After this, however, a great subject opens before us. "With thee will I establish my covenant" had been God’s word to Noah, before the ark was made, or the waters had come. vi. 18. Now that the judgment is past, and the new earth is inherited, that covenant is fully detailed, as well as pledged again to God’s elect. ix. 8-17. And it is here that the word "covenant" is first used. The covenants of which we read in Scripture are all specific, having their parties and their objects well defined and plainly declared. There is no mistaking of them. Whether it be this covenant of the earth with Noah, the covenant with Abraham and his seed, the covenant of priesthood with Phinehas, or that of the throne with David, all is defined--the parties are declared and the objects set forth. Nor do these, nor any of them, I surely judge, contemplate the peculiar calling of the Church. Spiritual calling in heavenly places, and the results of oneness with Christ, are neither described nor conveyed by them. But the Scriptures of the New Testament abundantly declare a _purpose_, or a counsel, of God according to the good pleasure of His will; a mystery hid in God, before the foundation of the world, in which the Church is directly interested. See Romans xvi. 25; 1 Cor. ii. 7; Eph. i. 9; iii. 8-11; Col. i. 26; 1 Tim. ii. 9. The inquiry may arise, Does this purpose or counsel take the form of a covenant? Let us call it covenant, or simply a purpose taken of God; still the great and holy and august transaction itself is richly found in the New Testament. But has it, we may still ask, the character of a covenant? I would not be careful to say that it is ever called so; but I believe we may say, that many things of a covenant nature are intimated as attaching to it. Promises are made, consideration or price contemplated, arrangements formed and fixed, and all this as between distinct parties. "In the volume of the book it is written of Me"--"I was set up from everlasting"--and such words of deepest and holiest import have their place in settling these thoughts that arise. And not only were our election, and appointment to our peculiar glory, as in predestination, matters before the world (Rom. viii. 28, 29; Eph. i. 4, 5; 1 Peter i. 2), but we were then formally or virtually given by the Father to Christ. John vi. 37, 39; x. 29; xvii. 1, 6, 8, 9, 11. And eternal life is declared to have been promised before the world was--language which intimates Christ as a party to a blessed transaction then, and one that has covenant character in it. Titus i. 2.