II. History. — The words rendered covenant are fre- (juently used in the original Scriptures in application to God's dealings with his creatures. The Hebrew r^13 signifies undoubtedly in its primary meaning a mutual compact (Robinson's Gesenius's Lexicon), and vet it is not unfrequently applied to transactions in which such an idea in its strictness is impossible (Gen. iXf 9-18 ; Jer. xxxiii, 20-21). With a true sense of its usage and idea, if not strictl}' according to its ety- mological signification, the LXX have translated this word by the Greek SiaSrijKi], the generic meaning of which is a disposition or arrangement, and lapses into the idea of a mutual compact or testament only when the author or authors of it happened to be mutual stip- ulators or testators. But neither in the Septuagint nor in the New Testament is the word ever applied to the relation in which man stood before the Fall, but al- ways to some transaction or dispensation under the covenant of grace (Hos. vi, 7, with this signification, is doubtful). Nor has any clear instance of such an application of the word to man's primeval state been found in any theological writer before the commence- ment of the 17th centurj-. (See, however, Bede on Gen. xvii, 14.) Certainly no one had attempted to arrange all the materials of a systematic theology un- der the general heads of divine covenants. And yet there was an obvious tendencj' in that direction among the Reformed churches of the Calvinistic school. These had become familiar with the word in relation to Christ and his people, and with all the principles in- volved in a covenant with Adam. They had seen tliat Adam's original position was not that of a mere subject of law, but that promises had been made to him with a condition, f.nd that the whole race were rep- resented on a limited probation in him. It is general- ly conceded that the federal system had its origin with Kloppenburg, a professor of theology at Franeker (lied in 1652). The first, however, who had the ge- nius and boldness to give definiteness and complete- ness to the sj'stem was John Koch'(Cocceius), a pupil of his, and a successor in the same chair. In his Snmma doctrinm defadere et testamtnto Dei (1048), and still further in his more enlarged Summa Theohgia; (2d edit. 1GG5), he comprises all the doctrines of the Chris- tian religion under the two great categories of the cov- enants of nature and of grace. The method he pursued has gained for him the appellation of "the Father of Biblical Theology;" and, laying aside the practice usu- al with his predecessors, of viewing divine truth in its subjective form, either as logically constructed by a human mind, or as it was supposed to lie in the di- vine mind around the great central doctrine of pre- destination, he professed to come to the Scriptures, reverently to read them, and derive his system from the inspired historical arrangement. The events of human historj' were regarded in their anthropological aspect as well as related to the divine efficiency. The final cause of salvation he can indeed find nowhere else than in the divine mind, and he has no occasi(m to impinge against the highest style of contemporary orthodoxy, and 3'et he succeeded in giving to theology a more practical character. Although under all dis- pensations he conceived of man as receptive, and God alone as communicative, he still represented man as coming under an obligation to perform Certain duties which were looked upon as a virtual condition of the divine promises. This fidelity to the scriptural repre-
sentation compelled him to develop his system accord- ing to the successive periods of the sacred history (Ebrard, Logmen. § 40 ; D. Schenkel, Christ.-Dogmen. § 129, note).
As often occurs when great changes are introduced in formal statements of truth, this sjstem was :.s bit- terly opposed as if it had been an essential error. Oth- er principles, on whicli the author was more vulnera- ble, were introduced into the controversy ; but the main features of his system soon obtained a remarka- ble degree of acceptance in all the Reformed churches of France, Switzerland, Holland, Scotland, and among the English Puritans. The orthodox Roman Catho- lics have always regarded it with aversion, and the Jansenists oppose the whole conception of a covenant with Adam as an innovation upon Augustinism, and needless to explain the natural eflPects of the first sin (Father Paul's Jlisi. of the Council of Trent, p. 177-201 ; Jansenius, Avgust. ii, 208-11). The Lutheran divines have in general rejected it on account of the promi- nence it still gave to the doctrine of predestination, and because, when the word covenant was divested of the idea of a mutual compact, it ofltered no advantages over the words which had long been in use (Thoraa- siuF, Christi Person und Werk, § 28). The Arminians of Holland were partially conciliated b)' those jurid- ical considerations by which the advocates of the sj^stem defended it, and many of them accepted of it with some important modifications. The object of these was to limit the direct consequences of Adam's sin to a privation of original righteousness, or the loss of those aids of the divine spirit on which they made the original moral image to depend, to temporal evils, and to bodily death, together with such a depravation of our mental and moral state as renders us incapable of obedience, and so to extend the benefits of Christ's death that he should not only lie regarded as dying for all men alike, but as actually restoring to them such supernatural aids as, if properlj' used, would en- able them to lay hold upon the great salvation (Nich- ol's Calvinism and Arminianism in '\\'atson's Theol. Instit. ii, 45). Notwithstanding the objections raised against the federal system, its principles were carried still further forward with fearless and logical consist- ency by Francis Burmann, a pupil of Koch, and a pro- fessor in the University of Utrecht. In his Synopsis of Theology, and especially of the Economy of the Covenants (1G71), he endeavored to show that all the details of the covenant of nature were fairly to be inferred from the idea of the divine image in man in connection with what we know of the divine goodness, since that good- ness would of course desire to bring man into the high- est communion with itself, and would not be satisfied with the prescriptions of a mere natural justice. The difficulties, however, with which the system was pressed by its opponents were sought to be removed by Her- mann Witsius, a successor and former pupil of Burmann in the theological chair of the University of Utrecht. In his Economy of the Covenants, the first edition of which appeared in 1685, some important distinctions maintained by his predecessors were given up (as, e. g. that between the irc'iptaiQ of the Old and the a<pKnQ of the New Testament, as show-n in Rom. iii, 25, 26, and the three dispensations or economies of the covenant of grace) ; a minute parallel is drawn between the two covenants bj- the introduction of four sacraments into Paradise (the tree of life, tlie tree of knowledge, the Sabiinth, and Paradise itself) ; and a sacramental char- acter is given to a multitude of things under the econ- omy before the law (the coats of skins, the ark, the rainbow, etc. bk. ii, chap, viii, § 10; bk. iv, chap. vii). In 1688 a further attempt was made to complete the federal sj'stem by Melchior Leydecker, another pro- fessor in Utrecht, who, tliough not in the strictest sense a Federalist, professedly wrote under its spirit and tendency. In his Seven Books rpon the Truth rf the Christian Religion, he endeavors to trace the econ-