e to some to
undertake, according to his own good pleasure, he commits to others.
Hence his people are employed in filling up what others had designed,
and also in arranging what their own successors may complete. A glorious
Lord rules over every occurrence in the Church's history. Schemes of
reformation set on foot by his servants he acknowledges. When he will,
they are enabled to complete them; otherwise they are wound up by
others. To resolve to use means to bring the Church to a state of
excellence, to which, according to the promise of God, she will yet come
on earth, is obligatory on them who fear him. To vow to use those means,
they are under obligation. Though they may not live to fulfil all that
they intended, yet they will be preserved till the work assigned to them
be accomplished. Their removal does not manifest their Lord's
displeasure at them, but his intention to bestow upon them a gracious
reward. Nor does the blank left in the Church by their decease, manifest
that the works which they had undertaken, behoved not to be fulfilled.
Others, the Lord of all, will call to the service, and accept of the
obedience rendered by them as the fulfilment of obligations to obey him,
which had been made by others, not merely on their own behalf, but on
behalf of such as he might employ to serve him. What his people lawfully
vow to him, he will afford means to perform. And in carrying his
purposes into effect, he will make them at once to serve him, and to
accomplish what others in dependence on Divine grace had pledged
themselves to use every means in their power to perform.

Sixthly. Because the people of God view themselves as bound by anterior
engagements of his Church. In the land of Moab Moses said, "The Lord our
God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant
with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive
this day."[349] Many of those whom he addressed in these words were not
then born. The obligations of their fathers must, therefore, have
descended to them. In many passages of Scripture do the saints
acknowledge themselves as included in the covenant made with Abraham,
and, consequently, as brought under its obligations.[350] By a prophet
of the Lord Israel are exhibited as recognising themselves to have been
represented in the covenant transaction of Bethel. "He found him in
Bethel, and there he spake with us."[351] The words of Peter to the
people of Israel on this