because fathers make testaments or wills without
the consent of their children, and these are called dispositions of
estates. Their definition of the term also makes the "Covenant" depend
upon the will of man, for covenants, in the sense of agreements, have
nothing to do with those who do not enter into them. Neither can men be
regarded as transgressing a covenant, in the sense of an agreement, unless
they have first placed themselves under its obligations. So, if these men
are right in their definition of the Old Covenant, they are wrong in
trying to fasten its conditions upon all mankind. Their logic also
excludes, from all the promises of the covenant, all those who were
incapable of making an agreement. Hence, infants were left to the
uncovenanted mercies of God. And as for the wicked, who never agreed to
keep those commandments, poor souls! they must be dealt with as violators
of a contract to which they never became a party.

These absurdities, which are legitimately drawn from their own premises,
drive us to the conclusion that their whole theory, upon the covenant
question, is wrong. The apostle Paul says we are the children of a
covenant, which he denominates "The free woman." "She is the mother of us
all." But, according to Sabbatarian logic, they are the children of two
covenants, or women. How is this? One good mother is sufficient. When they
tell you that the old covenant, which was done away, was the people's
agreement to keep the ten commandments, remember that they, by their own
showing, set up the same old covenant by agreeing to keep the ten
commandments. So it is done away, and it is not done away. That is, if the
people say, "We will keep and do them," it is established, but if they
say, "We will not," it is abolished. Again, if it was the people's
agreement that was done away, and the ten commandments were the conditions
of that agreement, then they also are of no force, for the conditions of
an agreement are always void when the contract is nullified. Again, if the
Lord had nothing to do in causing the Old Covenant to be done away, how
did it pass away by the action of one party to it? And how can men enter
into it without the concurring assent of the party of the second part?
Accept the Sabbatarian definition of the term covenant, and it
legitimately follows that none were ever in that covenant save those who
held converse with Jehovah, through Moses, saying, "All these things will
we observe and d