choice of Adam for that effect. The justice and equity of it appears, in that,

1. God made the choice; he pitched on Adam as a fit person to represent all mankind; and there is no mending of God's work, which is perfect, Eccl. iii. 14. There was infinite wisdom at making of it, and sovereign authority to establish it. The covenant proposed to Adam, could not but in duty be consented to by him; and there is the same obligation to his posterity. If judges on earth may name and give tutors to minors, might not the Judge of all the earth do the same to his own creatures?

2. Adam was undoubtedly the most fit choice. He was the common father of us all; so being our natural head, he was fittest to be our federal head. He was in case for managing the bargain to the common advantage, Eccl. vii. 29, being "made upright," and furnished with sufficient abilities. And his own interest was on the same bottom with that of his posterity. Thus his abilities, and natural affection concurring with his own interest, spoke him to be a fit person for that office.

3. Lastly, The choice was of a piece with the covenant. The covenant, in its own nature most advantageous for man, though it could not be profitable to God, Job xxxv. 7, was a free benefit and gift on God's part; for as much as man had not a claim to the life promised, but by the covenant. So that as the covenant owed its being, not to nature, but a positive constitution of God; so did the choice owe its being to the same. God joined the covenant and representation together; and so the consent of Adam or his posterity to the one, was a consenting to the other.

The parts of the Covenant of Works.

SECONDLY, I come now to discourse of the parts of the covenant. These are the things agreed upon betwixt God and man in this transaction; the which God proposed, and man assented to, which made it properly God's covenant. It was himself who settled and drew all the articles of it, by himself alone; Rom. xi. 34, "For who hath known the mind of the Lord? (says the apostle), or who hath been his counsellor ?" Nothing was left to man, but to receive, acquiesce in, and consent to it, as is manifest from the text. This was becoming the inequality of the parties; suitable to God's sovereign authority over man, whose proposals to his creature are in effect laws; and suitable to the meanness of man in his best estate, who hath nothing but what he receives, and can never profit bis Maker. Hence may be inferred,

1. That for a man's entering into the covenant of grace, there is no more required but the soul's hearty consent to the proposal of the covenant made to him in the gospel. For surely there is no more required of a sinner to instate him in the second covenant, a covenant of grace, than was required of Adam in innocence to instate him in the covenant of works; Isa. lv. 3, "Incline your ear, (says the Lord), and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David." Herein the two covenants are at least equal. What casts the balance on the side of the covenant of grace is, that it is an everlasting one, and a soul once in it can never fall out again, Cant iii. 10. 2. That surely God has made the second covenant himself; he proposes it to us, and requires us to embrace it; and has not left it to us to frame and mould it according to our mind, and then call on him to consent to the covenant we have framed. If he drew the whole of the first covenant to innocent man, much more has he drawn the whole of the second covenant for sinners. Let them know then, that it is their duty to study what God has proposed in his gospel, to examine themselves as to their liking of that way of salvation; and if their souls be content with it as it is laid down, let them embrace it.

3. Forasmuch as faith is the soul's assent to the covenant of grace, it cannot be the condition of that covenant properly so called. For consenting to a covenant is a consenting to the condition of it, and all the rest of the parts thereof; as we see in the first covenant, and may perceive in the second also in respect of Christ, where his doing and dying were the only proper conditions which he assented to; Psalm xl. 7, where he says, "Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me." But assenting to the condition of a covenant cannot be the condition itself properly speaking; otherwise we own faith to be the condition on our part, that is, the mean by which we are interested in Christ and the covenant, even as the woman's taking of the man may be called the condition of the marriage-covenant; which any may see is not the proper condition of it, but marriage faithfulness.

Now the parts of the covenant of works agreed upon by God and man were three; the condition to be performed by man, the promise to be accomplished to man upon his performance of the condition, and the penalty in case of man's breaking the covenant.

The Condition of the Covenant of Works.

FIRST, The first part is the condition to be performed; which was obedience to the law, fulfilling the commands God gave him, by

doing what they required, Rom. x. 5, upon the doing of which he might claim the promised life in virtue of the compact. So this was a covenant, a covenant properly conditional. For understanding of this, we must consider,

1. What law he was by this covenant obliged to yield obedience to. And,

2. What kind of obedience he was obliged to yield thereto.

1st, Let us consider what law he was by this covenant obliged to yield obedience to.

Man under a twofold law, Natural and Symbolical.

1. The natural law, the law of the ten commandments, as the New Testament explains it, Gal. iii. 10, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." The sum of this law is comprehended in what our Lord says; Matth. xxii. 37-39, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." That this law was given to Adam, is manifest, if it is considered that he was created righteous and holy, Gen. i. 27, compared with Eph. iv. 24. And all created righteousness and holiness is a conformity to the moral law, the perpetual rule of righteousness. And that he knew that law is evident, in that the knowledge of it is an essential part of righteousness and holiness, or the image of God, Col. iii. 10. Moreover, the remains of this law with the very heathens, Rom. ii. 15, are an evidence of its being given to Adam in perfection; as the remains of a fallen house shew that sometime a house stood there.

