, whereby he is
bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made
subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and
eternal.

Exposition of 6.6

This section relates to the desert of sin. Being a transgression of
the law of God, it must, in its own nature, bring guilt upon the
sinner, or render him liable to punishment. It exposes him to the
wrath of God, for "the children of disobedience" are also "children
of wrath," that is, they deserve and are obnoxious to the wrath of
God. It subjects him to the curse of the law, by which we may
understand the condemnatory sentence of the broken law, which binds
over the guilty sinner to all the direful effects of the wrath of
God. It likewise subjects him to death, or the dissolution of the
mysterious union between the soul and the body. Pelagians and
Socinians hold that death is not the punishment of sin—that Adam was
mortal from the beginning; and for this reason, those who are born
of him must also be mortal. Others, again, both in former and later
times, have held that temporal death was the only penalty threatened
to Adam, and that this is the only death which results from his sin.
Both these opinions are so plainly contradictory to the express
declarations of the Word of God, that they are unworthy of serious
refutation. In addition to this, our Confession states, that sin
exposes the sinner to numerous miseries, both in this life, and in
that which is to come. Among the spiritual or inward miseries to
which it renders the sinner liable in this world, the compilers of
our Confession elsewhere mention "blindness of mind, a reprobate
sense, strong delusions, hardness of heart, horror of conscience,
and vile affections;" and among the temporal or outward miseries,
they mention "the curse of God upon the creatures for our sakes, and
all other evils that befall us in our bodies, names, relations, and
employments." And the miseries to which sin exposes in the world to
come, they sum up in "everlasting separation from the comfortable
presence of God, and most grievous torments in soul and body,
without intermission, in hellfire forever."

When we reflect on the loss which Adam sustained by his fall, and on
the guilty and corrupted state in which we are thereby involved, and
on the manifold miseries to which we are liable, both here and
hereafter, let us be deeply impressed with a sense of the dreadful
malignity and demerit of sin,—the source of all our woe. Let us not
dare to repine against God, or to impeach his goodness or equity,
for permitting sin to enter into the world, and making us
responsible for the transgression of the first Adam, but rather let
us admire the divine wisdom and grace displayed in providing the
second Adam, by whose obedience we may be made righteous, as by the
disobedience of the first we were made sinners. Let us cordially
receive the Lord Jesus Christ, that, being found in him, we may not
only be acquitted from the guilt of the first man's transgression,
but may be brought, through "the abundance of grace, and of the gift
of righteousness, to reign in life by one," even by Jesus Christ,
our Lord.


7. Of God's Covenant with Man

SECTION 1. The distance between God and the creature is so great,
that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as
their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as
their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on
God's part, which he has been pleased to express by way of covenant.

SECTION 2. The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works,
wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon
condition of perfect and personal obedience.

Exposition of 7.1–7.2

Man is naturally and necessarily under a law to God. This results
from the necessary and unalterable relation subsisting between God
and man, as the one is the Creator, and the other his creature. God
might, therefore, if he had pleased, demanded all possible obedience
of man, without making any promise securing his establishment in a
state of innocence and enjoyment, and his advancement to a state of
still higher felicity, as the reward of his obedience. And though
man had gone through a long course of obedience, without a single
failure, he could not have laid his Creator under any obligation to
him, or been entitled to any recompense. But God graciously
condescended to deal with man by way of covenant, and thus gave him
an opportunity to secure his happiness by acquiring a right to it—a
right founded upon stipulation, or upon the promise. "Man," says the
celebrated Witsius, "upon his accepting the covenant, and performing
the condition, does acquire some right to demand of God the promise;
for God has, by his promises, made himself a debtor to man; or, to
speak in a manner more becoming God, he was pleased to make his
performing his promises a debt due to himself,—to his goodness,
justice, and veracity. And to man, in covenant, and continuing
steadfast to it, he granted the right of expecting and requiring
that God should satisfy the demands of his goodness, justice, and
truth, by the performance of the promises."

