dignity of God's character to give to man a law. It was becoming his
character to give him a moral constitution that would lead him to obey
it. It was equally becoming the glory of his nature to accept of
obedience to it. His entering into covenant with him was the accepting
of Covenanting--a part of that obedience, and was therefore in perfect
consistency with the excellency of His being. It is not allowable to
suppose that in order to a covenant relation between God and his
creatures, these should be able to give something of their own which
might be esteemed as a meritorious condition of a covenant; nor is it
warrantable to maintain that because man in innocence was unable to make
such a communication, therefore he was not in that state taken into
covenant. Neither man in innocence, nor man in a state of grace, was
required to make such a tender; nay, no creature is able to afford it.
If it is admitted, then, that a covenant exists between God and man
redeemed on the footing of the merits of the Saviour, how can it be
denied that man in innocence could be taken into a covenant with God on
account of the merit or worth of Himself as the Creator and righteous
moral Governor of all? In the case of the Covenant of Grace, the merit
on account of which man is accepted was displayed in a manifestation of
the mercy of God in the obedience and sufferings of Christ. In the case
of what is rightly held to have been a covenant between God and Adam as
the representative of the human family, the merit for which man was
accepted was not his own, but the merit or worth of the Divine character
exhibited, in giving him a constitution fitting him for acquiescing in
what the Divine law required, and in affording him every facility for
glorifying God by yielding obedience to all his commands.

And, besides, various are the considerations that tend to show, that
from the constitution of man there is reason to conclude that the
representative character and state that are attributed to Adam as a
covenant head, and therefore also what is called the Covenant of
Works,--though in a certain sense a covenant of grace--but not of grace
through a mediator, are not inconsistent with the glory of the Divine
character.

It would not have been inconsistent with the glory of God to have made
any one of the human family its representative head. No one of them
would have refused to represent their race. And since therefore Adam
would not have refused,