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

3. Adam gave more faintly obedience, more indeed of his own, but it was less obedience,¹ and less will in it, then the obedience of Angels, and had he continued, his obedience had been proper obedience; but this is to be observed, none did ever, actu secundo, and by the only help of simple nature attain Justification and Salvation by the simple Covenant of Works, but men and evil Angels fell under both, though that was a possible Covenant and holy and spiritual, yet God set it up to be an inlet to pure Justice in the reprobate Angels, and so to free grace in elect men.

3. Adam gave more faintly obedience, more indeed of his own, but it was lesse obedience,¹ and lesse will in it, then the obedience of Angels, and had he continued, his obedience had been proper obedience; but this is to be observed, none did ever, actu secundo, and by the only help of simple nature attain Justification and Salvation by the simple Covenant of Works, but men and evill Angels fell under both, though that was a possible Covenant and holy and spirituall, yet God set it up to be an inlet to pure Justice in the reprobate Angels, and so to free grace in elect men.

1. 1Of Adams obedience how proper it was.

¹4. The obedience of faith, or Gospel-obedience, in the fourth place, hath less of the nature of obedience, then that of Adam, or of the Elect Angels, or that of Christs. Its true we are called obedient Children, and they are called the Commandments of Christ, and Christ hath taken the Moral Law and made use of it in an Evangelic way, yet we are more (as it were) patients, in obeying Gospel-Commands, not that we are mere patients, as Libertines teach▪ for grace makes us willing, but we have both supernatural habits and influences of grace furnished to us from the Grace of Christ, who hath merited both to us, and so in Gospel-obedience