A covenant is generally defined to be an agreement between two
parties, on certain terms. In every covenant there must be two
parties, and consequently two parts—a conditionary and a promissory;
the one to be performed by the one party, and the other to be
fulfilled by the other party. If either of the parties be fallible,
a penalty is often added; but this is not essential to a covenant.

There are two important truths to which our attention is here
directed. First, That God entered into a covenant with Adam,
promising him life upon condition of his perfect and personal
obedience. Secondly, That this covenant was made with Adam, not only
for himself, but for all his natural posterity.

I. That God entered into a covenant with Adam in his state of
innocence, appears from Genesis 2:16, 17: "The Lord God commanded
the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: but
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of
it: for in the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die."
Here, indeed, there is no express mention of a covenant; but we find
all the essential requisites of a proper covenant. In this
transaction there are two parties; the Lord God on the one hand, and
man on the other. There is a condition expressly stated, in the
positive precept respecting the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, which God was pleased to make the test of man's obedience.
There is a penalty subjoined: "In the day you eat thereof, you shall
surely die." There is also a promise, not distinctly expressed, but
implied in the threatening; for, if death was to be the consequence
of disobedience, it clearly follows that life was to be the reward
of obedience. That a promise of life was annexed to man's obedience,
may also be inferred from the description which Moses gives of the
righteousness of the law: "The man that does these things shall live
by them,"—Romans 10:5; from our Lord's answer to the young man who
inquired what he should do to inherit eternal life: "It you will
enter into life, keep the commandments,"—Matthew 19:17; and from the
declaration of the apostle, that "the commandment was ordained to
life." Romans 7:10. We are, therefore, warranted to call the
transaction between God and Adam a covenant. We may even allege, for
the use of this term, the language of Scripture. In Hosea 6:7
(margin), we read, "They, like Adam, have transgressed the
covenant." This necessarily implies that a covenant was made with
Adam, and that he violated it.

II. That this covenant was made with Adam, not only for himself, but
also for all his natural posterity, is a doctrine which has met with
much opposition. It is denied by Pelagians and Socinians, who
maintain that he acted for himself alone, and that the effects of
his fall terminated upon himself. Arminians admit that the whole
human race is injured by the first sin, but at the same time
controvert the proposition, that Adam was their proper
representative. This truth, however, may be easily established. The
Scripture represents Adam as a figure or type of Christ,—Romans
5:14; and wherein does the resemblance between them consist? Simply
in this, that as Christ was a federal head, representing all his
spiritual seed in the covenant of grace, so Adam was a federal head
representing all his natural seed in the covenant of works. In 1
Corinthians 15:45, 47, the one is called the first Adam, the other,
the last Adam; the one the first man, the other the second man. Now,
Christ was not the second man in any other sense, but as being the
federal head or representative of his seed; and, therefore, the
first man must have sustained a similar character, as being the
federal head or representative of all his natural posterity. The
extension of the effects of Adam's first sin to all his descendants,
is another strong proof of his having represented them in the
covenant made with him. That he has transmitted sin and death to all
his posterity, is clearly taught in the 5th chapter of the Epistle
to the Romans; and unless his public character, as a representative
in the covenant, be admitted, no satisfactory reason can be assigned
why we are affected by his first sin in a way that we are not
affected by his subsequent transgressions, or the transgressions of
our more immediate progenitors. We know that "the son shall not bear
the iniquity of the father" (Ezekiel 18:20); and had Adam been
merely a private person, his sin could have affected us no more than
that of our immediate parents. The conclusion is inevitable,—that in
the covenant of works, our first parent not only acted for himself,
but represented all his natural posterity.

