CHAPTER II.

THE COVENANT OF REDEMPTION: GENERAL STATEMENT OF ITS GREAT PRINCIPLES AND TRUTHS.

I. 1. The Disclosure of this Covenant: Precise Conception of it.-2. Jesus Christ the Mediator of this Covenant.-3. The Covenant itself the Result of the Eternal Purpose of God, and the Eternal Counsel of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.— 4. The Relevancy of Divine Grace to the Mode of the Divine Existence.-5. Emphatic, with Relation to the Covenant of Redemption.-6. The Scriptural Doctrines of the Trinity and of Salvation by Grace, stand or fall together.—II. 1. The whole Subject one of pure Revelation-2. The Revealed Mode of God's Being, determines the Form of the Eternal Covenant.-3. The Revealed Nature of Salvation does the like.-4. The Relation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, respectively, to Elect Sinners in the Eternal Covenant.-III. 1. Christ the Covenanted Head of the Redeemed.-2. Otherwise, Salvation is neither promised, nor possible.-3. Need of restoring a truer Method of Statement.— 4. Fatalism: Human Freedom: A free Gospel: Common Operations of the Spirit.-5. The Senses in which Believers are in Covenant with God: Participation of the Universe in Covenanted Blessings.-6. Recapitulation of the Primary Conception of the Covenant, as between the Persons of the Godhead: and of its Secondary Conception, as embracing all the Redeemed in Christ, their Head. —7. Practical Appreciation of both these Aspects, indispensable to Man.

I.-1. It is not to the universe, situated as ours now is, that the knowledge of a great deliverance is first disclosed by God; but the actual condition of the universe, as we behold it, is the result of that disclosure made to a universe over which absolute and universal ruin was impending, and in which that disclosure has been perpetually confirmed and augmented throughout the whole life of the human race. It was the infinite purpose of divine mercy, thus disclosed in the very sentence of God, which totally changed the condition of the created universe, as it lay under the penalty of the covenant of works. And what we now behold is the combined result of the fall of man, of the respite until the great day, of the full infliction of the penalty annexed to the covenant of works, of the actual sentence of God, of the great promise of deliverance through the Seed of the woman, of the complete development of that promise in the sacred Scrip

tures, of the practical manifestation of Redemption itself through every dispensation hitherto exhibited, and of the ceaseless conflict between sin and misery on the one side, and grace and truth on the other. What we have to consider in the survey of all these immense topics is the elemental nature of that eternal purpose of God, and that whole working of God unto the restitution of all things through Jesus Christ our Lord. We express, in its widest sense, the idea in which the whole survey results, by the phrase, The Covenant of Grace, because divine grace is the very foundation and significance of the whole : and also by the phrase, The Covenant of Redemption, because the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is the vital point of the whole conception of grace unto salvation.

2. If the sacred Scriptures are either the Word of God, or are intelligible to man, then is Jesus of Nazareth the Seed of the woman; the Seed promised to Abraham, the father of the faithful; the Messiah of the Old Testament; the Christ of the New Testament; the Son of God; and the Saviour of the world.' It is to the effect that Christ is the promised Seed that the whole Scriptures conclude; and nothing was ever more distinctly asserted by Christ himself than that he is the Messiah.2 This is the mediator between God and men. Mediator of what, and to what end? Mediator to the end that God and men may be reconciled; to the end that man may be saved; to the end that God may be glorified in the eternal manifestation of his sovereign grace by means of the everlasting blessedness of redeemed sinners. Mediator of a scheme of eternal life proposed to sinners ready to be sentenced to eternal death; of a plan of salvation for the guilty, and mercy for the suffering; of redemption for those lying under a fearful penalty, release for those exposed to a terrible curse; Mediator, in one word, of a covenant of grace, which is also a covenant of redemption. It was to fit him to be the Mediator of this covenant that he became Immanuel, that is, God-man, that he might mediate between God and men. It was as Mediator of this covenant that he was infinitely humiliated, even to the cross; infinitely exalted, even to the throne of the universe. And every office he executes, whether as the infallible Teacher of all truth, or whether as the

1 Gen., iii. 15; xii. 3, 7; xvi. 7; Job, vii. 14; Matt., i. 23–25; Luke, i. 31–35. Gal., iii. 16; iv. 4; John, i. 41; iv. 26; ix. 37.

great High Priest who redeems men, or whether as the sole King of saints, it is still as Mediator of the same eternal covenant. And when he shall come the second time to consummate his infinite work, he will come as the glorified Redeemer, perfecting and then delivering up to the Father the kingdom which this same covenant had contemplated from eternity.

