Now, as the stability and everlastingness of God's covenant with His
elect, lies in the strength of the foundation, "His own love, and the
blood of His Son:" so the stability and firmness of our covenant with
God, lies in the strength of this foundation, the securing of the
gospel, and the asserting of gospel-purity in worship, and privileges
in government; the securing of our lives, and the asserting of our
common liberties. When at any time ye can question, and, from the
oracles of truth, be resolved, that these are sufficient grounds of
making a covenant, or that these are not ours, ye may go, and unassure
the covenant which ye make this day.

_Application._ Let me therefore invite you in the words of the prophet
Jeremiah, "Come let us join ourselves to the Lord, in a perpetual
covenant that shall never be forgotten." And do not these look like the
days wherein the prophet calls to the doing of this? "In those days, and
at that time, saith the Lord." What time, and what days were those? the
beginning of the chapter answers. "The word that the Lord spake against
Babylon, declare ye among the nations, and publish, and set up a
standard, publish and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bell is
confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her
images are broken in pieces: for out of the north there cometh up a
nation against her, which shall make her land desolate." Then follows,
"In those days and at that time saith the Lord, the children of Israel
shall come. And they shall ask the way to Zion, with their faces
thitherward saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the Lord, in a
perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten."

Are not these the days, and this the time (I speak not of time to a day,
but of time and days) wherein the Lord speaks against Babylon, and
against the land of the Chaldeans: wherein He saith, "Declare among the
nations, and publish, and set up the standard." Are not these the days,
and this the time, when out of the north there cometh up a nation
against her? As face answers face in the water, so do the events of
these days answer, if not the letter, yet much of the mystery of this
prophecy. There seems wanting only the work which this day is bringing
forth, and a few days more (I hope) will bring unto perfection, the
joining of ourselves in a perpetual covenant, never to be forgotten. It
is very observable, how the prophet, as it were, with one breath saith,
"Babylon