more good out of the covenant of God, than we have faith in it; so no
more good out of our own, than (in a due sense) we have faith in it.
There is as much need of faith, to improve this covenant, as there is of
faithfulness. We live no more in the sphere of a covenant, than we
believe. And we can make no living out of it but by believing. All our
earnings come in here also, more by our faith, than by our works. Let
not the heart of God be straitened, and His hand shortened by our
unbelief. Where Christ marvelled at the unbelief of a people, consider
what a marvel followed: Omnipotence was as one weak. "He could do no
mighty works among them." Works less than mighty will not reach our
deliverances or procure our mercies. The ancient worthies made more use
of their faith, than to be saved, and get to heaven by it. "By faith the
walls of Jericho fell down. By faith they subdued kingdoms, wrought
righteousness, (or exercised justice) stopped the mouths of lions. By
faith they quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword,
out of weakness they were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to
flight the armies of the aliens." We have Jerichos to reduce, and
kingdoms to subdue, under the sceptre and government of Jesus Christ: we
have justice to execute, and the mouths of lions to stop: we have a
violent fire to quench, a sharp edged sword to escape, Popish alien
armies to fight with; and we (comparatively to these mighty works) are
but weak. How then shall we out of our weakness become strong, strong
enough to carry us through these mighty works, strong enough to escape
these visible dangers? If we walk and work by sense, and not by faith?
And if we could get through all these works and dangers without faith,
we should work but like men, not at all like Christians, but like men in
a politic combination, not in a holy covenant. There's not a stroke of
covenant work (purely so called) can be done without faith. As fire is
to the chemist, so is faith to a covenant people. In that capacity, they
can do nothing for themselves without it; and they have, they can have,
no assurance that God will. Seeing then we are in covenant, we must go
to counsel by faith, and to war by faith; we must pull down by faith,
and build by faith; we must reform by faith, and settle our peace by
faith. Besides, to do a work so solemn and sacred, and then not to
believe and expect no fruit; yea, then to believe and expect answerable
fruit, is a direct taking of God's name in vain, and a mock to Jesus
Christ. And if we mock Christ by calling Him to a covenant, which we
ourselves slight, as a thing we expect little or nothing from: "He will
laugh at our calamity," and "mock when our fear cometh." Wherefore to
close, "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established," no,
not by this sure covenant. But, "believe in the Lord your God, in
covenant, so shall you be established; believe His prophets, so shall
you prosper."
4. Walk cheerfully. So it becomes those that have God so near them.
Such, even in their sorrows, should be like Paul, "As sorrowful, yet
always rejoicing." The (as) notes not a counterfeiting of sorrow, but
the overcoming of sorrow. On this ground David resolves against the fear
of evil, tho' he should see nothing but evil; "Tho' I walk in the valley
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me." In a
covenant, God and man meet; He is with us who is more than all that are
against us: and when He is with us, who can be against us? For then all
things, and all persons, even while (to the utmost of their skill and
power) they set themselves against us, work for us; and should not we
rejoice? If we knew that every loss were our gain, every wound our
healing, every disappointment our success, every defeat our victory,
would we not rejoice? Do but know what it is to be in covenant with God;
and be sad, be hopeless, if you can. It is to have the strength and
counsels of heaven engaged for you; it is to have Him for you, "Whose
foolishness is wiser than men, and whose weakness is stronger than men."
It is to have Him with you, "who doeth according to His will in the army
of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay His
hand, or say unto Him, what doest thou?" It is to have Him with you,
"who frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh the diviners mad,
who turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish." It
is to have Him with you, before whom "the nations are as the drop of a
bucket, and as the dust of the balance, who taketh up the isles as a
very little thing." In a word, it is to have Him with you, "who fainteth
not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding. He
giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might, He increaseth
strength." This God is our God, our God in covenant; "This is our
beloved and this is our Friend, O daughters of Jerusalem." And shall we
not rejoice? Shall we not walk cheerfully? Tho' there be nothing but
trouble before our eyes, yet our hearts should live in those upper
regions, which are above storms and tempests, above rain and winds,
above the noise and confusions of the world. Why should sorrow sit
clouded in our faces, or any darkness be in our hearts, while we are in
the shine and light of God's countenance? It is said, "That all Judah
rejoiced at the oath; for they had sworn with all their heart:" If we
have sworn heartily, we shall rejoice heartily. And for ever banish base
fears, and killing sorrows from our hearts; and wipe them from our
faces. They, who have unworthy fears in their hearts, give too fair an
evidence that they did not swear with their hearts.
