he price which the true God puts
upon those things which He freely gives. To consent to this covenant, to
wish well to this covenant, to speak well of this covenant, come not up
to the price; you must do these, and you must do more, you must be
doing, so the promise of every man for himself runs, I will through the
grace of God endeavour. Yet every endeavour is not current money,
payable as the price of this covenant: there must be a threefold stamp
upon it. Unless it bear the image and superscription of sincerity,
reality, and constancy, it will not be accepted. For so the promise
runs, "I will sincerely, really, and constantly endeavour."

Neither yet is this all. Such endeavours are virtually money; but as
this covenant calls also for money formally, as the price of it, he that
really endeavours after such ends, as here are proposed, must not only
be at the cost of his pains, but also at the cost of his purse for the
attainment of them. He must open his hand to give and to lend as well as
to work and labour. Unless a man be free of his purse as well as of his
pains, he bides not up to the demands of this covenant, nor pays up to
his own promise when he entered into it. Can that man be said really to
endeavour the maintenance of a cause while he lets it starve? or, to
strengthen it while he keeps the sinews of it close shut up? Would he
have the chariot move swiftly, who only draws but will not oil the
wheels? Know then and consider it that the cost you must be at is both
in your labours and in your estates. The engagement runs to both these:
and to more than both these.

The covenant engages us not only to do but to suffer, not only to
endeavour but to endure. Such is the tenor of the sixth article where
every man promises for himself that he will not suffer himself to be
withdrawn from this blessed Union by any terrors. If not by any terror,
then not by any losses, imprisonments, torments, no, nor by death, that
king of terrors. You see, then, that the price of this covenant may be
the price of blood, of liberty, and of life. Sit down and consider. Are
you willing to be at this cost to build the tower? Through the goodness
of God in ordering these great affairs, you may never come actually to
pay down so much, haply, not half so much, but except you resolve (if
called and put to it by the real exigencies of this cause) to pay down
the utmost farthing, your spirits are too narrow and your hearts too low
for the hono