Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: essential in Christianity; and the scheme which affirms the one is as diverse from that which asserts the other, as light is from darkness, and truth from falsehood." " The question between them, is nothing less than the question—of two wholly dissimilar and contradictory systems, which is it that is the gospel of the grace of God, and which therefore is it that wholly contradicts and subverts the gospel?" CHAPTER II. GOD'S COVENANT WITH ADAM, AND OUR RELATION TO HIM AS OUR FEDERAL HEAD INVOLVING THE DOCTRINE OF IMPUTATION AND ORIGINAL SIN. According to Witsius, " A covenant of God with man is an agreement between God and man, about the method of obtaining consummate happiness, with the addition of a threatening of eternal destruction, with which the despiser of the happiness offered in that way is to be punished." Such a covenant God made with Adam before the fall; and through him with all his posterity—he acting as their federal head and representative. " The first covenant made with man," says our Confession of Faith, " was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and' in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience".—(as our catechism adds,) " forbidding him to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil upon pain of death." This has been the common sentiment among the reformed churches since the time of Luther and Calvin. It also formed a part of the creed of the early Christian Fathers. Some of the reasons for this doctrine, are the following: 1. The law given to Adam in Gen. ii. 16, 17, contained all the essential properties of a covenant; viz. parties, a condition, a penalty, and an implied promise. It is not essential to a covenant that the parties should be equal —nor was it necessary in the present case, that...