Notes: Sect. 2 — The Promise renewed to Abraham.
Notes: Sect. 2 — The Promise renewed to Abraham.
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The ancient promise given to Adam was the first gospel, the Covenant of Grace. For man, by his fall, “having made himself incapable of life by the Covenant of Works, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the Covenant of Grace,” Gen. 3.15. Westm. Confess., chap. 7, art. 3. When that promise or covenant was renewed, in which the persons it respected were not expressly designed, Abraham and his seed were expressly designed in it; and so it became a covenant with Abraham and his seed. And the promise, still being the same as to its substance, was often repeated, and in the repetition it was more fully and clearly opened. So Jesus Christ, revealed to Adam only as the seed of the woman, was thereafter revealed to Abraham as Abraham’s own seed; and thus it was believed and embraced unto salvation in the various revelations of it. “God sought Adam again, called upon him, rebuked his sin, convicted him of it; and in the end, he made a most joyful promise to him, namely: that the seed of the woman would break down the serpent’s head; that is, he should destroy the works of the devil; this promise, as it was repeated and made more clear from time to time, so it was embraced with joy, and may constantly (i.e. most steadfastly) be received by all the faithful from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to David, and so forth to the incarnation of Christ Jesus.” Old Confess., art. 4.
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That passed between the Father and the Son from everlasting.
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Melchisedec was a type to Abraham, to confirm him in the faith, so that he and his believing seed would be as really blessed in Christ as he was blessed by Melchisedec.
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This seems to me to be a more than groundless opinion, being inconsistent with the Scripture account of Melchisedec in Gen. 14.18; Heb. 7.1-4; nevertheless, it lacks no patrons among the learned; declaring this is no just ground to fix it on our author, especially after his speaking so plainly a little before of Christ and Melchisedec as two different persons [e.g., Joseph was a type of Christ, being in the pit and raised again to save his people; but no one would claim he was the pre-incarnate Christ]. The text (John 8.56) alleged by the patrons of that opinion, does nothing for their purpose: “for all (we mean the faithful fathers under the law) saw (namely: by faith) the joyful day of Christ Jesus, and rejoiceed.” Old Confess., art. 4.
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Namely, the passing of the furnace and burning lamp between the pieces.
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Heb. 9.22, “And by the law almost all things are purged with blood: and without the shedding of blood there is no remission,” Compare Gen. 17.14, “The uncircumcised man-child shall be cut off from his people: he has broken my covenant.”
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Namely, the promises of the everlasting inheritance, typified by the land of Canaan: see these promises in Gen. 12.7, and 13.15.
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That is, mystical Christ, Christ and the Church, the head and the members; yet so as the dignity of the head is still reserved — he is to be understood here primarily, which is sufficient for our author’s purposes; and his members secondarily only.
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These three, together with Abraham, are meant here by the apostle, and not those mentioned in the first seven verses of the chapter, if it is considered that he spoke of them last, ver. 9. 11. The promise of Canaan was given to none before them; and they were the persons who had the opportunity to return to the country from which they came, v. 15.
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That is, the deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt was a figure of the redemption of believers by Christ.
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Not that it prefigured or represented baptism as a proper and prophetic type of it, though some orthodox divines seem to be of that mind; but as the author expresses himself, in the case of the manna and the water out of the rock, that it resembled baptism, being a like figure (or type) to it, as the apostle Peter determines, concerning Noah’s ark with the waters of the deluge, 1Pet. 3.21, even as the printer’s types of the letters are impressed on the paper, both signifying one and the same word. For the ancient church is expressly said to have been ‘‘baptized in the sea,” 1Cor. 10.1, 2, and as the rock with the waters flowing from it did not signify the Lord’s Supper, but the thing signified by that New Testament Sacrament (namely, Christ, ver. 4), so their baptism in the sea did not signify our baptism itself, but the thing represented by it. And thus it was a type or figure answering to and resembling the baptism of the New Testament-church; the one being an extraordinary sacrament of the Old Testament, and the other an ordinary sacrament of the New, both representing the same thing.