Part 18

4. Walk cheerfully. So it becomes those that have God so near them. Such, even in their sorrows, should be like Paul, "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." The (as) notes not a counterfeiting of sorrow, but the overcoming of sorrow. On this ground David resolves against the fear of evil, tho' he should see nothing but evil; "Tho' I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me." In a covenant, God and man meet; He is with us who is more than all that are against us: and when He is with us, who can be against us? For then all things, and all persons, even while (to the utmost of their skill and power) they set themselves against us, work for us; and should not we rejoice? If we knew that every loss were our gain, every wound our healing, every disappointment our success, every defeat our victory, would we not rejoice? Do but know what it is to be in covenant with God; and be sad, be hopeless, if you can. It is to have the strength and counsels of heaven engaged for you; it is to have Him for you, "Whose foolishness is wiser than men, and whose weakness is stronger than men." It is to have Him with you, "who doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, what doest thou?" It is to have Him with you, "who frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh the diviners mad, who turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish." It is to have Him with you, before whom "the nations are as the drop of a bucket, and as the dust of the balance, who taketh up the isles as a very little thing." In a word, it is to have Him with you, "who fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might, He increaseth strength." This God is our God, our God in covenant; "This is our beloved and this is our Friend, O daughters of Jerusalem." And shall we not rejoice? Shall we not walk cheerfully? Tho' there be nothing but trouble before our eyes, yet our hearts should live in those upper regions, which are above storms and tempests, above rain and winds, above the noise and confusions of the world. Why should sorrow sit clouded in our faces, or any darkness be in our hearts, while we are in the shine and light of God's countenance? It is said, "That all Judah rejoiced at the oath; for they had sworn with all their heart:" If we have sworn heartily, we shall rejoice heartily. And for ever banish base fears, and killing sorrows from our hearts; and wipe them from our faces. They, who have unworthy fears in their hearts, give too fair an evidence that they did not swear with their hearts.

5. Walk humbly and dependently; rejoice, but be not secure. Trust to God in covenant, not to your covenant. Make not your covenant your Christ; no, not for this temporal salvation. As a horse trusted to, is a vain thing to save a man, so likewise is a covenant trusted to; neither can it deliver a nation by its great strength: tho' indeed the strength of it be greater than the strength of many horses. "In vain is salvation hoped for from this hill, or from a multitude of mountains," heaped up and joined in one by the bond of this covenant. Surely in the Lord our God, our God in covenant, is the salvation of England. We cannot trust too much in God, nor too little in the creature; there is nothing breaks the staff of our help, but our leaning upon it. If we trust in our covenant, we have not made it with God, but we have made it a god; and every god of man's making, is an idol, and so nothing in the world: you see, pride in, or trust to this covenant will make it an idol, and then in doing all this, we have done nothing; for "an idol is nothing in the world." And of nothing, comes nothing. By overlooking to the means, we lose all; and by all our travail shall bring forth nothing but wind: it will not work any deliverance in the land. Wherefore, "rest not in the thing done, but get up, and be doing," which is the last point, and my last motion about your walking in covenant.

6. Walk industriously and diligently in this covenant. You were counselled before to stand to the covenant, but take heed of standing in it. Stand, as that is opposed to defection; but if you stand as that is opposed to action, you are at the next door to falling. A total neglect is little better than total apostasy.

We have made a perpetual covenant, never to be forgotten, as was shewed out of the prophet. It is a rule, that words in scripture, which express only an act of memory, include action and endeavours. When the young man is warned to "remember his Creator in the days of his youth," he is also charged to love, and to obey Him. And while we say, this covenant is never to be forgotten; we mean, the duties of it are ever to be pursued, and, to the utmost of our power, fulfilled. As soon as it is said that Josiah made all the people stand to the covenant; the very next words are, "and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers." They stood to it, but they did not, like those, "stand all the day idle;" they fell to work presently. And so let us. Having laid this foundation, a sure covenant, now let us arise and build, and let our hands be strong. Do not think that all is done, when this solemnity is done, It is a sad thing to observe how some, when they have lifted up their hands, and written down their names, think presently their work is over. They think, now surely they have satisfied God and man for they have subscribed the covenant.

