e Jews, who insincerely attempted this becoming service, that is
challenged in the words,--"This people draw near me with their mouth,
and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from
me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men."[620]
While, therefore, He sets before the wicked their sin, he honours his
own, or recognises them as gifted with privilege while they draw near
to him in the duty. To engage in the idolatry of the ancient heathen, or
otherwise to fail to recognise God as a God in covenant, was to be far
from him; while to draw near to him, and, consequently, to acknowledge
him in vowing to him or otherwise, was good for his saints.[621] Some,
as examples of all who were uninterested in the Covenant of God, are
represented as destitute of what are accounted the privileges of the
covenant children; while the attainments of those after their
conversion, and which, by being put in contrast with what appertained to
them in their former state, must be viewed as spiritual privileges, are
represented as consisting in this,--that they were made nigh by the
blood of Christ. "Ye were without Christ, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise,
having no hope, and without God in the world: but now, in Christ Jesus,
ye who sometimes were far off, are made nigh by the blood of
Christ."[622] And, by an apostle, encouragement to enter into the
holiest by the blood of Jesus, at once a duty including that of
Covenanting, and certainly a privilege, is given in the language--"Let
us _draw near_ with a true heart, in full assurance of faith."[623]

Secondly. These Covenanting are in the gracious presence of God. The
want of this on the part of the wicked being a curse, the enjoyment of
it by the righteous is a privilege. Cain went out from the presence of
the Lord, or ceased to attend to the institutions of religion, and thus
manifested that he had neither enjoyed nor valued the presence of God
reconciled to him. By suffering them to be removed by the Babylonians
from their own land, and, consequently, from the ordinances of his grace
dispensed in his temple, the Lord cast out the wicked of Jerusalem and
Judah from his presence,[624] or deprived them of those opportunities of
enjoying his gracious presence which they had not improved. To his
people among the heathen, even though deprived of the public ordinances
of Zion, He himself proved a sanctu