5. Walk humbly and dependently; rejoice, but be not secure. Trust to God
in covenant, not to your covenant. Make not your covenant your Christ;
no, not for this temporal salvation. As a horse trusted to, is a vain
thing to save a man, so likewise is a covenant trusted to; neither can
it deliver a nation by its great strength: tho' indeed the strength of
it be greater than the strength of many horses. "In vain is salvation
hoped for from this hill, or from a multitude of mountains," heaped up
and joined in one by the bond of this covenant. Surely in the Lord our
God, our God in covenant, is the salvation of England. We cannot trust
too much in God, nor too little in the creature; there is nothing breaks
the staff of our help, but our leaning upon it. If we trust in our
covenant, we have not made it with God, but we have made it a god; and
every god of man's making, is an idol, and so nothing in the world: you
see, pride in, or trust to this covenant will make it an idol, and then
in doing all this, we have done nothing; for "an idol is nothing in the
world." And of nothing, comes nothing. By overlooking to the means, we
lose all; and by all our travail shall bring forth nothing but wind: it
will not work any deliverance in the land. Wherefore, "rest not in the
thing done, but get up, and be doing," which is the last point, and my
last motion about your walking in covenant.
6. Walk industriously and diligently in this covenant. You were
counselled before to stand to the covenant, but take heed of standing in
it. Stand, as that is opposed to defection; but if you stand as that is
opposed to action, you are at the next door to falling. A total neglect
is little better than total apostasy.
We have made a perpetual covenant, never to be forgotten, as was shewed
out of the prophet. It is a rule, that words in scripture, which express
only an act of memory, include action and endeavours. When the young man
is warned to "remember his Creator in the days of his youth," he is also
charged to love, and to obey Him. And while we say, this covenant is
never to be forgotten; we mean, the duties of it are ever to be pursued,
and, to the utmost of our power, fulfilled. As soon as it is said that
Josiah made all the people stand to the covenant; the very next words
are, "and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of
God, the God of their fathers." They stood to it, but they did not, like
those, "stand all the day idle;" they fell to work presently. And so let
us. Having laid this foundation, a sure covenant, now let us arise and
build, and let our hands be strong. Do not think that all is done, when
this solemnity is done, It is a sad thing to observe how some, when they
have lifted up their hands, and written down their names, think
presently their work is over. They think, now surely they have satisfied
God and man for they have subscribed the covenant.
I tell you, nay, for when you have done taking the covenant, then your
work begins. When you have done taking the covenant, then you must
proceed to acting the covenant. When an apprentice has subscribed his
name, and sealed his indentures, doth he then think his service is
ended? No, then he knows his service doth begin. It is so here. We are
all sealing the indentures of a sacred and noble apprenticeship to God,
to these churches and commonwealths; let us then go to our work, as
bound, yet free. Free to our work, not from it; free in our work,
working from a principle of holy ingenuity, not of servility, or
constraint. The Lord threatens them with bondage and captivity, who will
not be servants in their covenant, with readiness and activity. "I,
saith the Lord, will give the men that have transgressed My covenant,
which have not performed the words of the covenant, which they had made
before Me, when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts
thereof; the princes of Judah, and the princes of Jerusalem, the
eunuchs, and the priests, and all the people of the land, which passed
between the parts of the calf, I will even give them into the hand of
their enemies, and into the hand of them that seek their life, and their
dead bodies shall be meat to the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the
earth." Words that need no rhetoric to press them, nor any comment to
explain them: they are so plain, that every one may understand them; and
so severe, that every one, who either transgresses, or performs not, who
doeth any thing against, or nothing for the words of this covenant, hath
just cause to tremble at the reading of them: I am sure, to feel them
will make him tremble. Seeing then our princes, our magistrates, our
ministers, and our people, have freely consented to, written, and sworn
this covenant; let us all in our several places, be up and doing, that
the Lord may be with us; not sit still and do nothing, and so cause the
Lord to turn against us.
