Notes: Chapter I. Of The Law, Or Covenant Of Works.
Notes: CHAPTER I. OF THE LAW, OR COVENANT OF WORKS.
23
Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563) – a leading Reformer in the cities of Augsburg and Berne.
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The Moral Law is an ambiguous term among divines. (1.) The Moral Law, simply, is taken from the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments. So the law in the Ten Commandments is owned to be commonly called the Moral Law, Westm. Confess., chap. 19. art. 2, 3. And thus our author has used that term up to this point, reckoning the Moral Law to be not the Covenant of Works itself, but only the matter of it. (2.) The Moral Law is taken for the Ten Commandments, having the promise of life, and threatening of death annexed to them; that is, taken for the Law, or Covenant of Works. Thus the Moral Law is described to be, “the declaration of the will of God to mankind, directing and binding everyone to personal, perfect, and perpetual conformity and obedience to it, in the frame and disposition of the whole man, soul and body, and in the performance of all these duties of holiness and righteousness which he owes to God and man, promising life upon its fulfilling, and threatening death upon its breach.” Westm. Larger Catech. Quest. 93. That this is the Covenant of Works, is clear from the Westm. Confess., chap. 19. art. 1, “God gave to Adam a law, as a Covenant of Works, by which he bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience; promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of it.” And this our author admits to be the sense of that term, strictly and properly taken — the reason for which I conceive that the Moral Law, properly signifying the law of manners, answers to the Scripture term, the Law of Works, by which is meant the Covenant of Works. And if he had added that in this sense, believers are delivered from it, he would have said no more than the Larger Catechism does, in these words: “Those who are regenerate, and believe in Christ, are delivered from the Moral Law as a Covenant of Works,” Quest. 97. But, in the meantime, it is evident he does not use that term in this sense here; and in the next paragraph, he gives a reason why, save once, he did not use it in that sense.
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Not a hired servant, for there is a covenant between such a servant and the master; rather, a bond-servant, bought with money from another person, or born in the master’s house, who is obliged to serve his master, and is liable to punishment in case he does not; but he cannot demand wages, since there is no covenant between them. This was the case of mankind with relation to the Creator, before the Covenant of Works was made.
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The soul approving, embracing, and consenting to the covenant; without any more, this is plain language, even if not to men, yet to God who knows the heart.
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The covenant being revealed to man, created in God’s own image, he could not help but perceive the equity and benefit of it; and so he heartily approved, embraced, accepted, and consented to it. And this accepting is plainly intimated in Eve’s words to the serpent, Gen. 3.2, 3, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.”
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His executive faculties and powers, whereby the good that was known and willed, was to be done.
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Col 3:10 put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him;
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That one commandment was in effect a summary of the whole duty of man; this clearly appears if one considers that its breach was a transgressing of all ten commandments at once, as our author afterwards distinctly shows.
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John Lightfoot, Miscellanies Christian and Judiciall (London, 1629), 182-83.
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God having given man a being after his own image, a glorious excellency, it was man’s natural duty to make suitable returns to the Giver by way of duty, by living and acting for him; even as the waters which originally are from the sea, return to the sea again in brooks and rivers. Man, being of God as his first cause, was required to have God as his chief and ultimate end, Rom. 11.36.
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The punishment of death upon the breach of his commandment touching the forbidden fruit.
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That is, an equitable covenant, fair and reasonable.
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This contradicts the text of Scripture in asserting that Adam was previously forbidden from the Tree of Life; clearly, only the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden (2.17). Adam would have lived forever in the Garden, eating of the Tree of Life, if he had not eaten the forbidden fruit. But lest he live forever in sin, God blocked Adam from eating of the Tree of Life anymore, having made provision for eternal life in the sanctifying blood of Christ.
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The author says that some learned men think so, and that the words of Gen. 3.22 seem to imply as much; but all this does not amount to a positive determination of the point. The words of that verse are these: “Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever,” etc. Whether or not these words seem to imply some such things, I leave to the judgment of the reader, whom I am not inclined to entertain with my own or others’ conjectures on this topic; but three things I take to be plain and beyond conjecture in this text: (1.) That there is no irony or scoffing here, as many think there is; but, on the contrary, a most pathetic lamentation over fallen man. The literal version and sense of the former part of the text runs thus: “Behold the man that was one of us,” etc., compare for the version. Lam. 3.1; Psalm 3.7; and for the sense of it, Gen. 1.26, 27, “And God said. Let us make man in our image. — So God created man in his own image,” etc. The latter part of the text I would read thus, “And eat that he may live forever.” Compare for this version, Exo. 4.23; 1 Sam. 6.8. It is evident the sentence is broken off abruptly; the words, “I will drive him out,” being suppressed; even as in the case of a father, with sighs, sobs, and tears, putting his son out of doors. (2.) That it was God’s design to prevent Adam’s eating of the tree of life, as he had forbidden eatingof the tree, “lest he take also of the tree of life;” thereby mercifully taking care that our fallen father, to whom the Covenant of Grace was now proclaimed, might not, according to the corrupt natural inclination of fallen mankind, run back to the Covenant of Works for life and salvation, by partaking of the tree of life — a sacrament of that covenant — and so reject the Covenant of Grace by eating of that tree now, as he had before broken the Covenant of Works by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (3.) That at this time, Adam thought that by eating of the tree of life, he might live forever. I do not dip further into this matter here.