A39697:110
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 2: II 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.
II Position.
Secondly, you affirm with like Confidence, That the Covenant of Circumcision is also the same, viz. The Covenant of Works made with Adam in Paradise.
This I utterly deny, and will try whether you have any better Success in the Proof of your second, than you had in your first Position; and to convince you of your mistake, let us consider what the general nature of this Ordinance of Circumcision was, what its ends were, and then prove that it cannot be what you affirm it to be, the very same Covenant God made with Adam before the Fall, but must needs be a Covenant of Grace.
(1.) Circumcision in its general Nature, was (1.) an Ordinance of God's own Institution in the 99th year of Abraham's Age, at which time of its Institution, God renewed the Covenant with him, Gen. 17. 9, 10. (2.) That it consisted (as all Sacraments do) of an external Sign, and a Spiritual Mystery signified thereby. The external part of it (which we call the Sign) was the cutting off the Foreskin of the Genital part of the Hebrew Males, on the eighth Day from their Birth. The Spiritual Mystery thereby signified and represented, was the cutting off the Filth and Guilt of Sin from their Souls, by Regeneration and Justification, called, the Circumcision of the heart,