ought we to make of this doctrine of providence? A. To commit our way unto the Lord; to "trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass," Psal. xxxviii. 5. QUEST. 12. What special act of Providence did God exercise towards man in the state wherein he was created? ANSW. When God had created man, he entered into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of perfect obedience; forbidding him to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, upon the pain of death. Q. 1. Was there any thing special in God's government of man, when he was was created, above the other creatures? A. Yes: for God gave man a moral law, which the other creatures, not endued with reason, were not capable of: Job XXXV. 10, 11.-" None saith, Where is God my maker?Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven." Q. 2. What call you a moral law? to God, and a singular regard to his authority, Eccl. vii. 29. Q. 5. What was the peculiar favour which God manifested to man in a state of innocency, besides writing the law upon his heart? A. The reducing that law unto the form of a covenant, whereby man became confederate with heaven. Q. 6. What is a covenant? A. A mutual free compact and agreement betwixt two parties, upon express terms or conditions. Q. 7. How many covenants are there, relating to the life and happiness of man? A. A moral law signifies a law of right manners, or good and suitable behaviour towards God and man, and adapted to A. Two; the covenant of man's rational nature, Rom. vii. works, and the covenant of 12. grace, Gal. iv. 24.-" These are Q. 3. How was this law first the two covenants,' given unto man? A. It was written upon the table of his heart, the moment that God created him in his own image, Gen. i. 27. Q. 4. What do you understand by God's writing the law upon the table of his heart? A. God's inlaying a principle of obedience in his heart, dis-1 posing him to obey out of love F Q. 8. Which of these was the covenant which God entered into with man, when he was created? A. The covenant of works, or of life. Q. 9. Why called a covenant of works? A. From the condition of it. Q. 10. Why called [a covenant of life]? A. From the promise of it. Q. 11. How doth it appear that God entered into a covenant with man in innocency? A. From the condition and penalty that were in the first covenant, Gen. ii. 16. 17. and from express mention in scripture of Adam's breach of that covenant. Hos. vi. 7.-" But they, like men, (margin, like Adam,) have transgressed the covenant." Q. 12. How doth it appear that Adam gave that consent, which was necessary in a mutual covenant? A. His silent acquiescence to the will of his sovereign Creator implied a consent; and his consent could not be withheld by a creature made after the image of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. Q. 13. What was the condition of the covenant of works? A. [Perfect obedience] to the whole law of God, in heart and life. Q. 14. What was the sum of that law, which was the rule of man's covenant obedience? A. That man believe whatsoever God shall reveal, and do whatsoever he shall command, Rom. x. 5; and, in testimony thereof, not to [eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil], Gen. ii. 17. Q. 15. Was this prohibition, of not eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, a moral or a positive precept? A. It was a positive precept, founded in the sovereign will of God. Q. 16. Was it then a thing in itself indifferent to eat, or not to eat, of that tree? A. There could be no moral evil, in eating of that tree, more than any other, antecedent to the command of God forbidding it; but after that, it was no more indifferent, but highly sinful to do so. Q. 17. Why did God extend the rule and matter of man's covenant obedience to a thing in itself indifferent? A. That man's obedience might turn upon the preicse point of the will of God, which is the plainest evidence of true obedience, Psal. xl. 8. Q. 18. Did man's life and death hang upon this positive precept about the forbidden fruit? A. Not upon this only, but likewise on the whole law, Gal. iii. 10.-" Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them." Q. 19. Was there any mercy or favour in restricting man from eating of this tree? A. Much every way; for this restriction taught him, that though he was lord of the creatures, yet he was God's subject: it was a beacon set up before him to beware of sin; and it pointed him away from the creatures to God himself for happiness. Q. 20. What was the penalty in case of disobedience? A. It was [the pain of death:] "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," Gen. ii. 17. Q. 21. What kind of death was this which was threatened upon disobedience? A. It was death temporal, spiritual, and eternal. Q. 22. Did Adam die a tem poral or natural death, that day | ven, after he had passed through be sinned? the time of his trial upon earth, Rom. vii. 10. A. No: but he became a dead man in law, and his body got its death's wound, and became mortal, Rom. v. 12. Q. 23. Why was the immediate execution of natural death suspended? Q. 29. How do you prove that eternal life in heaven, was included in the promise of this covenant? A. From eternal death in hell, being included in the threatenA. Because of his posterity ing of it, as the natural wages of then in his loins; and because sin; and from Christ himself of another covenant that was expounding the promise of the prepared, Job xxxiii. 24. covenant of works, of eternal Q. 24. What was the spiritual life, Matt. xix. 16; when one death threatened? puts the question to him, A. The loss of his original "What shall I do, that I may righteousness, and the favour of God, Gen. iii. 8. 10. 