Page:A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (John Ball).djvu/27

 Rh God in sincere, faithfull and willing obedience, as becomes such a creature lifted up unto such injoyment, and partaker of such pretious promises. This Covenant is opposite to the former in kind, so that at one and the same time, man cannot be under the Covenant of workes and the Covenant of grace. For he cannot hope to be justified by his perfect and exact obedience, that acknowledging himselfe to be a miserable and lost sinner, doth expect pardon of the free mercy of God in Jesus Christ embraced by faith. The condition of the Law as it was given to Adam, excludes the necessity of mercy reaching to the pardon of sinne: and the necessity of making a new Covenant, argues the former could not give life, Heb. 8. 7. He that is under grace, cannot at the same time be under the law: and he that waites for Salvation of meere and rich grace to be vouchsafed, cannot expect it as the deserved wages of his good worke from justice, and not of mercy.

What then may some say, is the Law abolished, or is it lawfull for Christians to live as they list, because they be not under the Law?

Not so: but the Law hath a double respect: one as the unchangeable rule of life and manners, according to which persons in Covenant ought to walke before and with the Lord, and in this sense it belongs to the Covenant of grace. The other, as it is propounded in forme of a Covenant, as if he must necessarily perish, who doth neglect or breake it in the least jot or tittle, and in this sense the Covenant of grace and workes are opposite. The matter of Evangelicall precepts and of the Morall Law is the same, but the forme of promulgation is not the same: the rule is one, but the Covenants differ. Materialy the Law, that is, the matter and argument of the Law, as a rule, stands in force: but if formally it did continue as a Covenant, there could be no place for repentance, nor for the promise of forgivenesse, or mercy reaching to the pardon of sinne, or the quickning of them that be dead in trespasses. The Covenant of workes is of justice, the Covenant of grace is of grace and mercy, which cannot agree and take place in one and the same subject: for he that tryeth justice, perceiveth not the force of mercy, & è contra. This might be common to both Covenants, that God doth freely give reward, because he was not bound unto it by any Law, and that is done of grace, which we are not tied unto by Law: but in the Covenant