I tell you, nay, for when you have done taking the covenant, then your work begins. When you have done taking the covenant, then you must proceed to acting the covenant. When an apprentice has subscribed his name, and sealed his indentures, doth he then think his service is ended? No, then he knows his service doth begin. It is so here. We are all sealing the indentures of a sacred and noble apprenticeship to God, to these churches and commonwealths; let us then go to our work, as bound, yet free. Free to our work, not from it; free in our work, working from a principle of holy ingenuity, not of servility, or constraint. The Lord threatens them with bondage and captivity, who will not be servants in their covenant, with readiness and activity. "I, saith the Lord, will give the men that have transgressed My covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant, which they had made before Me, when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof; the princes of Judah, and the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, and the priests, and all the people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf, I will even give them into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of them that seek their life, and their dead bodies shall be meat to the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the earth." Words that need no rhetoric to press them, nor any comment to explain them: they are so plain, that every one may understand them; and so severe, that every one, who either transgresses, or performs not, who doeth any thing against, or nothing for the words of this covenant, hath just cause to tremble at the reading of them: I am sure, to feel them will make him tremble. Seeing then our princes, our magistrates, our ministers, and our people, have freely consented to, written, and sworn this covenant; let us all in our several places, be up and doing, that the Lord may be with us; not sit still and do nothing, and so cause the Lord to turn against us.

You that are for consultation, go to counsel; you that are for execution, go on to acting; you that are for exhorting the people in this work, attend to exhortation; you that are soldiers, draw your swords; you that have estates, draw your purses; you that have strength of body, lend your hands; and all you that have honest hearts, lend your prayers, your cries, your tears, for the prosperous success of this great work. And the Lord prosper the works of all our hands, the Lord prosper all our handy-works. _Amen._

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.

SERMON AT LONDON.

_BY THOMAS CASE_[13]

"And I will bring a sword upon you that shall avenge the quarrel of My covenant."--_Lev._ xxvi. 25.

Since covenant-violation is a matter of so high a quarrel as for the avenging whereof, God sends a sword upon a church or nation: for which, it is more than probable, the sword is upon us at this present, it having almost devoured Ireland already, and eaten up a great part of England also, let us engage our council, and all the interest we have in heaven and earth, for the taking up of this controversy; let us consider what we have to do, what way there is yet left us, for the reconciling of this quarrel, else we, and our families, are but the children of death and destruction: this sword that is drawn, and devoured so much Christian protestant flesh already, will, it is to be feared, go quite thro' the land, and, in the pursuit of this quarrel, cut off the remnant, till our land be so desolate, and our cities waste, and England be made as Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of the fierce anger of Jehovah.

Somewhat I have spoken already in the former use, to this purpose viz. "To acknowledge our iniquities that we have transgressed against the Lord our God." To get our hearts broken, for breaking the covenant; to lay it so to heart, that God may not lay it to our charge. But this looks backward. Somewhat must be done, _de futuro_: for time to come: that may not only compose the quarrel, but lay a sure foundation of an after peace between God and the kingdom. And for that purpose, a mean lies before us; an opportunity is held forth unto us by the hand of divine wisdom and goodness, of known use and success among the people of God in former times; which is yet to me a gracious intimation, and a farther argument of hope from heaven, that God has not sworn against us in His wrath, nor sealed us up a people devoted to destruction, but hath yet a mind to enter into terms of peace and reconciliation with us, to receive us into grace and favour, to become our God, and to own us for His people; if yet, we will go forth to meet Him, and accept of such honourable terms as shall be propounded to us: and that is, by renewing our covenant with Him; yea, by entering into a more full and firm covenant than ever heretofore. For, as the quarrel was raised about the covenant, so it must be a covenant more solid and substantial, that must compose the quarrel, as I shall show you hereafter. And that is the service and the privilege that lies before us; the work of the next day. So that, me-thinks, I hear this use of exhortation, which now I would commend unto you speaking unto us in that language; "Come, let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten." It is the voice of the children of Israel, and the children of Judah, returning out of captivity. "The children of Israel shall come, they, and the children of Judah together; seeking the Lord," whom they had lost, and inquiring the way to Zion; from whence their idolatry and adulteries had cast them out; themselves become now like the doves of the valley, mourning and weeping, because they had perverted their way, and forgotten the Lord their God. "Going and weeping they shall go, and seek the Lord their God. They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward." And if you inquire when this should be? The fourth verse tells you, in those days. And if you ask again, what days those are? Interpreters will tell us of a threefold day, wherein this prophecy or promise is to be fulfilled; that is, the literal or inchoative, evangelical or spiritual, universal or perfect day.