24. Q. 25. What is meant by eternal death? A. The enduring of the wrath of God, in soul and body, in a state of separation from him for ever, Matt. xxv. 46. Q. 26. What was the promise in this covenant, in case of obedience? inherit eternal life?" he an swers, ver. 17-" If thou wilt enter into life, (namely, eternal life, by doing) keep the commandments." Q. 30. Was there any proportion betwixt Adam's obedi dience, though sinless, and the life that was promised? A. There can be no proportion betwixt the obedience of a A. It was life. finite creature, however perQ. 27. How does it appear fect, and the enjoyment of the that life was promised, when infinite God, Job xxii. 2, 3. the promise thereof is not ex-"Can a man be profitable to pressly mentioned? God? Is it any pleasure to the A. The promise of life is Almighty, that thou art righte included in the threatening of ous? or, is it gain to him, that death: "In the day that thou thou makest thy way per eatest thereof, thou shalt surely fect?" die:" which necessarily implies, Q. 31. Why could not Adam's If thou dost not eat thereof, perfect obedience be meritorithou shalt surely live, Gal. iii,ous of eternal life? 12. Q. 28. What kind of life was it that was promised unto man in the covenant of works? A. Because perfect obedience was no more than what he was bound unto, by virtue of his natural dependence on God, as a reasonable creature made after his image. A. The continuance of his natural life, consisting in the union of his soul and body; the Q. 32. Could he have claimed continuance also of his spiritual the reward as a debt, in case life, consisting in the favour of he had continued in his obediGod, Lev. xvii. 5; and his en- ence? tering upon eternal life in hea A. He could have claimed it only as a pactional debt, in virtue of the covenant promise, whereby God became debtor to his own faithfulness, but not in virtue of any intrinsic merit of his obedience, Luke xvii. 10. Q. 33. What then was the grace and condescension of God that shined in the covenant of works? A. In that he entered into a covenant, at all, with his own creature; and promised eternal life as a reward of his work, though he had nothing to work with, but what he received from God, 1 Cor. iv. 7. Q. 34. Did the covenant of works oblige man to seek life upon the account of his obedience? equals, but enjoined by the sovereign Lawgiver. Q. 38. In what respect was it a covenant? A. As it contained a promise of reward, graciously annexed to the precept, Gal. iii. 12. Q. 39. Is this covenant abrogated, or still in force? A. It was never abrogated, but is still binding upon all that are under it, Matt. v. 18. and xix. 17. Q. 40. Did not man's sin abrogate this covenant? A. No: his sin bound him under the curse of it, Gal. iii. 10. Q. 41. Did not Christ's doing and dying abrogate this covenant of works? A. No: it fulfilled both the precept and penalty thereof, Rom. x. 4. A. It left man to expect it upon his obedience, but did not oblige him to seek it on that Q. 42. Does not the law of score; but only upon the ac- faith abrogate the law of works? count of, the faithfulness of God A. No: "Do we make void in his promise, graciously an- the law through faith? God fornexing life to man's sinless obe-bid; yea, we establish the law," dience, Matt. xix. 16. Rom. iii. 31. Q. 35. Did the covenant of works oblige man to make his own life and happiness, the chief end of his obedience? A. By no means; the promise of life was an encouragement to his obedience, but the glory of God was to be the chief end therein; to which any view of his own happiness was to be subordinate, otherwise his obedience had not been perfect. Q. 43. Are sinners, that live under the gospel dispensation, under the same obligation to obedience, as the condition of life, that Adam was under? A. While they remain in unbelief, rejecting the surety of the better testament, they keep themselves under an obligation to do the whole law, and so are under the curse of it, Gal. v. 3, 4. Q. 44. What may we learn from this doctrine? A. It teacheth us, that eternal death comes by the breach of Q. 36. Was the covenant of works a law, as well as a covenant? A. Yes; it was both the one the covenant of works in the and the other. Q. 37. In what respect was it a law? A. As it was not between first Adam; and that eternal life comes only by the fulfilling of the same covenant by the second Adam, Rom. v. 19. QUEST. 13. Did our first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created? ANSW. Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God. Q. 1. What mean you by the [estate] wherein man was created? A. His estate of innocency, wherein he had his standing under God, as his great Lord and Creator. Q. 2. What standing had he under God in a state of innocency? A. A perfect comformity to I him; intimate fellowship and communion with him; and an ample dominion over all the -work of his hands, in this lower world; the tree of knowledge of good and evil only excepted. Q. 3. By what charter did man hold this estate of his great Creator? A. By the charter of the covenant of works. Q. 4. What remarkable and significant circumstances appertained to this charter? A. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. Q. 5. What did the tree of knowledge of good and evil, signify? A. It signified, that as Adam knew much of his Creator's goodness, by what he had done for him; so he was to know much of his displeasure and indignation, if he tasted the fruit of that tree. Q. 6. What did the tree of life signify to man? A. That upon his fulfilling the condition of the covenant, by a course of obedience, he was to live for ever. Q. 7. What understand you by the course of obedience, which Adam had to go through, in order to found his covenant title to eternal life? A. A continuance in perfect obedience, during the time which God had appointed for his state of probation." Q. 8. When was a state of probation only applicable to man? A. It was only applicable to man while in innocency, before the breach of the covenant of works; and by no means applicable to man in any other state since the fall. Q. 9. Why is it that no man, since the fall, can justly be said to be in a state of probation in this world?* A. Because the covenant of works being broken, all the children of men are either in a natural state, in the first Adam, or in a gracious state in the second; and consequently under a dispensation, either of divine justice or mercy. Q. 10. Are not men to have rewards given them according to their good or evil works, and consequently may be said to be in a state of probation, as well as Adam was? A. The consequence will not hold; because these rewards are of another kind than could have taken place under the co |