God having created man after his own image in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, entered into a covenant of life M'ith him, upon condition of perfect obedience, forbidding him to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil upon the pain of death.
According to this statement, (1.) God entered into a covenant with Adam. (2.) The promise annexed to that covenant was life. (3.) The condition was perfect obedience. (4.) Its penalty- was death.
§ 1. God entered into Covenant with Adam.
This statement does not rest upon any express declaration of the Scriptures. It is, however, a concise and correct mode of asserting a plain Scriptural fact, namely, that God made to Adam a promise suspended upon a condition, and attached to dis- obedietice a certain penalty. This is what in Scriptural language is meant by a covenant, and this is all that is meant by the term as here used. Although the word covenant is not used in Genesis, and does not elsewhere, in any clear passage, occur in reference to the transaction there recorded, yet inasmuch as the plan of salvation is constantly represented as a New Covenant, new, not merely in antithesis to that made at Sinai, but new in reference to all legal covenants whatever, it is plain that the Bible does represent the arrangement made with Adam as a truly federal transaction. The Scriptures know nothing of any other than two methods of at- taining eternal life : the one that which demands perfect obe- dience, and the other that which demands faith. If the latter is c.'dled a covenant, the former is declared to be of the same nature. It is of great importance that the Scriptural form of presenting truth should be retained. Rationalism was introduced into the Church under the guise of a philosophical statement of the truths of the Bible free from the mere outward form in which the sacred writers, trained in Judaism, had presented them. On this ground the federal system, as it was called, was discarded. On the same
118 PART n. Ch. VI. — the covenant of works.
ground the prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices of Christ were pronounced a cumbrous and unsatislactory form under which to set forth his work as our Redeemer. And then the sacrificial character of his death, and all idea of atonement were rejected as mere Jewish drapery. Thus, by the theory of accommodation, every distinctive doctrine of the Scriptures was set aside, and Christianity reduced to Deism. It is, therefore, far more than a mere matter of method tliat is involved in adhering to the Scrip- tural form of presenting Scriptural truths.
God then did enter into a covenant with Adam. That cove- nant is sometimes called a covenant of life, because life was prom- ised as the reward of obedience. Sometimes it is called the cov- enant of works, because works were the condition on which that promise was suspended, and because it is thus distinguished from the new covenant which promises life on condition of faith.
§ 2. The Promise.
The reward promised to Adam on condition of his obedience, was life. (1.) This is involved in the threatening : " In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." It is plain that this involved the assurance that he should not die, if he did not eat. (2.) This is confirmed by innumerable passages and by the gen- eral drift of Scripture, in which it is so plainly and so variously taught, that life was, by the ordinance of God, connected with obedience. " This do and thou shalt live." " The man that doeth them shall live by them." This is the uniform mode in which the Bible speaks of that law or covenant under wliicli man by the constitution of his nature and by the ordinance of God, was placed. (3.) As the Scriptures everywhere present God as a judge or moral I'uler, it follows of necessity from that representation, that his rational creatures will be dealt with according to the principles of justice. If there be no transgression there will be no punish- ment. And those wlio continue holy thereby continue in the fa- vour and fellowship of him whose favour is life, and whose loving- kindness is better than life. (4.) And finally, holiness, or as the Apostle expresses it, to be spiritually minded, is life. There can therefore be no doubt, that had Adam continued in holiness, he would have enjoyed that life which flows from the favour of God.
The life thus promised included the happy, holy, and immortal existence of the soul and body. This is plain. (1.) Because the life promised was that suited to the being to whom the promise wa? made. But the life suited to man as a moral and intelligent be