A39697:44
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
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.
Whether in the New Covenant, some act of ours, (though it have no Merit in it, nor can be done in our own single Strength) be not required to be performed by us, antecedently to a Blessing or Privilege consequent by virtue of a Promise? And whether such an Act or Duty, being of a Suspending Nature to the Blessing promised, it have not the true and proper Nature of a Gospel Condition? This I affirm, and he positively denies.
Whether in the New Covenant, some act of ours, (though it have no Merit in it, nor can be done in our own single Strength) be not required to be performed by us, antecedently to a Blessing or Priviledge consequent by vertue of a Promise? And whether such an Act or Duty, being of a Suspending Nature to the Blessing promised, it have not the true and proper Nature of a Gospel Condition? This I affirm, and he positively denies.
These three Positions being confuted, and the contrary well confirmed, viz. That the Law at Sinai was not set up by God as an Adam's Covenant, to open ⟨image 16⟩the old way of Righteousness and Life by works: but was added to the promise, as subservient to Christ in its design and use; and consequently can never be a pure Adam's Covenant of Works. And secondly,
That Abraham's Covenant, Gen. 17. is the very same Covenant of Grace we are now under; and (2ly.) that Circumcision in the nature of the act, did not oblige all men to keep the whole Law for Righteousness. And (3ly.)