s.
The Lord give you grace to keep close to the covenant and a good
conscience, which are both lost by breaking covenant.

There are four things I shall persuade you unto in pursuance of your
covenant. 1. To be humbled for your own sins, and for the sins of the
kingdom; and more especially, because we have not, as we ought, valued
the inestimable benefit of the gospel, that we have not laboured to
receive Christ in our hearts, nor to walk worthy of Him in our lives,
which are the causes of other sins and transgressions so much abounding
amongst us. Gospel sins are greater than legal sins, and will bring
gospel curses, which are greater than legal curses. And therefore let us
be humbled according to our covenant, for all our gospel abominations.
2. You must be ambitious to go before one another in an example of real
reformation. You must swear vainly no more, be drunk no more, break the
Sabbath no more. You must remember what David says. "But unto the wicked
God saith, What hast thou to do to take My covenant in thy mouth? Seeing
thou hatest instruction, and castest My words behind thee." To sin
willingly, after we have sworn not to sin, is not only to sin against a
commandment, but to sin against an oath, which is a double iniquity, and
will procure a double damnation. And he that takes a covenant to reform,
and yet continueth unreformed, his covenant will be unto him as the
bitter water of jealousy was to the woman guilty of adultery, which made
her belly to swell, and thigh to rot. 3. You must be careful to reform
your families, according to your covenant, and the example of Jacob and
Joshua, and the godly kings fore-mentioned. 4. You must endeavour,
according to your places and callings, to bring the churches of God in
the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction, and uniformity in
religion. O blessed unity! how comes it to pass, that thou art so much
slighted and contemned? Was not unity one of the chief parts of Christ's
prayer unto His Father, when He was here upon the earth? Is not unity
amongst Christians one of the strongest arguments to persuade the world
to believe in Christ? Is it not the chief desire of the holy apostles,
that we "should all speak the same things, and that there should be no
division amongst us?" Is not unity the happiness of heaven? Is it not
the happiness of a city, to be at unity with itself? "Is it not a good
and pleasant thing for brethren to dwell together in unity?" How comes
it to