Therefore, (3) the covenant of God with all mankind through Christ, is a living, operative covenant of life and immortality, not first begun, or first made known, when Christ was on earth, and died for us, but a covenant as antient as our first parents, as universal as their offspring. And what the apostle saith, that _God was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world unto himself_, tells us a truth and goodness of God, that extends itself to every nation, people, and language, that ever hath been, or ever shall be upon the face of the earth. * And as an implicit faith in a promised redemption was all the religion of the old world; all that could be done by the infinite wisdom of God, was according to the fitness of times, seasons and occasions (only known to himself) to give forth such typical and prophetic intimations of this redemption, as should more and more confirm their faith, and prepare them to see, that the whole process of Christ, when finished, was that very redemption first promised to all the world, in the promise made to the common Father of mankind, through succeeding ages kept constantly in view, by a train of types and prophecies. * And as the history and ritual of _Moses_, could not possibly design to take away the knowledge of any divine truths from the people of God, so least of all could they designedly hide from them a belief of the natural immortality of the soul: a truth absolutely necessary and essential to any spiritual relation, or religious communion between God and man. * And indeed, _Moses_, is as free from any such _design_, as the apostles themselves. * For to say, that the types of the law have designedly hid, from the people of God, all sense of the immortality of the soul, is as false, as bold and extravagant, as to say the same thing of the gospel. For in the New Testament, not a word is to be found, that expressly affirms the soul to be naturally immortal; in this respect the law and the gospel are equally silent; and yet neither of them secrete, or hide it from the people of God, but both fully prove, and with the same kind of proof, the absolute necessity of believing it. For as in the gospel it is never expressly asserted, and yet is fully proved, because unavoidably supposed, and necessarily implied in and by the open, and plain doctrines of the gospel: so it is with the books of _Moses_; they never expressly affirm the natural immortality of the soul, and yet give one, and the same full proof of it, as the gospel doth. Because the express doctrines of every dispensation of God, from _Adam_ to Christ, openly teach doctrines, which not by inference, but in the plain nature of the thing, unavoidably require, and necessarily imply, the immortality of the soul, and the common belief of it in all ages of the church before the coming of Christ.