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The identification of the covenant of works as a consequent doctrine surely accounts for the varied terminology (covenant of works, covenant of nature, covenant of creation, covenant of innocency) associated with it and for its absence from some of the major Reformed theological systems of the seventeenth century—just as it accounts for the intimate relationship in which the doctrine of the covenant of works stands with the central soteriological topics in Reformed theology: the Protestant orthodox recognized that a distorted perspective on a logically consequent doctrinal locus could, all too easily, become the basis of a retroactive misconception of a primary or logically prior doctrinal locus.2 This intimate relationship of the covenant of works to the right formulation of other topics in the covenantal or federal Reformed systems was stated succinctly by Brakel at the very end of the seventeenth century