The first day is a literal or inchoative day, here prophesied of, and that is already past, past long since; viz., in that day wherein the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity expired; then was this prophecy or promise begun in part to be accomplished: at what time the captivity of Judah, and divers of Israel with them, upon their return out of Babylon, kept a solemn fast at the river "Ahava, to afflict their souls before their God." There may you see them going and weeping, "to seek of Him a right way for them, and their little ones." There you have them seeking the Lord, and inquiring the way to Zion with their faces thitherward. And when they came home, you may hear some of their nobles and priests, calling upon them to enter into covenant; so Shechaniah spake unto Ezra, the princes, and the people, "We have sinned against the Lord, ... yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God." And so you may find the Levites calling the people to confess their sins with weeping and supplications, in a day of humiliation, and at the end of it, to write, and swear, and seal a covenant with "the Lord their God." This was the first day wherein this prophecy began to be fulfilled, in the very letter thereof.

The second day is the evangelical day, wherein this promise is fulfilled in a gospel or spiritual sense; namely, when the elect of God, of what nation or language soever, being all called the Israel of God, as is prophesied, "One shall say, I am the Lord's; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob, ... and surname himself by the name of Israel." I say, when these in their several generations and successions shall turn to the Lord their God, either from their Gentilism and paganism, as in their first conversion to Christianity; as Tertullian observes after the resurrection of Christ, and the mission of the Holy Ghost; _Aspice exinde universas nationes ex veragine erroris humani emergentes ad Dominum Deum, et ad Dominum Christum ejus_. From that day forward, you might behold poor creatures of all nations and languages, creeping out of their dark holes and corners of blindness and idolatry, and betaking them to God and His Son Jesus Christ, as to their Law-giver and Saviour; or else turning from Antichristian superstition, and false ways of worship, as in the after and more full conversion of churches or persons purging themselves more and more, from the corruptions and mixtures of popery and superstitions, according to the degree of light and conviction, which should break out upon them, and asking the way to Zion, _i.e._, the pure way of gospel worship, according to the fuller and clearer manifestations and revelations of the mind of Christ in the gospel. This was fulfilled in Luther's time, and in all those after separations which any of the churches have made from Rome, and from those relics and remains of superstition and will-worship, wherewith themselves and the ordinances of Jesus Christ have been denied.

The third day wherein this prophecy or promise is to be made good, is that universal day, wherein both Jew and Gentile shall be converted unto the Lord. That day of the restitution of all things, as some good divines conceive when "ten men out of all languages of the nations, shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you; for we have heard that God is with you." And to what purpose is more fully expressed in the former verses, answering the prophecy in the text. "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, it shall come to pass, that there shall come people, and the inhabitants of many cities: and the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily to pray before the Lord, and to seek the Lord of Hosts; I will go also. Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of Hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord."

This I call the universal day, because, as you see, there shall be such an abundance of confluence of cities, and people, and nations, combining together in an holy league and covenant, to seek the Lord. And a perfect day, because the mind and will of the Lord shall be fully revealed and manifested to the saints, concerning the way of worship and government in the churches. The new Jerusalem, _i.e._ the perfect, exact, and punctual model of the government of Christ in the churches, shall then be let down from Heaven. "The light of the moon being then to be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound."

By what hath been spoken, you may perceive under which of these days we are: past indeed the first, but not yet arrived at the third day; and therefore under the second day, that evangelical day; yet so, as if all the three days were met together in ours, while it seems to me, that we are upon the dawning of the third day: and this prophecy falling so pat, and full upon our times, as if we were not got beyond the literal; a little variation will do it. The children of Israel, and the children of Judah: Scotland and England, newly coming out of Babylon, antichristian Babylon, papal tyranny and usurpations, in one degree or other, going and weeping in the days of their solemn humiliations, bewailing their backslidings and rebellions, to seek the Lord their God, to seek pardon and reconciliation, to seek His face and favour, not only in the continuance, but in the more full and sweet influential manifestations of His presence among them; and to that end, asking the way to Zion with their faces thitherward; that is, inquiring after the pure way of gospel worship, with full purpose of heart; that when God shall reveal His mind to them, they will conform themselves to His mind according to that blessed prophecy and promise, "He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths." And that they may make all sure, that they may secure God and themselves against all future apostasies and backslidings, calling one upon another, and echoing back one to another: "Come, let us join ourselves to the Lord, in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten."

