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The Philadelphia Confession, 1742
The distance between God and the
creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as
their Creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life, but by some
voluntary condescension on God's part, which He hath been pleased to express, by way of
covenant.1
Moreover, man having brought himself
under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace,2 wherein He freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by
Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him, that they might be saved;3 and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto
eternal life, His Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.4
This covenant is revealed in the gospel
first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman,5 and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery
thereof was completed in the New Testament;6 and it is founded
in that eternal covenant transaction that was between the Father and the Son about the
redemption of the elect;7 and it is alone by the grace of this
covenant that all of the posterity of fallen Adam, that ever were saved did obtain life
and blessed immortality; man being now utterly incapable of acceptance with God upon those
terms on which Adam stood in his state of innocency.8
Footnotes:
1. Lk 17:10; Job 35:7-8.
2. Ge 2:17; Gal.3:10; Ro 3:20-21.
3. Ro 8:3; Mk 16:15-16; Jn 3:16.
4. Eze 36:26-27; Jn 6:44-45; Ps 110:3.
5. Ge 3:15.
6. Heb 1:1.
7. 2Ti 1:9; Tit 1:2.
8. Heb 11:6,13; Ro 4:1-2; Ac 4:12; Jn 8:56.
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