You that are for consultation, go to counsel; you that are for
execution, go on to acting; you that are for exhorting the people in
this work, attend to exhortation; you that are soldiers, draw your
swords; you that have estates, draw your purses; you that have strength
of body, lend your hands; and all you that have honest hearts, lend your
prayers, your cries, your tears, for the prosperous success of this
great work. And the Lord prosper the works of all our hands, the Lord
prosper all our handy-works. _Amen._
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.
SERMON AT LONDON.
_BY THOMAS CASE_[13]
"And I will bring a sword upon you that shall avenge the quarrel of My
covenant."--_Lev._ xxvi. 25.
Since covenant-violation is a matter of so high a quarrel as for the
avenging whereof, God sends a sword upon a church or nation: for which,
it is more than probable, the sword is upon us at this present, it
having almost devoured Ireland already, and eaten up a great part of
England also, let us engage our council, and all the interest we have in
heaven and earth, for the taking up of this controversy; let us consider
what we have to do, what way there is yet left us, for the reconciling
of this quarrel, else we, and our families, are but the children of
death and destruction: this sword that is drawn, and devoured so much
Christian protestant flesh already, will, it is to be feared, go quite
thro' the land, and, in the pursuit of this quarrel, cut off the
remnant, till our land be so desolate, and our cities waste, and
England be made as Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of the fierce anger of
Jehovah.
Somewhat I have spoken already in the former use, to this purpose viz.
"To acknowledge our iniquities that we have transgressed against the
Lord our God." To get our hearts broken, for breaking the covenant; to
lay it so to heart, that God may not lay it to our charge. But this
looks backward. Somewhat must be done, _de futuro_: for time to come:
that may not only compose the quarrel, but lay a sure foundation of an
after peace between God and the kingdom. And for that purpose, a mean
lies before us; an opportunity is held forth unto us by the hand of
divine wisdom and goodness, of known use and success among the people of
God in former times; which is yet to me a gracious intimation, and a
farther argument of hope from heaven, that God has not sworn against us
in His wrath, nor sealed us up a people devoted to destruction, but hath
yet a mind to enter into terms of peace and reconciliation with us, to
receive us into grace and favour, to become our God, and to own us for
His people; if yet, we will go forth to meet Him, and accept of such
honourable terms as shall be propounded to us: and that is, by renewing
our covenant with Him; yea, by entering into a more full and firm
covenant than ever heretofore. For, as the quarrel was raised about the
covenant, so it must be a covenant more solid and substantial, that must
compose the quarrel, as I shall show you hereafter. And that is the
service and the privilege that lies before us; the work of the next day.
So that, me-thinks, I hear this use of exhortation, which now I would
commend unto you speaking unto us in that language; "Come, let us join
ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be
forgotten." It is the voice of the children of Israel, and the children
of Judah, returning out of captivity. "The children of Israel shall
come, they, and the children of Judah together; seeking the Lord," whom
they had lost, and inquiring the way to Zion; from whence their idolatry
and adulteries had cast them out; themselves become now like the doves
of the valley, mourning and weeping, because they had perverted their
way, and forgotten the Lord their God. "Going and weeping they shall go,
and seek the Lord their God. They shall ask the way to Zion with their
faces thitherward." And if you inquire when this should be? The fourth
verse tells you, in those days. And if you ask again, what days those
are? Interpreters will tell us of a threefold day, wherein this prophecy
or promise is to be fulfilled; that is, the literal or inchoative,
evangelical or spiritual, universal or perfect day.
The first day is a literal or inchoative day, here prophesied of, and
that is already past, past long since; viz., in that day wherein the
seventy years of the Babylonian captivity expired; then was this
prophecy or promise begun in part to be accomplished: at what time the
captivity of Judah, and divers of Israel with them, upon their return
out of Babylon, kept a solemn fast at the river "Ahava, to afflict their
souls before their God." There may you see them going and weeping, "to
seek of Him a right way for them, and their little ones." There you have
them seeking the Lord, and inquiring the way to Zion with their faces
thitherward. And when they came home, you may hear some of their nobles
and priests, calling upon them to enter into covenant; so Shechaniah
spake unto Ezra, the princes, and the people, "We have sinned against
the Lord, ... yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. Now
therefore let us make a covenant with our God." And so you may find the
Levites calling the people to confess their sins with weeping and
supplications, in a day of humiliation, and at the end of it, to write,
and swear, and seal a covenant with "the Lord their God." This was the
first day wherein this prophecy began to be fulfilled, in the very
letter thereof.
