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of salvation for fallen men; and the nature of the impotence produced by sin― the universal need of divine aid by every created being-the glory of divine Grace, and the certainty of perdition without it, are set forth. The Fifth Chapter, which is also the last one of this First Book, is an attempt to disclose the whole Economy of the Covenant of Redemption, under all its administrations-with the special design of determining with precision our own actual position with reference thereto; wherein the Covenants of Works and Redemption are compared, and their agreement and difference pointed out; the successive dispensations of the latter Covenant, from Adam to the consummation of all things, are briefly exhibited-together with the condition of the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world at each great epoch relatively to each other; and the absolute unity of the essence of the Covenant of Redemption under all Dispensations is demonstrated-together with the nature and power of the knowledge, and the certainty of the salvation, thus attainable. As the result of this course of enquiry and demonstration, we are brought immediately to the direct application of divine knowledge, with divine power, through divine Grace, to our own hearts as individual sinners; which great work is developed in the Second Book. In this Book-if a selection can be made of a small number of fundamental truths covering in a general but decisive way, the immense field explored in it--the following statements may be considered as condensing the whole, namely,―That as the result of the Fall of Man, of the interlocutory Sentence then pronounced by God, and of the Promise of a Saviour then made by Him, the human race lies in a condition of sin and misery under the penalty of the broken Covenant of Works, and under the curse of God's violated law, but with God's promise of deliverance through the Saviour to all the followers of Christ,--and awaiting the final sentence of eternal life or eternal death at the judgment of the great day:-That the sole foundation of the sinner's hope lies in the sovereign Grace of God, of which grace the Word of God is a divine Revelation, and the manner of which grace in its fundamental statement is, the Covenant from Eternity between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to save by the work of each with the concurrence of all, the Elect of God whom the Son represented as their Federal head in that Covenant, with each of whom it becomes a personal covenant of life on his union with Christ, by the renewing of the Holy Ghost:-That the fundamental principles and truths involved in the Covenant of Redemption, have a relevancy most intimate and most efficacious, to the spiritual nature, inner life, and religious convictions of fallen men, they being and they alone being, that Gospel which is the power of God unto salvation:-That Repentance toward God and Faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ, are the universal and unalterable obligations and conditions of the Covenant of Redemption,―obligations binding upon every sinner,-conditions irrespective of which none can be saved:That the Administration of the Covenant of Redemption embraces all that God has ever done or will do for men considered as sinners,--throughout every Dispensation of which the same grace reigns, the same salvation is propounded, the same Saviour is held forth, the same union with him through the renewing of the Holy Ghost is exhibited, and the same eternal life is made the inheritance of God's Elect, through God's love.

CHAPTER I.

THE CONDITION OF THE UNIVERSE: AS IT LAY UNDER THE SENTENCE OF GOD, BUT WITH THE PROMISE OF DELIVERANCE.

I. 1. The Law of Nature.-2. Revealed Will of God anterior to the Covenant of Works.-3. The Covenant of Works: Penalty, General and Special.-4. Perfect Solution of the Origin, Career, Position, and Destiny of Man.-5. Explication of the Theoretical by the Actual. II. 1. Moral Constitution of Man.-2. It involves the Existence of an Infinite Ruler.-3. The Nature of His boundless Dominion.-4. Its Infinite Certainty, Rectitude, and Completeness.-5. The State of the Fallen Universe under that Dominion, and Modification of that State by the Covenant of Grace. III. 1. The Problems to be solved after the Fall, and the Parties thereto.-2. Statement of the Case.-3. God's Irreversible Sentence on Satan: Its Nature and Effects.-4. Sentence upon the Woman and the Man: General Statement.-5. Detailed Explanation of those Sentences, in their Nature and Effects: Mixed Condition of Things.-6. God's Sentence upon the Earth : And the Earth's promised Deliverance. IV. 1. The Posture of the Universe, as explained with, and without, the Word of God.-2. The Posture of the Universe, as explained with, and without, the Idea of Divine Grace.-3. What God actually did after the Fall of Man: And the Effects thereof.-4. Combined Result of the Covenant of Works, and the Covenant of Grace, upon the Condition of Man.-5. Difference between God's Conduct towards Satan and his Seed, and towards the Followers of the promised Seed of the Woman.-6. Every Thing depends on the Grace of God, and the Willingness and Sufficiency of Jesus Christ.

I.-1. IF we reject the divine revelation which is recorded in the Sacred Scriptures, we are left wholly without knowledge of the primeval state of man; and are unable to penetrate the final destiny of our race, or any individual of it. That revelation explains in the most precise manner, the original creation of man, the position he occupied, at first, with respect to God and to the universe, and the intimate nature of his own being, his endowments and his duty, his peril and his reward. Out of the state of the case thus exhibited to us by God, there necessarily arose obligations founded in the very truths, great as they were, upon which the case proceeded; principles inherent in the very nature of the case; necessities of every sort which must control mankind, considered in their relations to each other, to the universe,

and to God; laws in their very highest sense, and whether they were uttered in words or not, which are the necessary middle term between the idea of a creator and the idea of a creature. Here is the Law of Nature. And whatever nature herself may be, than which hardly anything is more difficult to conceive or define precisely, that code to which we justly give her name and which her Creator and ours stamped upon her in her first purity, must not only abide while she endures, but has received the sublime confirmation of being fully recognized and largely restated in the inspired Word of God.

