Brakel makes a distinction within Israel, but he does not make that distinction into a second covenant of salvation.
That is the core of his answer to the idea that Sinai, alongside the covenant of grace, would form a separate external, national and typical covenant.
Why that idea is attractive
The Sinaitic administration is strikingly bodily and national: a concrete people, promises of land, blood, sacrifices, priests, tabernacle, civil laws and visible signs. Moreover, it appears from history that many are unbelieving. It is therefore obvious to ask whether all these outward elements together formed a separate covenant.
Brakel answers: no. The outward forms are, according to him, bound to the spiritual reality to which they point. The ceremonial service looks to Christ; the promises contain not only bodily goods but also the spiritual goods of the covenant of grace.
An external relationship is real nonetheless
Yet Brakel does not deny the visible covenant relationship. All Israel enters the covenant outwardly. That is why Scripture can also call the people faithless toward the covenant. But Brakel then makes a distinction: many do this only with the mouth; where faith, knowledge and love are lacking, there is no saving indwelling in the covenant of grace.
This is a difficult part of his system. On the one hand he speaks of a real external relationship of the people to God. On the other hand he reserves full participation in the covenant of grace for believers. We should not smooth that tension away.
Why no second covenant?
Because Brakel does not detach the visible administration from its Messianic goal. Moses is for him not a second mediator of salvation alongside Christ. The sacrifices, cleansings and sanctuary service receive their meaning precisely because they look to the coming Messiah.
That is why he can say that a purely external description of Sinai is insufficient. The New Testament, too, after all, has outward preaching, water, bread and wine, bodily confession and concrete community. Outwardness in itself still proves no other covenant of salvation.
Now comes the law
After the covenant, the law follows in Exodus 20. Brakel urges that this order not be reversed. The next article is therefore about one of his most striking formulations: the law is "a rule for the confederates."