uld not only continue
unsubdued by us, but subdue us; though our estates and liberties should
continue, not only unrecovered, but quite lost; tho' we should neither
be a rich, nor a free, nor a victorious people; yet if we are an holy
people, we have more than all these, we have all, He is ours, "Who is
all in all." So much of the first general part of the application.

The second is for admonition and caution, in three or four particulars.

1. Take heed of "profaning this covenant," by an unholy life. Remember
you have made a covenant with heaven; then do not live as if you had
made a "covenant with hell or were come to an agreement with death," as
the prophet Isaiah characters those monsters of profaneness. Take heed
also of "corrupting this covenant," by an unholy gloss. Wo be unto those
glossers that corrupt the text, pervert the meaning of these words: who
attempt to expound the covenant by their own practice, and will not
regulate their practice by the covenant. The apostle Peter speaks of
Paul's writings, "That in them some things are hard to be understood,
which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the
other scriptures, to their own destruction." We may fear, that tho' the
text of this covenant be easy to be understood, yet some (who, at least
think themselves learned), and whom we have found not only stable but
stiffened in their own erroneous principles and opinions, will be trying
their skill, if not their malice, to wrest, or, as the Greek imports, to
torture and set this covenant upon the rack, to make it speak and
confess a sense never intended by the composers, or proposers of it: and
whereof (if but common ingenuity be the judge) it never will, nor can be
found guilty. All that I shall say to such is that in the close of the
verse quoted from the apostle Peter, let them take heed such wrestings
be not (worst to themselves, even) to their own destruction.

2. Take heed of delaying to perform the duties of this covenant. Some, I
fear, who have made haste to take the covenant, will take leasure to act
it. It is possible, that a man may make too much haste (when he swears,
before he considers what it is) to take an oath; but, having taken it
upon due consideration, he cannot make too much haste to perform it. "Be
not rash with thy mouth," saith the preacher. That is, do not vow
rashly, but, "When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it: for
He hath no pleasure in fools (slow p