Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
... To engage in such a covenant with the rational creature, formed after the divine image, is entirely worthy of, and by no means unbecoming of God. For it was impossible, but God should propose himself to the rational creature, as a pattern of holiness, in conformity to which he ought to frame himself and all his actions, carefully keeping, and always exerting the activity of that original righteousness, which he was, from his very origin, endowed with. God cannot but bind man to love, worship, and seek him, as the chief good: nor is it conceivable, how God should require man to love and seek him, and yet refuse to be found by man, loving, seeking, and esteeming him as his chief good, longing, hungering, and thirsting after him alone.
Who can conceive it to be worthy of God, that he should thus say to man: I am willing that thou seekest me only, but on condition of never finding me; to be ardently longed for above every thing else with the greatest hunger and thirst, but yet never to be satisfied. And the justice of God no less requires, that man, upon rejecting the happiness offered on the most equitable terms, should be punished with the privation of it, and likewise incur the severest indignation of God, whom he has despised. Whence it appears, that, from the very consideration of the divine perfections, it may be fairly deduced, that he has prescribed a certain law to man, as the condition of enjoying happiness, which consists in the fruition of God; enforced with the threatening of a curse against the rebel. In which we have just now said, that the whole of the covenant consisted. ...
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reformedcovenanter.wordpress.com
Who can conceive it to be worthy of God, that he should thus say to man: I am willing that thou seekest me only, but on condition of never finding me; to be ardently longed for above every thing else with the greatest hunger and thirst, but yet never to be satisfied. And the justice of God no less requires, that man, upon rejecting the happiness offered on the most equitable terms, should be punished with the privation of it, and likewise incur the severest indignation of God, whom he has despised. Whence it appears, that, from the very consideration of the divine perfections, it may be fairly deduced, that he has prescribed a certain law to man, as the condition of enjoying happiness, which consists in the fruition of God; enforced with the threatening of a curse against the rebel. In which we have just now said, that the whole of the covenant consisted. ...
For more, see:
Herman Witsius on the reasonability of the covenant of works
X. The covenant [of works] does, on the part of God, comprise three things in general. 1st. A promise of consummate happiness in eternal life. 2dly. A designation and prescription of the condition,…
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