law of God addressed
to corrupt ecclesiastical societies, is not a covenant, but essentially
a law. A national compact between rulers and people, when violated,
affords an analogy here. The laws, or institutions, or ordinances, of a
nation, according to which the sovereign reigns, the other rulers
govern, and the people voluntarily give obedience, is a covenant; but
against those who violate them, whatever may be their rank, they act not
as a covenant but as a law, punishing for breach of covenant. But to
proceed. When Israel were holiness to the Lord, his law was to them a
covenant. When any of them fell off into idolatry, that covenant was
dispensed to those solely as a law taking vengeance for the breach of it
as a covenant and as a law. To the true Israel receiving spiritual
blessings, it was dispensed as a covenant. But only as a law demanding
punishment and obedience, it extended, to many in the mountains of the
East, and on the plains of Babylon, and afterwards in every part of the
world, to the descendants of the unbelieving Jews. When the Christian
Church was pure, the law of God was to her a covenant. When, by the
removal of the truth, and opposition to it, she degenerated into
Antichrist, it continued not a covenant to her, but acted against her as
a law. And before its blighting curse she fell plagued. The judgments
poured out on the seat of the _Beast_ were its effects; and to that
curse will be due, the accomplishment of the prediction--"I will stretch
out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will
make thee a burnt mountain. And they shall not take of thee a stone for
a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate for
ever, saith the Lord;"[473] and the realization of the fearful doom
proclaimed by an angel come down from Heaven--"Babylon the great is
fallen, is fallen," and of the woe uttered by a mighty angel, that "took
up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying,
Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and
shall be found no more at all."[474] Even the offers of mercy to the
unrenewed are made as the requirements of a mere law. So long as they
are unaccepted, they possess the same character. They are tenders of
what, when acceded to, would be a covenant; but are not the requirements
of a covenant till they be appropriated. When received, they are the
duties of both a law and a covenant. For example, the injunction t