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