You see by this time I have changed my text, tho' not my project; to which purpose I shall remember that, in the handling of these words, I must not manage my discourse, as if I were to make a new entire sermon upon the text, but only to improve the happy advantages it holds forth, for the pursuit and driving on of my present use of exhortation. Come, let us join. To this end therefore, from these words, I will propound and endeavour to satisfy these three queries, 1. What? 2. Why? 3. How?

I. What the duty is, to which they mutually stir up one another?

II. Why, or upon what considerations?

III. How, or in what manner this service is to be performed? And in all these you shall see what proportion the text holds with the times. The duty in our text, with the duty in our hands, pressing them on still in an exhortatory way.

For the first. What the duty is?

_Answ._ You see that in the text; it is to join themselves to the Lord, by a solemn covenant; and so is that which we have now in our hands, to join ourselves to the Lord by a covenant; how far they correspond, will appear in the sequel. This is the first and main end of a covenant between God and His people, as I have shewed you, "to join themselves to the Lord. The sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord, and take hold of His covenant."

This, I say, is the first and main end of the covenant in the text: the second is subordinate unto it; namely, to inquire the way to Zion, _i.e._, to inquire the way and manner, how God would be worshipped; that they might dishonour and provoke Him no more, by their idolatries and superstitions, which had been brought in upon the ordinances of God, by the means of apostate kings, and priests, and prophets, as in Jeroboam's and Ahab's reigns, and for which they had been carried into captivity.

And such is the covenant that lies before us: in the first place, as I say, to join ourselves to the Lord, to be knit inseparably unto Him, that He may be our God, and we may be His people. And in the next place, as subservient hereunto, to ask the way to Zion; to inquire and search by all holy means, sanctified to that purpose, what is that pure way of gospel worship; that we and our children after us may worship the God of spirits, the God of truth, in spirit, and in truth. In spirit opposed to carnal ways of will-worship, and inventions of men; and in truth, opposed to false hypocritical shews and pretences, since the Father seeks such to worship Him.

Now, that this is the main scope and aim of this covenant before us, will appear, if you read and ponder it with due consideration; I will therefore read it to you distinctly, this evening, besides the reading of it again to-morrow, when you come to take it; and when I have read it, I will answer the main and most material objections, which seem to make it inconsistent with these blessed ends and purposes. Attend diligently while I read it to you.

(The covenant was then read.)

This brethren, is the covenant before us; to which God and His parliament do invite us this day; wherein the ends propounded lie fair to every impartial eye.

The first article in this covenant, binding us to the reformation of religion; and the last article, to the reformation of our lives. In both, we join ourselves to the Lord, and swear to ask and receive from His lips the law of this reformation. Truly, this is a why, as well as a what, (that I may a little prevent myself) a motive of the first magnitude. Oh! for a people or person to be joined unto the Lord; to be made one with the most high God of heaven and earth, before whom and to whom we swear, is a privilege of unspeakable worth and excellency. "Seemeth it (said David once to Saul's servants) a small thing in your eyes, to be son-in-law to a king," seeing I am a poor man? Seemeth it, may I say, a small thing to you, for poor creatures to be joined, and married, as it were, to the great God, the living God; who are so much worse than nothing, by how much sin is worse than vanity? yea, to be one with Him as Christ saith in that heavenly prayer of His; as He and His Father are one. "That they may be one, as Thou Father art in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in us." And again, "that they may be one, even as we are one." Yea, perfect in one; not indeed, in the perfection of that unity, but in unity of that perfection; not made perfect in a perfection of equality, but of conformity.

This is the fruit of a right managed covenant; and the greatest honour that poor mortality is capable of. Moses stands admiring of it. You may read the place at your leisure. But, against this blessed service and truth, are there mustered and led up an whole regiment of objections, under the conduct of the father of lies; though some of them may seem to have some shadow of truth; and therefore so much the more carefully to be examined. I shall deal only with some of the chief commanders of them, if they be conquered the rest will vanish of their own accord.

OBJECTIONS PROPOUNDED AND ANSWERED.

_Object._ 1. If this were the end of this service, yet it were needless: since we have done it over and over again, in our former protestations and covenants; and so this repetition may seem to be a profanation of so holy an ordinance, by making of it so ordinary, and nothing else, but a taking of God's name in vain. To this I answer.