Covenant

(küv'e-nunt.) (From L. convenio, I agree with.] (Law.) An engagement in writing, under seal, to do or omit a direct act:- these are of several kinds. The party who makes the agreement is termed the covenant or; he to whom it is made, the covenant ee. (Theol.) As applied to relations established between God and man, the term C. is sometimes employed as equivalent to dispensation; and the Jewish dispensation is called the Old C. (or testament, by another translation of diathēkē), in contradistinction to the Christian, which is called the New. God, in his supremacy, is regarded as appointing certain conditions for his creatures, which they cannot but accept, yet their willing consent to these conditions gives to the relation established the nature of a C.; and thus God is commonly said to have made two covenants with man: the first C., or C. of Works, with Adam, as the representative of the whole human race, promising life (with perfect happine ), upon condition of perfect obedience, whilst death was threatened as the penalty of transgre ion; the second C., or C. of Grace, being that on which depends the whole hope and salvation of man, since the first C. was broken, and in which life is freely offered to sinners, and they are simply required to believe in Jesus Christ that they maybe saved. This C. Godis Cowlitz, regarded as having made with Christ, as the representative of his people, and with them in him. The Abrahamic C. is the C. of Grace as declared to Abraham, in its particular relation to him and his seed.(Hist.) The Solemn League and Covenant was the title given by the Scots Presbyterian body of religionists to a solemn enunciation of their doctrines of faith and a repudiation of episcopacy, declared by the A embly of Divines, 1613, and signed by Charles II., under compulsion, 1650. The C. was ordered by the House of Commons, in 1661, to be burned by the common hangman, and in the same year it was condemned by the Scottish Parliament. A great body of Puritan fanatics, however, refused to abjure its principles, and accordingly suffered many persecutions till the establishment of freedom of conscience by the revolution of 1688. Much of the old covenanting spirit exists among the modern sect who call themselves Came rom i ans. [s. 239]