tude. 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.

_Answ._ 1. It cannot be done too oft; if it be done according to the law
and order of so solemn an ordinance. 2. The people in the text might
have made the same objection; it lay as strong against the work, to
which they encourage one another: for surely, this was not the first
time they engaged themselves to God by way of covenant; but having
broken their former covenants, they thought it their privilege, and not
their burden to renew it again, and to make it more full, stable, and
impregnable than ever; "a perpetual covenant that shall not be