2. In addition to this fundamental law of our very being, incorporated by our Creator in our very nature, still dimly felt notwithstanding our fall, and explicitly restated in the sacred Scriptures; God added other laws, having special relation to man, which were clearly stated to him at his creation, and which were recorded twenty-five centuries afterwards on the earliest pages of the Scriptures. Thus God consecrated man whom he had created in his own image, to his endless service and enjoyment; thus God consecrated the Sabbath day, the type and commemoration of this ineffable repose when this work of creation was done; thus God gave to man an unlimited dominion over the earth and over every creature inferior to himself, and bade him increase and multiply, possess the earth, subdue it, and enjoy it. And these laws of the primeval state of man, following immediately after the Law of Nature, and preceding immediately the Covenant of Works, however they, like all else, may have been defaced and impaired by the Fall of Man, are indestructibly united with the mortal existence of the human race, and enter decisively into the eternal results of that existence.

3. Thus created by God, thus additionally bound to God, man in his primeval estate became the object of a still further proof of the care and love of his Creator. God made with him a Covenant of Life, upon the single condition of perfect obedience to a single precept and a single prohibition. A Covenant, that is, whereby the probation incident to a perfect but fallible being, was made precise, temporary, and slight; whereby the probation of a whole race was concentrated on the probation of the natural progenitor and federal head of that race; whereby the high estate already possessed might not only be delivered from all risk and confirmed forever, but might be gloriously and eternally ad

vanced; whereby even if he fell, certain advantages would remain to his race, beyond what were possible after a fall, in other manner. This is the Covenant of Works. It found man in a condition of great glory and blessedness, and it proposed to secure to his whole race forever, the possession and increase of both. In this respect it failed. The same transgression which defeated it as a Covenant of Life, and brought upon the sinner its just penalty, was at the same time a violation of the fundamental Law of Nature, and of the fundamental consecration of man to the service and enjoyment of God superadded to the Law of Nature, and subjected him to the just penalty of both. What was the penalty to the Covenant of Works, was stated in the Covenant itself. What was the penalty of the violation of the first and highest Law of Nature, and what was that annexed to those additions to it which preceded the Covenant, were not declared beforehand they remained to be disclosed by God, when and how he pleased. All might be presumed to be concentrated in the fearful penalty annexed to the Covenant; the more readily, as it was a Covenant, not of vengeance but of Life, and as its penalty was the highest ever inflicted by Jehovah. At any rate, the Covenant of Works, like both systems of Law which preceded it, abode as an elemental and indestructible part of the spiritual system of the universe to which man appertained; and it, like them, will endure, in its place and to its ends, until the final catastrophe of nature, and man, and sin.

4. It is to the breach of the Covenant of Works-the Fall of Man-that the word of God constantly attributes the present condition of the human race, a condition which it everywhere describes as one of sin and misery. Nor can it be denied that in the facts stated in the Scriptures, concerning the creation, original state, trial, and fall of man, a perfect explanation is furnished of the whole career and present condition of the human race. Theoretically, at least, the grandest problems of humanity are solved; and it behooves the caviller to cast some doubt over the facts themselves, or to accept the perfect solution they afford; and all the more urgently, since besides these facts asserted by God and transmitted through all generations, the whole human race has been unable to suggest even a conjecture, upon which its own actual condition could be adequately explained. The original perfection, and at the same time the fallibility of human

nature, are the fundamental data of the Covenant of Works; precisely as the pollution, and at the same time the susceptibility of restoration, in fallen human nature, are the fundamental data of the Covenant of Grace; data infinitely remarkable and fruitful, not one of which any human intellect had ever of itself perceived to be an element in the solution of the great problems. of humanity, at which the human intellect has never ceased to labor. No less remarkable-nor less fruitful-was that other basis of the Covenant of Works, namely, that moral evil, and by means of it physical evil also, might find entrance into a perfect universe through the act of a perfect but fallible creature; just as it is a basis of the Covenant of Grace, that these evils can be repaired through the incarnation of the Godhead in the very nature which fell, and in no other way; sublime realities, before which the mysteries of our condition vanish. No less remarkable again-nor yet less fruitful-is that other basis of the Covenant of Works, that while God deals with every human being individually and directly, yet besides this and beneath this, there is a wider and deeper mode of God's dealing with the common head and root of all-for the whole race; both of which truths apply with perfect force under the Covenant of Grace; immeasurable truths, in the absence of which our condition and God's dealings with us are alike inexplicable, but in the combined light of which both Covenants and the effects of both of them upon s are perfectly comprehensible.

5. That perfect but fallible head and progenitor of our race was tried-and fell. That possibility of the entrance of evil into a perfect universe, actually occurred. That principle of covenanted dealing by God with man, through which life and immortality are now brought to light through Jesus Christ, when first applied produced through Adam the ruin of our race. The faTour and the image of God are lost; the race is no longer perfect, but is fallen and depraved; it lies under the curse of God's violated law, the penalty of his, broken covenant. And in this condition the personal dealings of God with each individual sinner, must necessarily have regard to all those transgressions, which besides their original source in the primeval fallibility of man, have a new and more virulent source in the polluted nature inherited since the fall. Nor are the results of these transactions either doubtful, accidental, or capable of remedy by us.

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