A30345:42
A treatise of the covenant of grace wherein the gradual breakings out of Gospel…A treatise of the covenant of grace wherein the graduall breakings out of Gospel…
A treatise of the covenant of grace wherein the gradual breakings out of Gospel grace from Adam to Christ are clearly discovered, the differences betwixt the Old and New Testament are laid open, divers errors of Arminians and others are confuted, the nature of uprightness, and the way of Christ in bringing the soul into communion with himself ... are solidly handled / by that faithful servant of Jesus Christ, and minister of the Gospel, John Ball ; published by Simeon Ash.A treatise of the covenant of grace wherein the graduall breakings out of Gospel grace from Adam to Christ are clearly discovered, the differences betwixt the Old and New Testament are laid open, divers errours of Arminians and others are confuted, the nature of uprightnesse, and the way of Christ in bringing the soul into communion with himself ... are solidly handled / by that faithfull servant of Jesus Christ, and minister of the Gospel, John Ball ; published by Simeon Ash.
London: printed by G. Miller for Edward Brewster, 1645
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Though God had put many abilities and honourable privileges upon man, yet he remained his Sovereign, which by an act of restraint, he was pleased to make man thus exalted to know, which he did by requiring and commanding his creature to abstain from one fruit in it self pleasant to the eye, and good for meat. This was mans Homage-penny, a thing before the command indifferent, unto which he had a natural inclination, from which he was now to abstain, because God (who had before given to man as part of his patrimony, and not as reward of his obedience to this particular restraint, liberty to eat of every tree of the Garden) here interposed himself and reserved this as an Homage unto himself. ⟨p. 11⟩God in his Sovereignty set a punishment upon the breach of this1 his Commandment, that man might know his inferiority, and that things betwixt him and God were not as between equals. The subject of this Covenant is man entire and perfect, made after the Image of God in Righteousness and true holiness, furnished not only with a reasonable soul and faculties beseeming, but with divine qualities breathed from the whole Trinity, infused into the whole man, lifting up every faculty and power above his first frame, and enabling and fitting him to obey the will of God entirely, willingly, exactly, for matter and measure. Whether this was natural or supernatural unto the first man, is a question needless to be disputed in this place, and peradventure if the terms be rightly understood, will be no great controversy. Only this must be acknowledged, that this was Adams excellency above all the creatures, and that in the fallen creature this quality is supernatural. Unto this mutual Covenant God added a seal to assure the protoplast of his performance and persisting in Covenant with him, and further to strengthen his obedience, with the obedience of his posterity, which upon his breach with God was made void. This Covenant of works made with Adam should have been the same unto his whole posterity, if he had continued as in all after Covenants of God, they are made with Head and Root, reaching unto all the branches and members issuing from them, Rom. 5. 17. 1 Cor. 15. 22, 47. The proportion holding in Abraham to Christ, till the Covenant be rejected in after comers.