Often has this part of the divine procedure been arraigned by
presumptuous man. The supposition that God called Adam to represent
us in a covenant, into which he entered with him long before we had
a being, and to the making of which we could not personally consent,
is, it has been alleged, inconsistent with the divine goodness, and
contrary to moral justice and equity. To this it might be sufficient
to reply, that this transaction being the proposal and deed of God,
it must be fit and equitable. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth
do right?" "He is a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and
right is he." But though we ought to acquiesce in the propriety of
this transaction, simply because it was the will of God, yet it
might be evinced, by various considerations, that it was not only
consistent with equity, but manifested much of the divine goodness.
If Adam had fulfilled the condition of the covenant, and thus
secured happiness, not only to himself, but also to all his
posterity, no one, certainly, would have complained that Adam was
constituted his representative; and why should that transaction,
which, in this event, would have been deemed just, be pronounced
unjust on the contrary event? Adam, being made after the image of
God, was as capable of keeping the covenant as any of his posterity
could ever be supposed to be; that he should fulfill it was as much
his personal interest as that of any of his descendants, his own
felicity, no less than theirs, being at stake; and he was intimately
related to the persons whom he represented, and had the strongest
inducement to take care of his numerous offspring, as well as of
himself. Adam having such peculiar advantages and inducements to
perform the demanded obedience, it may be fairly presumed that, had
it been possible for us to be present when the federal transaction
was entered into, we would have readily agreed that it was more
eligible and safe for us to have our everlasting felicity insured by
the obedience of our first parent, as our covenant head, than that
it should depend upon our own personal behavior. And who would
complain of his being represented by Adam in the covenant of works,
since God has opened up a way for our recovery from the consequences
of the breach of that covenant, by another and a superior covenant?

SECTION 3. Man by his fall having made himself incapable of life by
that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly
called the covenant of grace: whereby He freely offers unto sinners
life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him,
that they may be saved; and promising to give unto all those that
are ordained unto life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and
able to believe.

Exposition of 7.3

In entering upon the exposition of this section, it is proper to
remark, that, at the period when our Confession was framed, it was
generally held by the most eminent divines, that there are two
covenants connected with the salvation of men, which they called the
covenant of redemption, and the covenant of grace; the former made
with Christ from everlasting, the latter made with sinners in time;
the righteousness of Christ being the condition of the former, and
faith the condition of the latter covenant. This distinction, we
conceive, has no foundation in the Sacred Scriptures, and it has
long since been abandoned by all evangelical divines. The first Adam
is said to have been a figure of Christ, who is called the second
Adam. Now, there was not one covenant made with Adam, the condition
of which he was to perform, and another made with his posterity, the
condition of which they were to fulfill; but one covenant included
both him and them. It was made with him as their representative, and
with them as represented in and by him. In like manner, one covenant
includes Christ and his spiritual seed. The Scriptures, accordingly,
everywhere speak of it as one covenant, and the blood of Christ is
repeatedly called "the blood of the covenant," not of the covenants,
as we may presume it would have been called, if it had been the
condition of a covenant of redemption and the foundation of a
covenant of grace.—Hebrews 10:29; 13:20. By the blood of the same
covenant Christ made satisfaction, and we obtain
deliverance.—Zechariah 9:11. We hold, therefore, that there is only
one covenant for the salvation of fallen men, and that this covenant
was made with Christ before the foundation of the world. The
Scriptures, indeed, frequently speak of God making a covenant with
believers, but this language admits of an easy explication, in
consistency with the unity of the covenant. "The covenant of grace,"
says a judicious writer, "was made with Christ in a strict and
proper sense, as he was the party-contractor in it, and undertook to
fulfill the condition of it. It is made with believers in an
improper sense, when they are taken into the bond of it, and come
actually to enjoy the benefit of it. How it is made with them may be
learned from the words of the apostle,—Acts 13:34: 'I will give you
the sure mercies of David,' which is a kind of paraphrase upon that
passage,—Isaiah 55:3: 'I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
even the sure mercies of David.' God makes the covenant with them,
not by requiring anything of them in order to entitle them or lay a