Covenant with thee, wilt thou take him for a servant for ever? That is, the Leviathan will not engadge as a servant to obey Iob as his master. A Covenant speaks something of giving, and taking, work, and reward, and mutuall engagements, betwixt parties, though there be something in the Covenant between God and man, that is, not in the Covenants of men. The rationall creatures owe suitable, that is, rationall obedience to the Creator, but God is under no obligation to give life, especially so excellent a life as a communion with God, in glory, yet he does it. What a God must he be, who will come downe and put himself in a lovely and gaining capacitie to be a Covenanting debtour to our feeble obedience, whereas he ows nothing, and to make heaven and glory so sure to us, that the heavens should sooner break and melt, like snow before the Sun, then his promise can fail.
Obj. True, but faith is fixed upon the new Covenant-promise, if I believe. Ans. Yea, but faith here is to believe, that the condition it self is promised, as well as the reward.
Obj. The condition of a new heart and of faith is promised, but not to all, not to me, but to some few chosen only. Ans. There be here a number of errors.The errors in temptations which wee create from surmises that we are not chosen to life eternall. 1. Unbelief foments proud merite, that we are to believe as much of God promised, as there is conceived, to be worth in self, and in me to fulfill the condition; But true faith, contrare to self-unworthinesse, relyes upon the Truth of God, the excellencie of Christ, and the absolutenesse of the promise. 2. Sathan like a Sophist drawes the dispute to the weakest conclusion from the strongest, to wit, from the promise of God, that is surer then heaven to the state, against which there is a greater number of Topick Arguments, then there can be against the promise of God. As 1. What am I? 2. Am I chosen or not? So Sathan to Christ, if thou be the Son of God, command these stones to be made bread, in point of beleeving its better that faith expatiate in viewing God, Christ, the Ransome of the blood of God-Man, the depth of free grace,Better faith view God & Christ, as self. Unbelief quarrels at God, and but pretends self sinfulnesse. then upon self, and the state: in point of repenting and humble down-casting, we would read self, and our own estate. 3. Its Satan and the unbeleeving heart that would have our faiths greatnesse rising from selfs holinesse, and goodnesse. Whereas the greatest faith that Christ finds, Mat. 8.10. looks away from self, v. 8. I am not worthy — and dwells much upon the Omnipotency of Christ in commanding diseases, as a Centurian his Souldiers. 4. When unbelief quarrels the Lord as untrue and weak, who faints and wearies, and one that is not the Creator of the ends of the earth, it alledges only and pretends self-guiltinesse to justifie unbelief: Yet Isa▪ 40.28. though God be reproached as weak, we seem to resolve all in this; our own unworthinesse, but we cannot get our faith stately enough; and the truth is here, we quarrell with God and his decrees, under pretence of this, what if he have not chosen me? and I have no right to Covenant-mercies, except I take a Law-way to earne them, by fulfilling the condition. 5. When we beleeve a conditionall promise (if I beleeve, How to beleeve conditionall promises.I am saved) faith relyes not fiducially upon the (if I beleeve) or upon the condition, Its a weak pillar to a sinner to stay his unquiet heart upon, to wit, his own beleeving, but faith rests upon the connexion (if thou beleeve thou shalt be saved) and it stayes upon the connexion, as made sure by the Lord, who of grace gives the condition of beleeving, and of grace the reward conditioned, so that faith binds all the weight upon God only, even in conditionall Gospel-promises. 1. Man is to be considered as a creature. 2. As such a creature, to wit, endued with reason and the Image of God, in either considerations, especially in the former all that are created, are obliged to do and suffer the will of God▪ though they never sinned. Its not enough to say, that Sun, Moon, Trees, Herbs, Vines, Earth, Beasts, Birds, and Fishes, cannot suffer the ill of punishment, which is relative to the break of a Law, for the whole Creation is subject to vanity for our sins, Rom. 8.20, 21. The Servant is smitten and sickened, for the Masters sake, and God may take from them what he gave them, their lives without sense of pain and dollour, for all beings, yea defects and privations are debters to the glory declarative of God, Prov. 16.4. Rom. 11.36. yea and no beings are under this debt. God can serve himself of nothing, yea, that there are not created, Locusts, Caterpillars, more numerous, then that all the fruits of the earth can be food to them,Beings and not beings are debtors to the glory of God. Preach the Glory of the Lords goodnesse to man, and what are never to be, no lesse then all things, that have futurition, or shall come to passe either absolutely or conditionally, are under the positive decree of God, else we should not owe thanks to the Lord for many evils that never fall out, that the Lord turns away violent death, violence of men, and wilde beasts, and many possible mischiefs, contrair to Deut. 28.11, 12. Lev. 26.6. Psal. 34.20, Psal. 91.5, 6, 7, 8.All not