Part 1. CHAPTER VIII.
James Dodson
What place death hath in the Covenant. 2. What such as Cain and Judas are to do in their desperate state. 3. And why the LORD is no where called the GOD of Adam.
The room of death in the two Covenants. The change that Christ hath made in death.
Q. What room hath death in the Covenant?
A. Death hath room in the broken Covenant of Works, as the Pursuivant [an officer of arms ranking below a herald] and Sergeant of revenging justice. Hence deaths reign, [I must die whether I will or not] Unwillingness to die and bondage through fear of death is the Law-sting in death, from which Christ hath delivered us, Heb. 2:15. Original sin and death came and entered the world by the Covenant of Works. The Covenant of Grace made not death, but found it in the world, Christ made of an old enemy death a new servant: it’s now the Kings ferry-boat to carry the children over the water. It’s a suitable condition to a spiritual state to die being sent for, not legally summoned, and to die, because I desire to be dissolved, Ph. 1:23. not because I must. And better it is to summon ourselves than to be summoned. Though we love heaven too much as a place of pleasure, rather than a place of holiness, yet most men would wish a better causey to it than to sleep through the cold grave or a dark hole in the earth.
Q. What room hath life in the Covenant?
Ans. The Administration of the Law-Covenant is first habitual holiness of works, and then a crown. The Administration of grace is first faith and a title to Christ our life and hope of glory, and then habitual holiness, begun here and perfected hereafter. The Gospel-life is both a reward and a duty of praising and loving eternally in place of all the ten Commands, yea of Law and Gospel. The Law-life (for ought that is revealed) is a reward to be purchased by our legal obedience.
What Judas & Cain in their despairing mood, are to do.
Q. If Adam in the interval betwixt his fall and the publishing of the blessed Seed, was not to despair, but to rely upon God as mighty to save; What should such as Judas or Cain do?
Ans. The conscience of Cain and of despairers, being no authentic Bible nor Judge, which can carry the controversy between them and God, so long as they are in the way, or are viators, the Gospel treaty betwixt them and Christ yet standing and not broken off upon the part of Christ, they are to cherish and hold up the Treaty, and (as it were) to force speech out of Christ, and to pursue the news of an offered salvation.
2. There is no Spirit of God that suggests to them despair, and bids them write themselves in the black roll of Reprobates, for though they believe hell, as the Devils haply believe there is a God, yet they blow the coals of that hellish furnace, and kindle a fire before night.
3. They being under the Law of Nature, are to rely on infinite mercy able to save. Their witty darkness of unbelief saith they believe, but they hate mercy in the general toward others, as to themselves.
What weak doubters are to do and when faith acts most strongly.
2.) For a doubting child of God, because the light of evidence (which to them, in that case is dim) comes nearer to the natural light of reason, then to spiritual light, therefore faith must be set on work to act as faith, and faith acts most strongly when reason is weakest. Natural causes work more strongly under opposition, the fire burns most vehemently in winter frost, and the internal heat of the body is most mighty for concoction, when the coldness of the air is most piercing without, faith sees God most piercingly at midnight in Job, when rottenness and deadness speaks the contrary, Job 19. I know surely (so the word, Exod. 8:1; Psal. 31:8. that my Redeemer lives. Isa. 50:10. He that walks in darkness, and hath no light (of evidence) let him trust on the Name of the Lord, and let him stay himself upon his God, Rom. 4:19, 20.
Willfulness in unbelief.
(2.) There is a piece of unseen willfulness in unbelief, and two refusals in it, as we see in Thomas, Joh. 20:25 [οὐ μὴ πιστεύσω]. as there is a mass of sanctified will required in sincere faith, Rom. 10:9, 10; Mark. 9:24. and so resistance must be made to that blind impulsion of will in unbelief, by which we please ourselves in doubling our doubting.
We are to obey, and leave supposed contradictions to God in time of darkness.
(3.) Should the commanding of killing the Son, Gen. 22:2. seem to contradict the whole Gospel of the promised Seed, Gen. 15:4. yet knowing both to come from God, Abraham did well to leave the supposed contradiction to be solved by God, and believe both as we are to believe food, in no food, and in famine.
Why it is not said, that God was the God of Adam.
Q. Where was there a word that God was Adam’s God?
Ans. Not directly. For
1. that Covenant was like Letters of the King raised to such a day, and the date being expired, the Letters cease to be in force.
2. Adam was to win and purchase (as it were) God to be his God, by consummate obedience. God never said that he would be Adam’s God by giving him influences to obey, and to obey to the end, all influences granted to Adam, to will and to do, were granted to him.
1.) By God Creator, not by the grace of a Redeemer, as in the Covenant of Grace, to walk, Ezek. 36:27. to love, Deut. 30:6. to persevere, Jer. 32:39, 40.
2.) These influences were free gifts, but not promised.
Better our hearts be the Lord’s than our own.
3.) They seem to be ordinis naturalis [natural order], natural, though they did bow and previously incline the will, but not so in the New Testament, for the whole Covenant is called by the promise of the giving of a new heart, Heb. 8:10; Isa. 54:9, 13; Jer. 31:31, 32, 33; Ezek. 11:19, 20. Hos. 2:18, 19. And therefore better it is that God be Lord of my heart, and it be his, then that I be lord of it, and my heart be mine own heart, the less of our heart be upon our heart, the more upon God, the better. Ah! we cannot skill to guide a heart.
3. The threatening of death to Adam, if he should sin, Gen. 2:17. may infer a Covenant of life, and that God should be Adam’s God, if he should obey.