The tide of Reformed opinion is that the first covenant God made with Adam was somehow gracious. The grace, it is argued, enters in one or both of two places: 1) God was not bound to offer Adam any reward for his obedience but could have required such obedience from him without any reward. That God chose to offer a reward through a covenant is considered gracious. 2) The reward God offered is so out of proportion to the obedience required that the size of the reward constitutes a further act of grace.

A veritable All-Star team of Reformed heroes have subscribed to one or both of those points, asserting or implying grace in the covenant of works: William Ames, Johannes Cocceius, Frances Turretin, the Westminster Divines[1], John Owen, Thomas Boston, R. L. Dabney, Geerhardus Vos, John Murray, Louis Berkhof, Anthony Hoekema, Sinclair Ferguson, Richard Gaffin. Only a handful — Johannes Heidegger, Herman Witsius, Charles Hodge — hold out against this tide. And Witsius does so after much agonizing. He knows what he's up against.

Read the rest at Several Quick Arguments that the Covenant of Works Is Not Gracious – Bill Baldwin. Though, in my opinion, it is full of entirely false and illogical inferences.  It is the basic honesty and refusal to engage in revisionism that makes the paper stand out as valuable (and virtually an endangered species in “Reformed watchdog” writing today).