beings are under the positive decree of God And all these beings or no beings owe themselves to God to hold forth the glory of goodnesse, wisedome, mercy, justice, &c. suppone there had never been sin: Far more now, who wants matter of meditation, or can write a book of all the pains, a…kings, convulsions, pests, diseases that the Lord decreed to hold off? so that every bone, joynt, lith, hair, member, should write a Psalm Book of praises, Psal. 35.10. All my bones shall say, Lord, Who is like unto thee? Nor can any man write his debts of this kind. But we are little affected with the negatives of mercies, except we read them upon others, and little then also; Self-pain Preacheth little to us, far more▪ the borrowed experience of fallen Angels, of Sodom, of the old world, &c. leaves small impression upon stony spirits. 2. Complain not, that you have not that share of grace, another hath, if ye (you think) had it, you would be as usefull to glorifie God, as they, but ye know not your self; swell not against him, that thou hast no grace, O vessell of wrath, thou owes that bit clay, and all thy wants to glorifie his Justice. 3. My sicknesse, my pain, my bands owe themselves to God, and are debtors to his glory, I, and every one of men should say, O that my pain might praise him, and my hell, and flamings of everlasting fire,Our pains and sufferings are debters to the glory of God. might be an everlasting Psalm of the Glory of his Justice; That my sorrow could sing the Glory of so High a Lord; But we love rather that he wanted his praise, so we wanted our pain. 3. God hath made a sort of naturall Covenant with night and day, Jer. 31.35. For all are his servants, Psal. 119.91. that they should be faithfull to their own naturall ends to act for him,There is more self-denyall in the lifeless and unreasonable creatures in their Covenant of nature, thē in man. Ier. 5.22. Ier. 31.37. Psal. 104.1, 2, 3.4. and they are more faithfull to their ends then men. Isa. 1.3. Ier. 8.7. The oxe and the asse being more knowing to their owner, and the swallow and the cran being more discerning of their times, then men are. 2. They so keep their line, that there is more self-deniall in their actings, then in mans way: as if fire were not fire, and nature in it denied, the fire devours not the three Children, Dan. 3.27, 28 The Sun stands still, the Moon moves not, Iosh. 10.12, 13. The hungry Lions eat not Daniel, ch. 6.22. When the Lord gives a counter-command to them, and that is a clause in the Covenant, that the Lord entered with them, that they act or no act, as he shall be pleased to speak to them, John 2.10. Isa. 50.2. Mat. 8.16. It is a most humbling Theame, that an asse is more in denying nature, and the cran and the fire, then man, yea then a renued man in some cases. 4. But if man be considered, as such a man, endued with the Image of God, and withall the Covenant be considered as such a Covenant, as is expressed in the Ten-Commandements, in which one of seven is a Sabbath to the Lord, it will be found that many positives Morall are in the Covenant of Works, that are not in naturall Covenants.
5. So man must come under a three-fold consideration.
1. As a creature.
2. As a reasonable creature.
3. As such a creature reasonable, endued with the image of God.
In the first consideration,A threefold consideration of man in reference to a Covenant. man comes under the Covenant naturall, common to all creatures; So is Peters body carried above in the water as iron swims.
2. As a reasonable creature, he owes himself to God, to obey so far as the Law written in the heart carries him, to love God, trust in him, fear him. But this can hardly bear the name of a Covenant, except it be so called, in a large sense, nor is there any promise of life, as a reward of the work of obedience here.
3. But man being considered as indued with the Image of God, so the Holy God made with him a Covenant of life,The Covenant naturall, & the Covenant in its positives of diverse considerations. with Commandements, though positive and Morall, yet not deduced from the Law of Nature, in the strictest sense, as to observe such a Sabbath, the seventh from the Creation, the not eating of the forbidden tree, and with a promise of such a life. And therefore though Divines, as our solid and eminent Rollock, call it a Covenant naturall, as it is contradistinguished from the supernaturall Covenant of Grace, and there is good reason so to call it; Yet when it is considered in the positives thereof, it is from the free will of God, and though it be connaturall to man, created according to the Image of God, yet the Covenant came so from the Lords wisedom and free-will, as he might have casten it in a new and far other frame: And it cannot be denyed, though it be most suitable to mans intire nature to love God, yet to love him so and so, by obeying the command of not eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and some other Commands, is not so connaturall, but God might have commanded the contrair, without any thing done contrair to mans nature. Yet from this it followes, no more that these are two Covenants, then that there be two Covenants of Grace, Because faith in God, and the Morall Law in an Evangelick way are therein commanded, and also some duties touching the seals by a positive Law are therein contained.