3. It would be wholly impossible to explain any part of the mediatorial office, or character, or worth of Christ, and, therefore, wholly impossible to explain fully any part of the actual mode of salvation proposed in the Scriptures; without being led immediately to the divine nature, and the divine purpose, and the result of both as exhibited in the conception and execution of salvation by a Redeemer; which result is, the covenant of redemption. This is inevitable in the nature of the case. But besides this, which the whole Scriptures not only recognize, but assert; the Lord Jesus habitually and continually discloses the intimate participation of the Father and the Holy Ghost in all his work, in all that preceded it, and in all its results. In all his teaching, nothing is more frequently reiterated than that in all things he was executing the purpose of the Father: in all his promises, nothing is more emphatic than that in all things the Holy Ghost would consummate his work. So deeply is this participation of all the persons of the Godhead imbedded in the scriptural conception of the way of salvation, that there is a most distinct passing over from one divine person to another, as the sacred record advances in its sublime disclosures of salvation itself. First, it is God simply considered; then it is the Son, who' does all in the name of the Father; then it is the Holy Ghost, who does all in the name of the Son. Great, therefore, as is the certainty that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world; the certainty is just as great that God the Father, and God the Holy Ghost co-operate in all his glorious work; and that salvation is the result of the eternal purpose of God, and of the concurrence. of all the persons of the Godhead. This is expressed by the phrase, The Covenant of Redemption.

4. There can be no doubt that, if salvation is of divine grace, it must be of him who is God, and can be of none else. Whatever is not God, is wholly impotent as a source of divine grace: whatever is God, is divinely competent as a source of divine grace. If there are three Gods, there must be three distinct

sources; if there be but one God, there can be but one source, But if the mode in which the unity of the infinite essence of the only and true God subsists and acts be a threefold personality, then each of these three persons must concur in every act and purpose of this single and infinite essence, and, therefore, must concur in every act and purpose of divine grace. And whatever ineffable counsels, or mutual intuition, or inbeing, or intercourse with and between the three persons of the one God upon any subject whatever, or in relation to any purpose or act whatever, can be supposed to be real or to be possible; the very same as a possibility and as a reality, lies at the foundation of the divine purpose and concurrence in that divine grace which saves sinners through a Redeemer. But this, again, is the Covenant of redemption.

5. It is easy to understand that every divine purpose and concurrence must conform to the absolute nature of God, and must be wrought out in a manner answerable to that nature. What is thus true universally, must be true, in a most emphatic sense, of that sublime purpose and concurrence of salvation by grace, which the sacred Scriptures, through which alone we know anything about either grace or salvation, teach us is the highest manifestation of the glory of God, and therefore the highest exhibition of his nature and his perfections. If it is true, therefore, that God exists in an absolute unity of essence, but that the mode of that unity is a threefold personality; then it is infallibly certain, that if there are any sinners in the universe, and God should save any of them, he will do it in a manner answerable to such a nature. Now the Scriptures teach us that there are sinners in the universe, that God does save some of them, that he does this through a Covenant of Redemption, based upon that very mode of the divine existence, and that, in fine, such is the exact mode in which God does exist; all of which I have proved at large in a former Treatise. This being true, upon the only authority which is infallible upon the question under consideration; nothing is left but to admit the eternal purpose and concurrence of the one living and true God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to save lost sinners through divine gracewhich is the Covenant of Redemption; or else to reject the sacred Scriptures, in which alone is found either this great doctrine of salvation, or this great doctrine of the divine existence.

6. To that issue the earnest seeker after truth will always come, first or last. And if he be an earnest seeker after truth, that issue is soon settled. It is an issue I cannot follow here ; its consideration belongs to another department of our great subject. I may observe, however, that the mode of the divine existence which must be true, if the plan of salvation taught in the Scriptures is either divine or efficacious; is a mode of that existence which so far from being capable of taking its origin from human conjecture, is really not capable of being taught or understood except in connection with the plan of salvation which is responsive to it. It is not systematically revealed except in connection with that plan; it is not a speculation of philosophy capable of being thought out; it is a sublime result set before us in a lost soul saved-and educed by God himself, concerning himself, teaching and saving side by side. Blot out all we know about salvation, and then see what it is we know about the doctrine of the Trinity, and the eternal counsel of God. Or blot out the doctrine of the Trinity and of the Covenant of Redemption, and then see what it is we know about salvation for lost sinners. It seems to me that such transcendent abstract truths, and such overwhelming practical results, with the intense and inseparable connection between them, make a system which transcends human imposture.

II.-1. According to the Scriptures, salvation is by the grace of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, by means of the work of the Holy Ghost within us.' If the Scriptures be rejected, then there is no knowledge of the grace of God, nor any knowledge of faith in Christ, nor any knowledge of any work of the Holy Ghost, left upon earth. But in that case, we have also lost all true conception both of what salvation is, and of what is the exact nature of our own terrible condition; and are left to the fearful dominion of sin and death, under which the goadings of our depraved conscience and reason, fleeing from despair, drive us to atheism or to superstition-the only refuges for man without the Bible. We cannot repeat it to ourselves too often, that sinners cannot be saved without a Saviour; that man left to himself cannot even conceive a way of saving himself which his own reason will accept till, it is blinded by his consuming religious wants; that the whole subject of deliverance for sinners lies Eph., ii. 4-10; John, i. 1-20; 1 Cor., i. 21-24.