The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable
creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their creator, yet they could never have attained
the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which He hath been
pleased to express by way of covenant.(1)
Moreover, man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased
the Lord to make a covenant of grace,(2) wherein He freely
offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him,
that they may be saved;(3)
and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life, His Holy Spirit,
to make them willing and able to believe.(4)
This covenant is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of
salvation by the seed of the woman, (5)
and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New
Testament;(6)
and it is founded in that eternal covenant transaction that was between the Father and the
Son about the redemption of the elect;(7)
and it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all of the posterity of fallen Adam
that ever were saved did obtain life and blessed immortality, man being now utterly
incapable of acceptance with God upon those terms on which Adam stood in his state of
innocency.(8)