the Son of God. We muft daily live upon Jefus Christ, making him the object of our truft, for pardon of fin, acceptance with God, grace and strength to discharge duties and to overcome temptations. 2. Renew repentance for your fins. Repentance is what God calls for in the gofpel. Act. xvii. 30. But now God commandeth all men, every where, to repent. The gofpel is full of fuch commands. This duty of repentance, is to be kept up all our days. Our former fins fhould be confeffed to God over and over again, and our repentance for them is to be renewed. Our fouls should have them in remembrance, and be humbled for them. David maintained a penitent fenfe of the fins of his youth, and befought God not to remember them against him, Pfal. xxv. 7. And as for our daily fins and infirmities, we fhould daily mourn over them and bewail them before the Lord. The work of repentance, is not the work of a day only; but fhould be the work of our lives. As long as we live in this world, we fhall have fin in us, and fin will be committed by us and therefore as long as we live, we must be exercised in repentance toward God. 3. Keep up a courfe of cbedience to God. Thus God required of Abraham, to walk before him and to be perfect, or upright, Gen. xvii. 1. that is, to yield fincere obedience to him. And this is what God calls his covenant-people unto under the gofpel. The fum of their duty is laid together in Tit. ii. 11, 12. The grace of God that bringeth falvation, bath appeared to all men, teaching us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lufts, we fbould live foberly, righteoufly and godly in this prefent world. Wherefore, 1. Live foberly.Be temperate and moderate, in the ufe of the good things of this world. Beware of excefs in meats and drinks, fo as to indifpofe and unfic for the duties of your general or particular callings. In this cafe, let your moderation be known to all men.Learn to govern the paffions well, and poffefs your veffels in fantification and honour. 2. Live Be ho 2. Live righteously.---Do juftice to all men. neft in all your dealings with others; doing to them as you would they should do to you. Defraud and wrong no man; and if you have fo done, fee that you make reftitution, or else your unrighteoufnefs abideth on you. And always fpeak the truth. 3. Live godlily. Endeavour to carry it towards God as you ought to do; difcharging all duties of religious worship, which he calls you unto. Pray daily to him in fecret, as well as in the family. Read and meditate on his holy word. Confcientiously attend on all the ordinances and inftitutions of the Lord. Reverence his fanctuary, and fanctify his fabbath, and his name. These are the duties owing to ourselves, to our neighbours, and to our God; which we must be careful to do, if we would prove ourselves fuch as keep covenant with God. Now the duties of both the tables of the law must be performed in the name of Chrift; done in faith. Our obedience must be the obedience of faith. And we muft yield univerfal obedience to God; having refpect to all his commandments. And in fuch obedience we must be concerned to perfevere, to the end of our days. If we are not conftant in our obedience to God, we are not stedfaft in his covenant. USE 4. Of Confolation to all that are really interested in the covenant of grace, and keep covenant with God. Those that have heartily confented to take God for their God in Chrift, and to give up themselves to God to be his fervants, and fo have entred into covenant with God through Jefus Chrift, have abundant ground of comfort. They may from the covenant of grace gather confolation, and this in every condition. 1. It may comfort them under a fenfe of finfulness. The firft covenant afforded not the leaft confolation in cafe of fin. The leaft fin brought under the curfe of that covenant, and doom'd man to death. It gave no call to repentance, nor promife of pardon. But now, the covenant of grace, as it contains precepts requiring Our our faith and repentance, fo it contains promises of forgiveness to the penitent, that fly for refuge to Jefus Chrift, the great facrifice for fin. This is one article in the covenant, Heb. viii. 12. I will be merciful to their anrighteoufnefs, and their fins and iniquities will I remember no more. God covenants with us as a merciful and fin-pardoning God. If therefore we penitently bewail our fins, and betake ourselves to the mercy of God, through the precious blood of Jefus Chrift, for pardon, we fhall affuredly obtain pardon. This fhould comfort us under the sense of our many failings. Indeed, this fhould not make us more bold to fin, or lefs affected for our fins; but it fhould keep us from finking difcouragements under the fenfe of our lamented finfulness. God 2. Under afflictions. Thofe that are interested in the covenant of grace, are not exempted from afflictions. But the covenant of grace, administers abundant confolation to them under their afflictions. has in that covenant, made fuch promifes relating to the afflictions of his people, as may exceedingly comfort them in all their affiictions. He has promifed, thereby to purge them and take away their iniquity, Ifai. xxvii. 