Page:A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (John Ball).djvu/210

 198

glory, the holy Ghost came downe upon the Apostles in visible shape, in token that Christs Church was now betrothed unto him, and had received strength to conceive and bring forth, and breasts replenished with plenty of Milk to nourish and feed her children. This was as the Solemnization of the Marriage, and then did the barren begin to rejoyce, that she should be the mother of many children. From this time properly the New Testament tooke its beginning.

The nature of this Testament stands principally in three things. 1. In the kinde of Doctrine, plaine, full, and meerly Evangelicall. 2. In freedome from the curse of the Law, and freedome from Legall Rites. 3. In the amplitude and enlargement of the new Church, throughout all Nations of the world.

It may be described, the free Covenant which God of his rich grace in Jesus Christ incarnate, crucified, dead, buried, raised up to life, and ascended into Heaven hath made and plainly revealed unto the world of Jew and Gentile, promising to be their God and Father by right of Redemption, and Christ to be their Saviour; to pardon their sinne, heale their nature, adopt them to be his Sonnes, protect them from all evill that may hurt, furnish them with all needfull good things spirituall and temporall, and crown them with everlasting glory in the world to come, if they repent of their iniquities, beleeve in Christ and through or by Christ in him, and walk before him in sincere, constant and conscionable obedience: which he doth inwardly seale by the witnesse of the holy Spirit, who is the earnest of their inheritance, in the hearts of the faithfull; and ratifie and confirme by outward seales universall, plain, easie, and perpetuall.

The Author of this Covenant is God in Jesus Christ: for none can make these promises but God, none can make them good but his Highnesse. Therefore the Lord doth evermore challenge this unto himself, that he is the maker of the Covenant: And as it is called our Covenant in respect of the conditions required, Zech. 9. 11. So it is called the Lords Covenant, because he hath made, and will establish it. If ye can break my Covenant of the day, and my Covenant of the night, &c. Then may also my Covenant be broken with David my servant. Christ also as Mediatour is both the foundation and Author of this Covenant, as he is appointed of the