COVENANT (Lat. convenire, to come together), a contract or agreement; a term much used by theologians, and in its ordinary signification, as well as in its theological,use, nearly if not always exactly equivalent to the Hebrew Milk of the Old Testament and the Greek diathike of the New. Applied to relations established between God and men, the term C. must be understood with a certain modification of the meaning which it bears when employed concerning the relations of men to one another, when two independent parties enter into a C., which they have equal right to make or to refuse to make; and is sometimes employed as equivalent to dispensation, and the Jewish dispensation is called the Old C. (or testament, by another translation of diathiki), 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 happiness), upon condition of perfect obedience, whilst death was threatened as the pen alty of transgression; the second C., or C. of grace, being that on which depend 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 may be saved. This C. God is regarded as having made with Christ, as the repre sentative of his people, and with them in him. The older theologians often speak of the C. of redemption between God and Christ, employing the term C. of grace rather to
designate the whole dealings of God with men in giving effect to the C. of redemption; but the term C. of grace has long been almost universally employed to include all that was comprehended under both terms. The Abrahamic 0. is the C. of grace as declared to Abraham, in.its particular relation to him and his seed. God is represented in Scripture as sustaining a C. relation to his own people, to the Jews under the old C., to believers in Christ under the new; and doctrinal theology consists not a little in tracing out the nature of this relation, and the consequences which flow from it. As the people of God collectively sustain a C. relation to him, so do believers individually; and it has not been an uncommon thing for pious persons to endeaver to reduce to writing their sense of this "C. obligation," under the notion of a personal covenanting with God; and of binding themselves by a stronger obligation to what they believed to be good and their duty. It has also been common for men, from the earliest ages, to enter into covenants with one another with more or less of religious solemnity; and this has in particular been done among those who have suffered persecution, or have been engaged in contests concerning matters of religion, for which the authority of certain passages of the Old Testament is strongly pleaded. Instances occur in the history of the Waldenses, and of some of the reformed churches, particularly in the history of the reformation in Scotland. But the most memorable covenants in Scottish ecclesiastical history belong to a period subsequent to the reformation.