"Wee have confuted the false differences, and now come to lay downe the true, between the law and the Gospel taken in a larger sense.

     And, first, you must know that the difference is not essential, or substantiall, but accidentall: so that the division of the Testament, or Covenant into the Old, and New, is not a division of the Genus into its opposite Species; but of the subject, according to its severall accidentall administrations, both on Gods part, and on mans.  It is true, the Lutheran Divines, they doe expresly oppose the Calvinists herein, maintaining the Covenant given by Moses, to be a Covenant of workes, and so directly contrary to the Covenant of grace.  Inded, they acknowledge that  the Fathers were justified by Christ, and had the same way of salvation with us; onely they make that Covenant of Moses to be a superadded thing to the Promise, holding forth a condition of perfect righteousness unto the Jewes, that they might be convinced of their owne folly in their self-righteousnesse."  (Vindication of the Morall Law, 241)

 

Notice how Burgess defines the views that are characteristic of Calvinistic and Lutheran divines.  In our opinion, this whole debate is better understood when we look not at what one or two individual theologians might say about a given topic, but what is characteristic of a given tradition.  Clearly, at least for Burgess, it is characterstic of Lutheran theology to see the Mosaic covenant as a covenant of works, and it is characterstic of Calvinistic theology to see it as a covenant of grace.