are solemnly apprehended and appropriated. In reference
to his repeated acceptance of the promises of God in this act,[98] there
is borne to the father of the faithful, the testimony, "By faith
Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that received the
promises offered up his only begotten son."[99] And as a people, the
Israelites in this act received the promises. "Who are Israelites; to
whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the
giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises."[100] The
Covenants must have been the different dispensations of the same
Covenant--the former dispensations, or the Old Covenant, and the last,
or the New Covenant. It was at a renovation of the Covenant under the
former dispensation, that the people of Israel received the law; and
certainly not less the promises. Are the benefits contemplated in the
exercise of Covenanting, individual or general reformation in religion
or in practice, or the preservation of peace and truth, or any other
blessings spiritual or temporal? These are included in God's Covenant
promise, and in this act they are consequently accepted as thus
embodied.

Sixthly. In this act the Covenanting community vow to God to render
general and specified obedience. In that is expressed or implied the
offer of obedience to the whole law of God, and to particular obvious
requirements included in it. When the Covenant was made at Sinai, the
people said, "All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be
obedient."[101] And at Shechem, before Joshua, this was their language,
"The Lord our God will we serve, and his voice will we obey."[102] At
the return from the captivity, the oath taken included the promise to
discharge specific demands of God's law; and every vow should be made,
and every oath sworn, in order to perform some service required.

Seventhly. This act is a solemn federal transaction among the members of
the Covenanting community. The fact of the public social character of
the act shows that the engagements of a Covenant with God, have a
reference to the relations to one another of those who Covenant. The
reception of good from the hand of God, through the means of
Covenanting, necessarily supposes that that good, at least in part, will
come to each in some manner by those associated in the exercise. The
promise of obedience to God by vow or oath, includes a promise of
certain services to each member of the confederatio