A39697:88
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.
Perhaps you will say, this Promise did not belong to the Moral Law given at Sinai, but to the Ceremonial Law; if so, then I should reasonably conclude, that you take the Ceremonial Law (of which you seem to make this a Branch, Page 181.) to be a Covenant of Grace, seeing one of its Branches bears such a gracious Promise upon it. No, that must not be so neither, for say you Page 151. the Ceremonial Covenant is of the same nature with the Covenant of Works, or Law written in Tables of Stone; whither then shall we send this Promise? To the Covenant of Grace we must not send it, unless only as an Index or Finger to point to it, because it was made upon Mount Sinai, and delivered to Israel by the Hand of Moses; to the Gospel-Govenant we must not therefore annex it; and to the legal Dispensation at Sinai you are as loath to annex it, because it contains so much Relief and Grace in it for poor Penitents; and that will prove, that neither the Moral nor Ceremonial Law (place it in which you please) can be a pure Covenant of Works as Adam's was.
Moreover, In making this the Promise which must Relieve and Comfort the distressed Israelites in the purest Gospel-times, towards the end of the World, you as palpably contradict your self in another respect; for we shall find you by and by stoutly denying, that the Gospel-Promises have any Conditions or Qualifications annexed to them; but so hath this which you say relates to them that shall live at the end of the World. If their uncircumcised Hearts be humbled, and if they accept the punishment of their Iniquities, then will I remember my Covenant, &c. But be this Promise Conditional or Absolute, two things are undeniably clear. (1.) That it is a Promise full of Grace, for the relief of Law-Transgressors, ver. 40. (2.) That it was a Mount Sinai Promise, ver. 46. and such a Promise as you can never show in Adam's Covenant.
Moreover, In making this the Promise which must Relieve and Comfort the distressed Israelites in the purest Gospel-times, towards the end of the World, you as palpably contradict your self in another respect; for we shall find you by and by stoutly denying, that the Gospel-Promises have any Conditions or Qualifications annexed to them; but so hath this which you say relates to them that shall live at the end of the World. If their uncircumcised Hearts be humbled, and if they accept the punishment of their Iniquities, then will I remember my Covenant, &c. But be this Promise Conditional or Absolute, two things are undeniably clear. (1.) That it is a Promise full of Grace, for the relief of Law-Transgressors, ver. 40. (2.) That it was a Mount Sinai Promise, ver. 46. and such a Promise as you can never shew in Adam's Covenant.