hus
much be spoken concerning the first branch of this third query, how to
acceptation?

I come now to the Second branch of it, and that is, How to perpetuity?
Or, how may we perform this service so that it may be "an everlasting
covenant, that may never be forgotten?" To that end, take these few
brief directions, and I have done.

_First_, Labour to come to this service with much soul-affliction for
former violation of the covenant, either in refusing, or profaning, or
breaking thereof: the foundations must be laid low, where we would build
for many generations. In what deep sorrows had you need to lay the
foundations of this covenant, which you would have stand to eternity,
that it may be "an everlasting covenant." This you have in the text;
"they shall seek the Lord, going and weeping;" weeping in the sense of
their former rebellions and apostasies, whereby they forfeited their
faith, and brake their covenant with the Lord their God; and it was no
ordinary slight business they made of it. "A voice was heard upon the
high places, weeping and supplication." They were not a few silent
tears: no, they "lift up their voices and wept," as was said of Esau.
They cried so loud, that they were heard a great way off. "A voice was
heard upon the mountains;" and it was as bitter, as it was loud; "a
great mourning, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of
Megiddon," when all Judah, Jerusalem, Jeremiah the prophet, and all the
singers, bewailed the death of their good king Josiah, with a grievous
lamentation, "and made it an ordinance forever." Oh! that as we have
their service in hand, so we had their heads and their hearts, to manage
it with rivers of tears, for our former vileness: that we could weep
this day together, and afterward apart, as it is prophesied, "Every
family apart, and our wives apart;" yea, and every soul apart, that we
have dealt so evilly with so good a God, so unfaithfully with so
faithful a God; that we could put our mouths in the dust, and smite upon
our thigh, and be ashamed and confounded, for all the wickedness we have
committed against God and His covenant, in any, or all these ways. Such
a posture God will see us in, before He will shew us "the way to Zion;"
before He will reveal to us the model and platform of reformation; for
so was His charge to Ezekiel, "If they be ashamed of all that they have
done, shew them the forms of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the
goings out thereof, an