1. In general, God will have man to receive life or death as an accepter and keeper, or a refuser or breaker, of his covenant, because he will do it not only as a Benefactor, or absolute Lord, but also as a Governor, and will make his covenant to be also his law, and his promise and benefits to promote obedience; and because he will deal with man as with a free agent, and not as with a brute that hath no choosing and refusing power, conducted by reason: man's life and death shall be in his own hands, and still depend upon his own will; though God will secure his own dominion, interest, and ends, and put nothing out of his own power by putting it into man's; nor have ever the less his own will, by leaving man to his own will. God will at last, as a righteous Judge, determine all the world to their final joy or punishment, according to their own choice while they were in the flesh, and according to what they have done in the body, whether it be good or evil, Matt. xxv. Therefore he will deal with us on covenant terms. 2. And he hath chosen to rule and judge men according to a covenant of grace, by a Redeemer, and not according to a rigorous law of works, that his goodness and mercy may be the fullier manifested to the sons of men; and that it may be easier for men to love him, when they have so wonderful demonstrations of his love; and so that their service here, and their work and happiness hereafter, may consist of love, to the glory of his goodness, and the pleasure of his love for ever. [Sidenote: External baptism, what.] _Direct._ III. Next understand rightly the nature, use, and end of baptism. Baptism is to the mutual covenant between God and man, what the solemnization of marriage is to them that do before consent; or what the listing a soldier by giving him colours, and writing his name, is to one that consented before to be a soldier.[39] In my "Universal Concord," p. 29, 30, I have thus described it: Baptism is a holy sacrament instituted by Christ, in which a person professing the christian faith (or the infant of such) is baptized in water into the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost, in signification and solemnization of the holy covenant, in which as a penitent believer (or the seed of such) he giveth up himself (or is by the parent given up) to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, forsaking the devil, the world, and the flesh, and is solemnly entered a visible member of Christ and his church, a pardoned, regenerate child of God, and an heir of heaven. [Sidenote: Complete baptism, what it is.]