The safety of appearing at the day of judgement, in the righteousness of Christ

PROPOSITION, I.

The Covenant of Works is not an agreement between God and man, but a rule of Righteousness between them: sometimes the word Covenant is taken for a promise without condition, Gen. 9.11. but frequently for a Law with promises and threatenings: persons indeed are not taken into the Covenant of Grace without their actual consent: but this is not necessary in other Covenants, as in the Covenant that God makes with the Infant seed of his People, Deut. 5.3, 29. Deut. 15. the children of Gods people are born under this Covenant, that is under that Law with such sanctions: so in the Covenant of works there is no need that Man should consent: Adam did not give his consent antecedently to the making of the Covenant, for he was made under it; and there are millions of men that never gave any consent unto it: yet hand as firmly bound by it as if they did: God being infinitely mans superior and having a Legislative power over him, might make him under such a Covenant without asking his consent: this covenant is nothing else but a righteous rule, which God by his own authority has constituted between himself and man, according unto which he will distribute awards and punishments to men: In this covenant God has given Law unto himself, marked out a path for himself to walk in, he was at liberty, might if he had pleased have forborne to exact punishment for sin, might have annihilated man after a course of perfect obedience, might have chose in some other way to have rewarded his obedience: might have bestowed blessedness on him as an absolute free gift without any ⟨p. 31⟩condition at all, but in this covenant he has bound up himself, and laid down a rule according to which he will proceed.