The second day is the evangelical day, wherein this promise is fulfilled
in a gospel or spiritual sense; namely, when the elect of God, of what
nation or language soever, being all called the Israel of God, as is
prophesied, "One shall say, I am the Lord's; and another shall call
himself by the name of Jacob, ... and surname himself by the name of
Israel." I say, when these in their several generations and successions
shall turn to the Lord their God, either from their Gentilism and
paganism, as in their first conversion to Christianity; as Tertullian
observes after the resurrection of Christ, and the mission of the Holy
Ghost; _Aspice exinde universas nationes ex veragine erroris humani
emergentes ad Dominum Deum, et ad Dominum Christum ejus_. From that day
forward, you might behold poor creatures of all nations and languages,
creeping out of their dark holes and corners of blindness and idolatry,
and betaking them to God and His Son Jesus Christ, as to their Law-giver
and Saviour; or else turning from Antichristian superstition, and false
ways of worship, as in the after and more full conversion of churches or
persons purging themselves more and more, from the corruptions and
mixtures of popery and superstitions, according to the degree of light
and conviction, which should break out upon them, and asking the way to
Zion, _i.e._, the pure way of gospel worship, according to the fuller
and clearer manifestations and revelations of the mind of Christ in the
gospel. This was fulfilled in Luther's time, and in all those after
separations which any of the churches have made from Rome, and from
those relics and remains of superstition and will-worship, wherewith
themselves and the ordinances of Jesus Christ have been denied.
The third day wherein this prophecy or promise is to be made good, is
that universal day, wherein both Jew and Gentile shall be converted
unto the Lord. That day of the restitution of all things, as some good
divines conceive when "ten men out of all languages of the nations,
shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go
with you; for we have heard that God is with you." And to what purpose
is more fully expressed in the former verses, answering the prophecy in
the text. "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, it shall come to pass, that
there shall come people, and the inhabitants of many cities: and the
inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily
to pray before the Lord, and to seek the Lord of Hosts; I will go also.
Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of Hosts
in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord."
This I call the universal day, because, as you see, there shall be such
an abundance of confluence of cities, and people, and nations, combining
together in an holy league and covenant, to seek the Lord. And a perfect
day, because the mind and will of the Lord shall be fully revealed and
manifested to the saints, concerning the way of worship and government
in the churches. The new Jerusalem, _i.e._ the perfect, exact, and
punctual model of the government of Christ in the churches, shall then
be let down from Heaven. "The light of the moon being then to be as the
light of the sun, and the light of the sun sevenfold, as the light of
seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His
people, and healeth the stroke of their wound."
By what hath been spoken, you may perceive under which of these days we
are: past indeed the first, but not yet arrived at the third day; and
therefore under the second day, that evangelical day; yet so, as if all
the three days were met together in ours, while it seems to me, that we
are upon the dawning of the third day: and this prophecy falling so pat,
and full upon our times, as if we were not got beyond the literal; a
little variation will do it. The children of Israel, and the children
of Judah: Scotland and England, newly coming out of Babylon,
antichristian Babylon, papal tyranny and usurpations, in one degree or
other, going and weeping in the days of their solemn humiliations,
bewailing their backslidings and rebellions, to seek the Lord their God,
to seek pardon and reconciliation, to seek His face and favour, not only
in the continuance, but in the more full and sweet influential
manifestations of His presence among them; and to that end, asking the
way to Zion with their faces thitherward; that is, inquiring after the
pure way of gospel worship, with full purpose of heart; that when God
shall reveal His mind to them, they will conform themselves to His mind
according to that blessed prophecy and promise, "He will teach us of His
ways, and we will walk in His paths." And that they may make all sure,
that they may secure God and themselves against all future apostasies
and backslidings, calling one upon another, and echoing back one to
another: "Come, let us join ourselves to the Lord, in a perpetual
covenant that shall not be forgotten."
You see by this time I have changed my text, tho' not my project; to
which purpose I shall remember that, in the handling of these words, I
must not manage my discourse, as if I were to make a new entire sermon
upon the text, but only to improve the happy advantages it holds forth,
for the pursuit and driving on of my present use of exhortation. Come,
let us join. To this end therefore, from these words, I will propound
and endeavour to satisfy these three queries, 1. What? 2. Why? 3. How?
