A39697:103
Vindiciæ legis & fœderis
Vindiciæ legis & fœderis: or, A reply to Mr. Philip Cary's Solemn call Wherein he pretends to answer all the arguments of Mr. Allen, Mr. Baxter, Mr. Sydenham, Mr. Sedgwick, Mr. Roberts, and Dr. Burthogge, for the right of believers infants to baptism, by proving the law at Sinai, and the covenant of circumcision with Abraham, were the very same with Adam's covenant of works, and that because the gospel-covenant is absolute. By John Flavel minister of the gospel in Dartmouth
London: printed for M. Wolton, 1690
A REPLY TO Mr. Philip Cary's Solemn Call. › Section 1: I Position.
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.
Had you minded those things which I seasonably sent you, you had avoided all those Bogs into which you are now sunk, and been able fairly to reconcile all those seeming Contradictions in Paul's Epistles, with respect to the Law at Sinai: But however, by what hath been said, your first Position, That the Sinai Covenant is the same Covenant of Works with Adam's in Paradise, vanishes before the Evidence of Scripture-truth and sound Reason.
Had you minded those things which I seasonably sent you, you had avoided all those Boggs into which you are now sunk, and been able fairly to reconcile all those seeming Contradictions in Paul's Epistles, with respect to the Law at Sinai: But however, by what hath been said, your first Position, That the Sinai Covenant is the same Covenant of Works with Adam's in Paradise, vanishes before the Evidence of Scripture-truth and sound Reason.
But yet, though what I have said destroys your false Position, I am not willing to leave you, or the Reader, ignorant wherein the Truth lies in this controverted Point betwixt us; and that ⟨p. 32⟩will appear by a due consideration of the following Particulars.
(1.) 'Tis plain and uncontroverted, That Adam's Covenant in Paradise contained in it a perfect Law and Rule of natural Righteousness, founded both in God's Nature, and in Mans, which in its perfect state of Innocency was every way enabled perfectly to comply therewith: For the Scripture tells us, Eccles. 7. 29. That God made Man upright, and his punctual complying therewith was the Righteousness by which he stood.