# Robert Traill on earthly life as the reward of the covenant of works



## Reformed Covenanter (Mar 27, 2021)

We find God making himself known to man (for it is about man we will keep ourselves confined) as a Lord Commander; and as he has made this creature, he will dispose of him as he sees good. He determines the place of his living; he determines his employment; he lays him under law, and gives him a just and righteous command. He made himself known to man as a threatener too: _In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die_.

Ay, but, say you, was there no promise in the first covenant? Truly the word does not say there was any: but if people will needs have it that there was a promise, it is not worthy the name of a promise, in regard of what we have in the New Testament. That promise laboured under woful disadvantages, that we are now relieved from.

_1st, _That promise was a promise of continuance in that happy state he was made in, but no promise of a better. There was no promise of eternal life to the first Adam, as far as we can find in the terms of it. There was no more spoken of, but a continuance in that state: and this is implied in the threatening, _In the day that though eatest thereof, thou shalt die_; which implies, Until the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt live. But we have a promise in the new covenant of a far better state than that we are in. ...

For more, see Robert Traill on earthly life as the reward of the covenant of works.

@Travis Fentiman - here is the source that I mentioned in the other thread. As you will see from the blog post, these sermons were published in 1718, which would have been too late for PvM. There may have been an earlier edition of them, but I can find nothing on EEBO I or II.


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## Travis Fentiman (Mar 27, 2021)

Thanks so much Daniel.

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## brandonadams (Mar 27, 2021)

I believe Rowland Ward also has a section on the various views on this point


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## Travis Fentiman (Mar 28, 2021)

brandonadams said:


> I believe Rowland Ward also has a section on the various views on this point


Are you able to get a reference, Brandon? Only at your convenience.


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## brandonadams (Mar 29, 2021)

It's chapter 14 ("The life promised in the covenant") in Ward's "God and Adams" (at least in the first edition - 2nd is out now). He quotes

William Bucanus, Institutions, 111.
Robert Rollock, A Treatise, 10.
John Ball, A Short Treatise, 67.
John Ball, A Treatise on the Covenant, 10.
William Ames, Marrow, I.X.31 (p.113).
A Body of Divinitie, 125.
John Downame, The Summe of Sacred Divintie, 225-226.
Edward Fisher, The Marrow, 1st ed. 1645, 11-12.
Anthony Burgess, Vindiciae, 136.
Peter Bulkeley, The Gospel-covenant, 55.
Samuel Rutherford, The Covenant of Life Opened, 22.
Francis Roberts, Mysterium, 27; see also Anthony Burgess, Vindiciae, 107-108.
William Bridge, Christ and the Covenant, 61, who quotes the Geneva Bible.

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