The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Advertisement
• The Divine Feudal Law Represented
• §1.
• §2.
• §3
• §4
• §5
• §6
• §7
• §8
• §9
• §10
• §11
• §12
• §13
• §14.
• §15
• §16
• §17
• §18
• §19
• §20
• §21
• §22
• §23
• §24.
• §25
• §26
• §27
• §28
• §29
• §30
• §31
• §32
• §33
• §34
• §35
• §36
• §37
• §38
• §39.
• §40
• §41
• §42
• §43
• §44
• §45
• §46
• §47
• §48
• §49
• §50
• §51
• §52
• §53
• §54
• §55
• §56
• §57
• §58
• §59
• §60
• §61
• §62
• §63
• §64
• §65
• §66
• §67
• §68
• §69
• §70
• §71
• §72
• §73
• §74
• §75
• §76
• §77
• §78
• §79
• §80
• §81
• §82
• §83
• §84
• §85
• §86
• §87
• §88
• §89
• §90
• §91
• §92
• §93
• §94

§27

The Covenant of God with Men, which was made by the Interposition of a Mediator.But when this Original Covenant was broken, it did not please God to withhold altogether his Mercy from Mankind, nor to suffer that the Generations of Men should go on without any Divine Worship, or Covenant between God and them, or that they should so be utterly excluded from Everlasting Happiness. But it was agreeable to his Goodness to establish a new Covenant with Man by the Interposition of a Mediator. For indeed after that Adam had in so ill and unhappy a manner borne the Person of all Mankind, and had overthrown the Happiness of all his Posterity by his Fault, it did not seem fitting to Almighty God to Covenant immediately with him, as he had done before, nor without the Intervention of an Umpire or Sponsor, who would expiate the Crime of Mankind, and who should dispence the Divine Favour to Mankind from thenceforth, since they were become unworthy and uncapable by Sin, of an immediate and familiar Intercourse and Correspondence with Almighty God. And because he was not pleas’d to put it upon Adam any more to bear the Person of all Mankind, there was also for this Reason a need of a Mediator; because for the giving Being to the Obligation, it was necessary that the consent of both Parties covenanting should concur at the same Time. But forasmuch as the Humane Race could not be all in Being at once, but the Persons of whom it consists must come successively into Being; and those who come first cannot engage for the Rest, nor those that come after be bound by the Engagement of the Former: Therefore that this Covenant might include or comprehend all Men in whatever Age they should come into the World, it was to be constituted in the Person of the Mediator; so that by his Interposition particular Men might at any time come into it. For here we must observe, that in this Covenant Mankind were not consider’d as a Society so gather’d and join’d, as that there could be no proceeding in it but by the consent of them all, or of the greatest Part, or so as that the Whole were to be reckon’d to stand for One, or One to stand for all the Rest: But they are consider’d as particulars, who have every one of them right by himself, and without any respect to others, or what they do to enter into this Covenant. Which is quite otherwise than as is wont to be among those who are bound and join’d into one Society; in which Case ’tis not lawful for any one to enter into a Covenant to the Acknowledgement of any Sovereignty, unless the whole, or a major part representing the whole, do consent to it. From which State of the Case this also follows now, that every one forsakes this Covenant, or breaks it only for himself, or at his own Peril, which is otherwise than as the Case was with Adam in the first Covenant.