A39697:45
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.
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.)
That the New Covenant is not absolute and wholly unconditional; though notwithstanding a most free and gracious Covenant: the Pillars on which Mr. Cary sets his new Structure sink under it, and the building falls into ruins.
I have not here taken Mr. Cary's two Syllogisms, proving Abraham's Covenant to be a Covenant of Works; because I find my self therein prevented by that ingenuous and learned man Mr. Whiston, in his late Answer to Mr. Grantham. Neither have I particularly spoken to his 23 Arguments to prove the Sinai Law to be a pure Adam's Covenant, because frustra sit per plura, quod sieri potest per pauciora, I have overthrown them all together at