9. He has promifed, thereby to make them partakers of his holiness, Heb. xii. 10. He has promifed, that all of them ball work together for their eternal good, Rom. viii. 28. Now fuch fanctified afflictions, are indeed great mercies, and the event will clearly prove them to be fo. And therefore God makes the chaftning his people an evidence of his love to them. Rev. iii. 19. When I love, I rebuke and chaften. Yea, he makes chaftnings, rather a part of his promifes, than of his threatnings. Pfal. lxxxix. 32. I will visit their tranfgreffions with the rod, and their iniquity with ftripes; not to do them hurt, but to do them good, as a point of covenant-faithfulness. So that the covenant of grace, turns the curfe of the covenant, as to the afflictive part of it, into a bleffing to believers. 3. Under 3. Under temptations from Satan. The covenant of grace does not exempt from temptation, any more than the covenant of works. Adam under that covenant might be tempted, and was tempted. So believers under the new covenant may be, yea, fhall be, tempted: But then this is their comfort, no temptations fhall prevail against them, fo as to deprive them of the bleffedness made over in the covenant of grace: The temptations of fatan did fucceed, to the utter overthrow of Adam, and the cutting him off from that life promifed in the first covenant. But his temptations shall not have the like effect upon believers, under the cove; nant of grace. The gates of hell fhall never prevail against them. Their covenant-God, who is on their fide, is ftronger than that roaring lion, who feeks to devour them. He is wifer than that old ferpent, who feeks to deceive and feduce them. He is more watchful over them, than their adverfary the devil is watchful against them. God therefore will preferve them from the power, fubtlety, and malice of fatan. He will give to them a fufficiency of grace, whereby they fhall be be enabled to refift fatan's temptations. 2 Cor. xii. 9. Yea, God will 'ere long give them compleat victory over fatan. Rom. xvi. 20. The God of peace fhall bruife fatan under your feet shortly.In the day of judgment, which haftneth apace, and will come fhortly, Satan fhall be utterly crushed under their feet for evermore. Then they fhall triumph over him, as being eternally got out of the reach of all his temptations. 4. Under the forethoughts of death. The covenant of grace, does not exempt believers from the stroke of death; but die they may, yea, die they muft. It is appointed to them once to die, Heb. ix. 27. Yet this may comfort them, death shall not break the covenant between God and them. It is an everlasting covenant, which fhall ftand firm till death, and after death, through all eternity. After the death of Abraham, Ifaac and Facob, God declared himself to be their God. Exod. iii. 6. God faid unto Mofes, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Ifaac, and the God of Jacob. Death did not difanul the covenant between God and them. Though they were dead, yet the covenant with them still lived. Other covenants, as between king and fubjects, husband and wife, master and fervants, are made void by death. But the covenant between God and his people cannot be destroyed by death. Nor does death deprive them, of the great and precious bleffings, of the covenant of grace. Nay, it hands them over to the more full enjoyment of them, as to their fouls. For at death their fpirits depart and go to be with Chrift in heaven, which is better than to abide bere. Phil. i. 23. There they are made perfectly blessed in the full and immediate enjoyment of God. They are as happy as they can be in their separate estate. And as for their bodies, death to them is but a fleeping in Chrift, 1 Theff. iv. 14. 'Tis but a refting in their graves, Ifa. li. 2. And ere it be long Jefus Chrift will come and awake them out of their fleep, and make them ever-living and moft glorious bodies. And then fhall they triumph over death, and fay, O death! where is thy fting? O grave! where is thy victory? 1 Cor. xv. 55. So that death is gain to them that are interested in the covenant of grace. And therefore it is mentioned as one of the things which is the believer's. I Cor. iii. 22. Death is yours. It is for their advantage, it is their friend. For them to die, is a great mercy to them. Believers therefore have no caufe to fear any evil, when they pass through the valley of the fbadow of death. The covenant of grace gives them all manner of fecurity against any harm by death; nay, affures them of greatest benefit by it. When you come to the table of the Lord (the next Lord's-day) there you will be invited to behold the mediator of the new Covenant, dying for you, that he might take out the fting of death, left it fhould hurt you; that he might fanctify death, and make it a bleffing to you that he might overcome death, in order to your gaining victory over it. You will alfo come to that ordinance as a feal of the covenant of grace, to affure you |