I. What the duty is, to which they mutually stir up one another?
II. Why, or upon what considerations?
III. How, or in what manner this service is to be performed? And in all
these you shall see what proportion the text holds with the times. The
duty in our text, with the duty in our hands, pressing them on still in
an exhortatory way.
For the first. What the duty is?
_Answ._ You see that in the text; it is to join themselves to the Lord,
by a solemn covenant; and so is that which we have now in our hands, to
join ourselves to the Lord by a covenant; how far they correspond, will
appear in the sequel. This is the first and main end of a covenant
between God and His people, as I have shewed you, "to join themselves to
the Lord. The sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord, and
take hold of His covenant."
This, I say, is the first and main end of the covenant in the text: the
second is subordinate unto it; namely, to inquire the way to Zion,
_i.e._, to inquire the way and manner, how God would be worshipped; that
they might dishonour and provoke Him no more, by their idolatries and
superstitions, which had been brought in upon the ordinances of God, by
the means of apostate kings, and priests, and prophets, as in Jeroboam's
and Ahab's reigns, and for which they had been carried into captivity.
And such is the covenant that lies before us: in the first place, as I
say, to join ourselves to the Lord, to be knit inseparably unto Him,
that He may be our God, and we may be His people. And in the next place,
as subservient hereunto, to ask the way to Zion; to inquire and search
by all holy means, sanctified to that purpose, what is that pure way of
gospel worship; that we and our children after us may worship the God of
spirits, the God of truth, in spirit, and in truth. In spirit opposed to
carnal ways of will-worship, and inventions of men; and in truth,
opposed to false hypocritical shews and pretences, since the Father
seeks such to worship Him.
Now, that this is the main scope and aim of this covenant before us,
will appear, if you read and ponder it with due consideration; I will
therefore read it to you distinctly, this evening, besides the reading
of it again to-morrow, when you come to take it; and when I have read
it, I will answer the main and most material objections, which seem to
make it inconsistent with these blessed ends and purposes. Attend
diligently while I read it to you.
(The covenant was then read.)
This brethren, is the covenant before us; to which God and His
parliament do invite us this day; wherein the ends propounded lie fair
to every impartial eye.
The first article in this covenant, binding us to the reformation of
religion; and the last article, to the reformation of our lives. In
both, we join ourselves to the Lord, and swear to ask and receive from
His lips the law of this reformation. Truly, this is a why, as well as a
what, (that I may a little prevent myself) a motive of the first
magnitude. Oh! for a people or person to be joined unto the Lord; to be
made one with the most high God of heaven and earth, before whom and to
whom we swear, is a privilege of unspeakable worth and excellency.
"Seemeth it (said David once to Saul's servants) a small thing in your
eyes, to be son-in-law to a king," seeing I am a poor man? Seemeth it,
may I say, a small thing to you, for poor creatures to be joined, and
married, as it were, to the great God, the living God; who are so much
worse than nothing, by how much sin is worse than vanity? yea, to be one
with Him as Christ saith in that heavenly prayer of His; as He and His
Father are one. "That they may be one, as Thou Father art in Me, and I
in Thee; that they also may be one in us." And again, "that they may be
one, even as we are one." Yea, perfect in one; not indeed, in the
perfection of that unity, but in unity of that perfection; not made
perfect in a perfection of equality, but of conformity.
This is the fruit of a right managed covenant; and the greatest honour
that poor mortality is capable of. Moses stands admiring of it. You may
read the place at your leisure. But, against this blessed service and
truth, are there mustered and led up an whole regiment of objections,
under the conduct of the father of lies; though some of them may seem to
have some shadow of truth; and therefore so much the more carefully to
be examined. I shall deal only with some of the chief commanders of
them, if they be conquered the rest will vanish of their own accord.
OBJECTIONS PROPOUNDED AND ANSWERED.
_Object._ 1. If this were the end of this service, yet it were needless:
since we have done it over and over again, in our former protestations
and covenants; and so this repetition may seem to be a profanation of so
holy an ordinance, by making of it so ordinary, and nothing else, but a
taking of God's name in vain. To this I answer.