were we to view it
as given as a law, but not as a covenant. Even as the matter of the law
revealed at Sinai was an exhibition of the provisions of the Covenant of
Grace, so that of the law given to man in innocence was the condition of
the Covenant of Works. It was not merely by the promise, but also by the
gift of life, that the positive law was converted into the nature of a
covenant. By that promise, indeed, the Covenant of Works was
distinguished; that showed the unspeakably beneficent design of the
great Creator, and formed the most powerful motive to obedience. But the
making of that promise was not essential to the existence of a covenant
between the parties. By the giving of that promise, God indeed became,
by explicit intimation, engaged to man; but by giving to his creature
capacities for enjoying good, and desiring it, he virtually engaged to
give him what was to be beneficial for him, so long as He should
choose. Adam was in the enjoyment of good when God revealed to him his
law. God addressed him, not as one who might be doubtful whether or not
he should receive good from his hand, but as one in possession of powers
and capacities even then appropriating extensive benefits. His
delighting himself in God--the highest good that he could enjoy, though
no explicit promise of good had been made to him, would have been a
token to him that he was in covenant. But the promise in which that good
was implied rendered the anticipation of it definite, both as to time
and duration.

Again, the law of God was given both as a law and as a covenant to Adam,
as the representative of the human race. Though the giving of the
positive precept put him into a covenant state as a federal head, and
though by breaking it he fell, and in consequence of his sin they fell
in him, yet it is unwarrantable to maintain that the duty of abstaining
from the tree of life was the only condition of the covenant to be
observed by him as the public covenant head of his descendants. What
would have been his condition had he neglected any other duty incumbent
on him? Would he not have been depraved as an individual personally
guilty? and accordingly seeing that he that offends in one point is
guilty of all, would he not have been unworthy of representing his
posterity, or in consequence of his depravity would he not have resolved
to eat of the tree of life, and thus have exposed himself to the stroke
of Divine indignation, and have been cut off?