the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine: and
I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth." We
read also, that God tells Zedekiah, because he brake the covenant he had
made with the king of Babylon, that therefore, "He would recompense upon
his head the oath that he had despised, and the covenant that he had
broken, and would bring him to Babylon, and plead with him there for the
trespass which he had trespassed against the Lord." David tells us, that
it is a sin that shuts a man out of heaven. The Turkish history tells
us of a covenant made between Amurath, that great Turk, and Ladislaus,
king of Hungary, and how the pope absolved Ladislaus from the oath, and
provoked him to renew the war: in which war the Turk, being put to the
worst, and despairing of victory, pulls out a paper which he had in his
bosom, wherein the league was written, and said, "O Thou God of the
Christians, if Thou beest a true God, be avenged of those that have,
without cause, broken the league made by calling upon Thy name." And the
story says, that after he had spoken these words, he had, as it were, "a
new heart, and spirit put into him and his soldiers," and that they
obtained a glorious victory over Ladislaus. Thus God avenged the quarrel
of man's covenant. The like story we read of Rudolphus, duke of Sweden,
who, by the pope's instigation, waged war with Henry IV., emperor of
Germany, to whom he had sworn to the contrary. But, in the fight it
chanced that Rudolphus lost his right hand, and falling sick upon it, he
called for it and said, "Behold this right hand with which I subscribed
to the emperor, with which I have violated my oath, and therefore I am
rightly punished." I will not trouble you with relating that gallant
story of Regulus, that chose rather to expose himself to a cruel death,
than to falsify his oath to the Carthaginians. The sum of all is, if it
be such a crying abomination to break covenant between man and man; and
if such persons are accounted as the off-scouring of men, not worthy to
live in a Christian, no, not in a heathen commonwealth: if it be a sin
that draws down vengeance from heaven; much more for a man to enter into
covenant with the great Jehovah, and to break such a religious
engagement: this must needs be a destroying and soul-damning sin. And of
such religious covenants I am now to speak.

There are two covenants that God made with man, a covenant of nature,
and a covenant of grace