A39697:107
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.
(3.) Soon after the Violation of the Covenant of Works, God was graciously pleased to publish for the relief of Mankind, ⟨p. 33⟩now miserable and hopeless, the Second Covenant, which we call the Covenant of Grace, Gen. 3. 15. which is the first opening of the Grace of God in Christ to Fallen Man; and though this first Promise of Christ was but short and obscure, yet it was in every Age to be opened clearer and clearer, until the promised Seed should come. After the first opening of this new Covenant in the first Promise of Christ, the first Covenant is shut up for ever, as a Covenant of Life and Salvation; and all the World are shut up to the only way of Salvation by Christ, Gal. 3. 23. it being contrary to the Will of God, that two ways of Salvation should stand open to Man at once, and they so opposite one to another, as the way of Works and the way of Faith are, Acts 4. 12. John 14. 6. Gal. 2. 21.
(4.) 'Tis evident however, that after the first opening of the Promise of Christ, Gen. 3. 15. God foreseeing the Pride of Fallen Man, who naturally inclines to a Righteousness of his own in the way of doing, was pleased to revive the Law of Nature, as to its matter, in the Sinai Dispensation, which ⟨p. 34⟩was 430 Years after the first Promise had been renewed, and further opened unto Abraham, of whose Seed Christ should come; and this he did not in opposition to the Promise, but in subserviency thereto,