A39697:140
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 › Argument 3: Argument III.
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.
I will trouble you on this Head but with one Query more: If the four first Verses of the Seventeenth of Genesis, contain a pure Gospel-Covenant as you say, and the Restipulation in the following Verses make a Covenant of works, because it thereby becomes Conditional: Then tell me, if you please, whether what God graciously granted to Abraham in the former Verses, be not all nulled, and made void again by their Restipulation? Does not this seem Harsh? Here you have brought Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the believers of Abraham's race, just into the same case you brought Moses and all the Israelites before, under two opposite Covenants, where one cuts off all that the other granted.
I will trouble you on this Head but with one Query more: If the four first Verses of the Seventeenth of Genesis, contain a pure Gospel-Covenant as you say, and the Restipulation in the following Verses make a Covenant of works, because it thereby becomes Conditional: Then tell me, if you please, whether what God graciously granted to Abraham in the former Verses, be not all null'd, and made void again by their Restipulation? Does not this seem Harsh? Here you have brought Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the believers of Abraham's race, just into the same case you brought Moses and all the Israelites before, under two opposite Covenants, where one cuts off all that the other granted.
But there is a stronger reason urged than the conditionality of the Covenant, to prove it a Covenant of Works, and that is, Circumcision is made the Condition of Abraham's Covenant; and that's the worst of all conditions; for it obliges a man to keep the whole Law, Gal. 5. 3. 'tis the yoke of bondage, and to whatsoever Covenant it be so annexed, it makes it become a bondage Legal Covenant. ⟨p. 52⟩If we be circumcised, Christ shall profit us nothing. Thus it was in the Covenant. Gen. 17.