Of the Commanding, Debarring, Condemning, and Irritating Power of the Covenant of Works, upon those who are under it.

III. I proceed to show what is the effect of the broken covenant of works upon those who are under it.

Of the Commanding Power of the Covenant of Works. First, It has and exercises a commanding power over them, binding them to its obedience, with the strongest bonds and ties of authority. Its commands are contained in the fiery law delivered from Mount Sinai, out of the midst of the fire, Deut. v. 22. The obedience of them, which it binds unto, is perfect obedience, every way perfect, Luke x. 27, 28. It has its full commanding power over them all that are under it. It has become a question whether or not believers are set free from the commanding power of the covenant of works, as well as from the condemning power of it. We own the ten commands, which were delivered on Mount Sinai, to be the eternal rule of righteousness, and that these are given of God in the hand of Jesus Christ to believers, for a rule of life to them; that they require of them perfect obedience, and have all the binding power over them that the sovereign authority of God the Creator and Redeemer can give them, which is supreme and absolute. But that believers are under that law as it stands in the covenant of works, that these commands are bound on believers by the tie of the covenant of works, or that the covenant of works has a commanding power over believers, we must deny. For believers are dead to the law as a covenant of works, Rom. vii. 4, and therefore as a husband cannot pretend to command his wife after she is dead and the relation dissolved; so believers being dead to the law as a covenant, it cannot have any commanding authority over them. They are not under it, Rom. vi. 14, how then can it have any commanding power over them? They are not under its jurisdiction, but under that of grace; so though the commands be the same as to the matter, yet they are not to take them from the covenant of works, but from the law as in the hand of Christ. Our Lord Jesus did, in the name of all his people, put himself under its commanding power, and satisfied all its commands, to deliver his people that were under it, Gal. iv. 4, 5, "God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law." And shall they dishonour him by putting their necks under it again? After Christ has got up the bond, having fully paid all the law's demands, shall we pretend to enter in payment again?

Let us take a view of the commanding power of the covenant of works, which it has over all that are under it.

1. It commands and binds to perfect obedience, under pain of the curse; 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." Every the least duty is commanded with this certification, and this is the risk they run upon every the least slip. The law in the hand of Christ unto believers commands obedience too, and that under a penalty. But it is a soft one in comparison of that, namely, strokes of fatherly anger; as appears from Psalm lxxxix. 30-33, "If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their transgressions with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes," &c. This penalty is not the curse of a wrathful judge, Gal. iii. 13, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us." But the covenant of works has no less certification, it cannot speak to its subjects in softer terms; so that though the stroke itself be never so small, yet there is a curse in it, if it were but the miscarrying of a basket of bread, Deut. xxviii. 17.

2. It commands without any promise of strength at all to perform. There is no such promise to be found in all the Bible, belonging to that covenant. It shews what is to be done, and with all severity exacts the task; but furnishes not anything whereof it is to be made. So the case of men under that covenant is represented by Israel's case in Egypt, Exod. v. 18, "Go therefore now and work," said Pharaoh to that people; "for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks." Under the covenant of grace, duty is required, but strength is promised too, Ezek. xxxvi. 27, "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh." And the commands in the hands of the Mediator are turned into promises, as appears from Deut. x. 16, "Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked." Compare chap. xxx. 6, "And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live." Yea, the Mediator's calls and commands to his people bear a promise of help; Prov. x. 29, "The way of the Lord is strength to the upright." But there is no such thing in the covenant of works; the work must be performed in the strength that was given; they must trade with the stock that mankind was set up with at first: but that strength is gone, that stock is wasted;

howbeit the law can neither make it up again, nor yet abate of its demands.

Of the Debarring Power of the Covenant of Works.

Secondly, The broken covenant of works has a debarring power over them that are under it, in respect of the promise; it bars them from life and salvation, as long as they are under its dominion, Gal. ii. 16, "For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." While Adam kept this covenant, it secured eternal life to him; but as soon as it was broken, it set it beyond his reach; and neither he nor any of his descendents had ever seen life, if another covenant had not been provided. The broken covenant of works fixes a great gulf betwixt its territories and life and salvation; so that no man can pass from the one to the other. If any would be at heaven, they must get out from under the law, and get into the covenant of grace; so shall they have life and salvation; but not otherwise. There are two bars which this broken covenant draws betwixt its subjects and life and salvation.

