The covenant of life opened, or, A treatise of the covenant of grace

What? could not God have said,¹ eat not of the tree of knowledge, for if ye eat not, your obedience shall be rewarded with life eternal, and no more? might he not have laid aside all threatening? What Scripture or reason teacheth to say, that God, if he create a reasonable creature, and under a moral dependency, which it hath and must have of God, then must God, by necessity of nature, punish the sinner, yea so as, if he punish not, he should not be God, nor just, but must fall from his natural dominion, except he make penal laws, and so he should not be God, except he say to Adam (if thou eat thou shalt die) or (shalt be punished for eating) but this is not proven by one word, except this, the reasonable creature is not, nor cannot be subject to God Creator, except God punish the sinner; But that is denied: Adam should have had a Moral dependence upon God, and God should have been God, and essentially just, if sin had never come into the World, and if God had kept Adam under a Moral Law, as he did the Elect Angels, who never felt or knew the fruit of a Moral Law broken and transgressed. And God, if he imposed any penal Law upon the Elect Angels as penal (which shall be an hard work to prove) yet had a natural dominion over the Elect Angels, ²and suppose no Law, but only a rewarding and remunerative Law, had been over their heads, should God be no God, in that case? and if any deny, that God hath a perfect dominion over the Elect Angels, he is not worthy to be refuted. 2. Show me, in all the Old or New Testament, any penal Law of active obedience as penal, imposed upon the man Christ, or where is it written, If the Man Christ sin, he shall eternally die? I tremble at such expressions: Is the Lord therefore not the Lord, and hath the Lord fallen from his natural dominion over his Son, the Man Christ? Or (3) will any man deny, but the Lord might justly have laid upon all men and upon the Elect Angels a Law only remunerative, not penal at all, a Law only with the promise of a reward, and void of all threatening of death, first or second, or any other punishment, and yet he should have been the Lord, and had a natural dominion over Angels, the Man Christ, and all mankind?

What? could not God have said,¹ eat not of the tree of knowledge, for if ye eat not, your obedience shall be rewarded with life eternall, and no more? might he not have laid aside all threatning? What Scripture or reason teacheth to say, that God, if he create a reasonable creature, and under a morall dependencie, which it hath and must have of God, then must God, by necessitie of nature, punish the sinner, yea so as, if he punish not, he should not be God, nor just, but must fall from his naturall dominion, except he make penall laws, and so he should not be God, except he say to Adam (if thou eat thou shalt die) or (shalt be punished for eating) but this is not proven by one word, except this, the reasonable creature is not, nor cannot be subject to God Creator, except God punish the sinner; But that is denyed: Adam should have had a Morall dependance upon God, and God should have been God, and essentially just, if sin had never come into the World, and if God had kept Adam under a Morall Law, as he did the Elect Angels, who never felt or knew the fruit of a Morall Law broken and transgressed. And God, if he imposed any penall Law upon the Elect Angels as penall (which shall be an hard work to prove) yet had a naturall dominion over the Elect Angels,