If it be inquired, How that law was given him? It was written on his mind and heart, Rom. ii. 15; and that in his creation, Eccl. vii. 29. Therefore it is called the natural law. He was no sooner a man than he was a righteous man, knowing the natural law he was under, and being conformed to it in the powers and faculties of his soul. That same law which God gave from Sinai with thunder and lightning, in all the precepts of it was breathed into Adam's soul, when God breathed into him the breath of life and he became a living soul.

This law was afterwards incorporated into the covenant of works, and was the chief matter of it. I say, afterwards; for the cove-. nant of works is not so ancient as the natural law. The natural law was in being when there was no covenant of works; for the former was given to man in his creation, without paradise; the lat

ter was made with him after he was brought into paradise, Gen. ii. 7, 8, 15, 16, 17. The natural law had no promise of eternal life; for God might have annihilated his creature, though he had not sinned, till once the covenant of works was made. But then God put to the natural law a promise of eternal life, and a threatening of death, and so it became a covenant of works.

How then can men make such ado against believers being delivered from the law as it is the covenant of works, as if the law could no more be a rule of life to believers if that be so? It was a rule of life to Adam before the covenant of works, and it may, yea and must be a rule of life to believers, after the covenant of works is gone as to them. God made it once the matter of the covenant of works, and in that covenant a rule of life to Adam and all his natural seed; and why may it not be made the matter of the law of Christ, and therein be a rule of life to them that are his?

To shut up this point, see your deep concern in this covenant; and consider that your help is not therein, but in laying hold on Christ, the head of the second covenant.

2. Another law which Adam was obliged, by the covenant of works, to yield obedience to, was the positive symbolical law, forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, recorded in the text. This law Adam had not, nor could have, but by revelation; for it was no part of the law of nature, being in its own nature indifferent, and altogether depending on the will of the Lawgiver, who, in a consistency with his own and man's nature too, might have appointed otherwise concerning it. But this law being once given, the natural law obliged him to the observation of it, inasmuch as it strictly bound him to obey his God and Creator in all things, binding him to love the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. Hence it follows,

1st, That in as far as this law was obeyed, the natural law was obeyed; and the breaking of the former was the breaking of the latter also. They were but several links of one chain, constitutions of the Supreme Lawgiver, which, in point of obedience, stood and fell together.

2dly, That whatever is revealed by the Lord to be believed or to be done, the natural law of the ten commandments obliges to the believing or doing of it; Psalm xix. 7, "The law of the Lord is perfect." Hence faith is reckoned a duty of the first command. The gospel reveals the object of faith, and the natural law lays on the obligation to the duty of believing.

This law was not given, because of any evil that was in the fruit itself of that tree; for "God saw everything that he had made, and

behold it was very good," Gen. i. 31. It was not forbidden because it was evil; but evil because forbidden. Yet was the giving of that law an action becoming the divine perfections, however small the matter seems to be in itself. In the most minute things God ap

pears greatest.

(1.) Herein man's obedience was to turn upon the precise point of respect to the will of God, which was a trial of his obedience exactly suited to the state he was then in, and by which the most glaring evidence of true obedience would have been given. So this was a most fit probatory command. To love God and one's neighbour, nature itself taught Adam. Not to have another God, worship images, take God's name in vain; to keep the Sabbath, returning once a-week only; these could not have given such a demonstration of man's obedience to his Creator, having such affinity with the nature of God, in themselves, and with his own pure nature too. As little could the commands of the second table have been so, he having no neighbour then in the world with him, and Eve only his own flesh for a considerable time after.

(2.) Thus his obedience or disobedience behoved to be most clear, conspicuous, and undeniable, not only to himself, but to other creatures capable of observation; forasmuch as this law respected an external thing obvious to sense, and the discerning of any, who yet could not judge of internal acts of obedience or disobedience. So that God might be "clear in judging," Psalm li. 4; in the eyes of angels good and bad, and of man himself.

(3.) It was most proper for asserting God's dominion over man, being a visible badge of man's subjection to God. God had made him lord of the inferior world, set him down in paradise, a place furnished with all things for necessity and delight; so it was becoming the divine wisdom and sovereign dominion, to discharge him from meddling with one tree in the garden, as a testimony of his holding all of him as his great Landlord.

(4.) It was a most proper moral instrument, and suitable mean, to retain man in his integrity, who though a happy creature, was yet a changeable one. So far was it from being a bar to his further happiness, as Satan alleged, Gen. iii. 5. The tree of knowledge, as it stood under that prohibition, was a continual monitor to him to take heed to himself, a watchword to beware of the enemy; a plain lecture of his mutable state, wherein he might learn that he was yet but in favour on his good behaviour. Besides, it was a sign of emptiness hung at the door of the creation, with that inscription, "Here is not your rest;" so pointing him to God, as the alone fountain of happiness, forasmrch as there was a want even in paradise.