1. There is no life to the sinner without complete satisfaction to justice, for the wrong he has done to the honour of God and his law; Heb. ix. 22, for "without shedding of blood is no remission." The terms of the covenant were-"In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die," Gen. ii. 17. Now the covenant is broken, the penalty must be paid, in the true sense and meaning of the bond; the sinner must die, and die infinitely, die till infinite justice be satisfied. Can the sinner get over this bar? Is he able to satisfy, can he go to that death, a sacrifice for himself, and return again? Can he pay the penalty of the bond? No, no. In his blindness and ignorance, he thinks perhaps to get over it by his mourning and afflicting himself for his sin, by bearing as well as he can the afflictions God lays on him; but all his sufferings in the world are but an earnest of what he must suffer hereafter. For at best they are but the sufferings of a finite being, which cannot compensate the wrong his sin has done to the honour of an infinite God; and besides, he sins anew in his suffering too; he cannot bear a cross without some grudge against God, and some impatience, which are new sins. So the sinner in this does but attempt to wash himself in the mire. Wherefore he can never get over this bar. And if he were over it, there is yet a

2. Second bar betwixt him and life and salvation, namely, There is no life and salvation without perfect obedience to its commands for the time to come; Matth. xix. 17, "If thou wilt enter into life," says Christ unto the young man in the gospel, "keep the command

ments." This was the condition of the covenant; and it is not enough that a man pay the penalty of a broken covenant, but he must perform the condition of it, ere he can plead the benefit. Perfect obedience to the commands of God is the terms of life in that covenant; no less was proposed to Adam, who broke it; no less to Christ who fulfilled it in the room of his elect, Gal. iv. 4, 5, forecited. As there was a necessity of passive obedience to it, Luke xxiv. 26, "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things?" so was there of active obedience, Matth. iii. 15, "It becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." And there is no less proposed to all that are under it.

Is the sinner able to get over this bar? His stock of strength is gone; the fall in Adam has so bruised him, that his arm is broken, he cannot work for life; he is not fit to be God's hired servant now for life; for till he get life of free grace in Christ, he can do nothing, John xv. 5. He must be saved before he can work one good work, saved from sin, the guilt and power of it; saved from the spiritual death he is lying under, as the penalty of the covenant of works ; how then can he work for salvation? The scripture is express on this head, not only that we are not justified by works, but that we are not saved by works: for "By grace are ye saved," says the apostle," through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them," Eph. ii. 8—10. "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost," Tit. iii. 5.

I know the sinner, in his blindness, will think to please God by his doing as well as he can; by his pretended sincerity, though he cannot attain to perfection; by the will, where he cannot reach the deed. But alas! he considers not that the covenant of works will admit of none of these, all which are rejected by that one sentence of the law, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." Besides that there is not one thing that he does that is well done, while he is not in Christ; there is no sincerity with him, but selfishness; no will but self-will.

And as there is no getting over either of these bars, so there is no removing them out of the way, that so the sinner may have a passage, without concerning himself with them, Matth. v. 18. Some fancy to themselves a removing of them by mere mercy. God knows that we cannot answer the demands of the covenant of works, so, think they, mercy will pass them for the safety of the sinner. But

has not God sufficiently declared the contrary, in the sending of his own Son, who, before he could redeem the elect, behoved to get over them both by perfect obedience and satisfaction in their stead, Rom. viii. 22. If the terms of life and salvation could have been abated, might not God's own Son have expected the abatement in his favour, while he stood in the room of elect sinners? but he got no abatement; how can ye expect it then; See Exod. xxxiv. 7.

Of the Condemning Power of the Covenant of Works.

Thirdly, The broken covenant of works has a cursing and condemning power over them that are under it, in respect of the threatening. "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them," Gal. iii. 10. Compare Rom. iii. 19, "Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." Every man and woman under it, is in a state of condemnation; they are condemned persons, bound over to the wrath of God in time and eternity, John iii. 18, "He that believeth not is condemned already." So that there have never any come to Christ but with the rope about their necks, as condemned criminals. Christ's kingdom is the jurisdiction of grace, where grace, life, and salvation reign through Jesus Christ. It is peopled by fugitives out of the dominion of the law; and they that flee thither are all such as find there is no living for them at home; they are such as the sentence of death is passed upon, and there is no access for a remission to them under the dominion of the law. And they never think of fleeing into the jurisdiction of grace, till once the sentence of death is intimated unto them, by their own consciences, and they begin to see they are in hazard every moment of being drawn to death; for till then, they will not believe it. Then they bethink themselves of making their escape out of the law's dominion.

This power the law, as a covenant of works, has over them by sin, forasmuch as it was a clause in the covenant, that man sinning should die the death, Gen. ii. 17. It had no such power over man, till once sin entered; but upon the breach of the command, the penalty took place. And since every man is born a sinner, he is also born a cursed and condemned man by the sentence of the law, which abides on him so long as he continues under that covenant. And upon every sin committed, the yoke is wreathed faster and faster about his neck; so that upon every sin committed by persons while in that state, there is a new band by which they are bound over to wrath.