ourse Himself; who, when He pleases to become the
God of any people or person, it is by covenant; as with Abraham,
"Behold, I make a covenant with thee." And whatever mercies He bestows
upon them, it is by covenant. All the blessings of God's people are
covenant blessings: to wicked men, God gives with His left hand, out of
the basket of common providence; but to His saints, He dispenseth with
His right hand, out of the ark of the covenant. "I will make an
everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David."

Yea, which is yet more to our purpose, when the first covenant proved
not, but miscarried, not by any fault that was in the Covenant-Maker,
no, nor simply in the covenant itself; for, if man could have kept it,
it would have given him life; I say, when it was broken, God makes a new
covenant with His people. "Not according to the covenant which I made
with their fathers, which My covenant they brake.... But this shall be
the covenant, ... I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it
in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be My people."
Because they could not keep the first covenant, God made a second that
should keep them. Oh! that while we are making a covenant with our God,
He would please to make such a covenant with us; so would it be indeed a
"perpetual covenant, that should not be forgotten." Well, you see we
have a covenanting God, a covenant-making God, and a covenant-renewing
God; be we "followers of God, as dear children:" let us be a covenanting
people, a covenant making, a covenant-renewing people; and as our God,
finding fault with the first, let us make a "new covenant, even a
perpetual covenant, that shall never be forgotten."

A _fifth_ motive to quicken us to this duty, may be even the practice of
the Antichristian state and kingdom; popery hath been dexterous to
propagate and spread itself by this means. What else have been all their
fraternities and brotherhoods, and societies, but so many associations
and combinations politic, compacted and obliged, by oaths and covenants,
for the advancing of the Catholic cause, whereby nations and kingdoms
have been subdued to the obedience of the Roman mitre? And prelacy (that
whelp) hath learned this policy of its mother papacy (that lioness) to
corroborate and raise itself to that height, we have seen and suffered
by these artifices; while, by close combinations among themselves, and
swearing to their obedience, all the i