to. Spiritual mercies are entailed upon it, Deut. xxix. 12, 13.
"That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and into
his oath, which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day: that he may
establish thee to-day for a people to himself, and that he may be unto
thee a God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy
fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." Temporal mercies are also
promised to this upright renewing and keeping covenant, Deut. xxix.
9--"Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may
prosper in all that ye do." And, it is remarked, 2 Chron. xv. 15, that
after Asa's covenant, "the Lord gave them rest round about."

4. The malice and opposition of the Popish, Prelatical, and malignant
party against the covenants, and their doing what in them lies, to make
their obligation void and null, may be a motive and argument for the
people of God so much the more to avouch their respect to them by a
public adherence, especially after long continued breaches.

5. Upright entering into, or renewing covenant with God, is a most
sovereign medicine for healing a people's breaches, as well as their
backslidings, the covenant being a cement, as well to join and unite the
people of God one to another, as all of them in their duty to God; and,
as it flows from the nature of the covenant to unite the friends of
reformation, so it is observable as one of the peculiar fruits of
covenant-renewing, that union in the Lord has followed thereupon: thus
it was with Israel and Judah in the text, who united together in making
a covenant with the Lord. Whence all the people of God, who are called
to be united and "perfectly joined together in the same spirit, and in
the same mind;" and especially they who have been lamentably divided one
from another, by their manifold defections from God, and from their
covenant-engagements, ought to be strongly inclined, moved, and engaged
to this duty; from this consideration, the upright covenant-renewing is
a usual mean of land-uniting and church-uniting dispositions amongst the
people of God.

As for the manner of renewing covenant with God, and how the duty ought
to be gone about, he propounded and opened it in the following
particulars, to this effect:--

1. That it must be done with understanding and judgment, both in
relation to the nature of the duties we engage to perform in the
covenant: grossly ignorant persons being justly deprive