16. You were with your gold, with your silver, sordid objects, to which you pay in this nation the homage, which God peculiarly requires in climates so happy. You were perhaps in the temple of superstition; while we were assembled in the house of the Most High. You were in Egypt, preferring the garlic and onions to the milk and honey of Canaan; while we were on the borders of the promised land, to which God was about to give us admission.

Poor children of those unhappy fathers! Where were you, while we devoted our offspring to God who gave them; while we led those for admission to his table, who were adequately instructed; while we prayed for the future admission of those who are yet deprived by reason of their tender age? Ah! you were victims to the indifference, the cares, and avarice of those who gave you birth! You were associated by them with those who are enemies to the reformed name; who, unable to convince the fathers, hope, at least, to convince the children, and to extinguish in their hearts the minutest sparks of truth! O God! if thy justice have already cut off those unworthy fathers, spare, at least, according to thy clemency, these unoffending creatures, who know not yet their right hand from their left; whom they would detach from thy communion, before they are acquainted with its purity!

Would to God that this was all the cause of our complaint! Oh! where were you, while we celebrated the sacrament of the Lord's Supper? You, inhabitants of these provinces, born of reformed families, professors of the reformation! You, who are mar. ried, who are engaged in business, who have attained the age of forty or fifty years, without ever participating of the holy eucharist! There was a time, my brethren, among the Jews, when a man who should have had the assurance to neglect the rites which constituted the essence of the law, would have been cut off from the people. This law has

varied in regard to circumstances; but in essence it still subsists, and in all its force. Let him apply this observation, to whom it peculiarly belongs.

III. Moses required the Israelites, in renewing their covenant with God, to consider what constituted its essence: which, according to the views of the Lawgiver, was the reciprocal engagement. Be attentive to this term reciprocal; it is the soul of my definition. What constitutes the essence of a covenant, is the reciprocal engagements of the contracting parties. This is obvious from the words of my text; that thou shouldest (stipulate or) enter. Here we distinctly find mutual conditions; here we distinctly find that God engaged with the Israelites to be their God; and they engaged to be his people. We proved, at the commencement of this discourse, that the covenant of God with the Israelites, was in substance the same as that contracted with christians. This being considered, what idea ought we to form of those christians, (if we may give that name to men who can entertain such singular notions of christianity,) who ventured to affirm, that the ideas of condi tions, and reciprocal engagements, are dangerous expressions, when applied to the evangelical covenant; that what distinguishes the Jews from christians is, that God then promised and required; whereas now he promises, but requires nothing. My brethren, had I devoted my studies to compose a history of the eccentricities of the human mind, I should have deemed it my duty to have bestowed several years in reading the books, in which those systems are contained; that I might have marked to posterity the precise degrees to which men are capable of carrying such odious opinions. But having diverted them to other pursuits, little, it is confessed, have I read of this sort of works and all I know of the subject may nearly be reduced to this, that there are persons in these provinces who both read and believe them.

Without attacking by a long course of causes and consequences, a system so destructive of itself, we will content ourselves with a single test. Let them produce a single passage from the Scriptures, in which God requires the acquisition of knowledge, and engages to bestow it, without the least fatigue of reading, study, and reflection. Let them produce a passage, in which God requires us to possess certain virtues, and engages to communicate them, without enjoining us to subdue our senses, our temperature, our passions, our inclination, in order that we may attain them. Let them produce one passage from the Scriptures to prove, that God requires us to be saved by the merits of Jesus Christ, and engages to do it, without the slightest sorrow for our past sins, without the least reparation of our crimes....without precautionary measures to avoid them....without the qualifying dispositions to participate the fruits of his passion. What am I saying! Let them produce a text which overturns the hundred, and the hundred more passages which we oppose to this gross antinomian system, and with which we are ever ready to confront its advocates.

We have said, my brethren, that this system destroys itself. Hence it was less with a view to attack it, that we destined this article, than to apprise some among you of having adopted it, at the very moment you dream that you reject and abhor it. We often fall into the error of the ancient Israelites; frequently forming as erroneous notions of the covenant God has contracted with us, as they did of that he had contracted with them. This people had violated the stipulations in a manner the most notorious in the world, God did not fulfil his engagements with them, because they refused to fulfil their engagements to him. He resumed the blessings he had so abundantly poured upon them; and, instead of ascribing the cause to themselves, they had the assurance to ascribe it to him. They said, The

temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the tem-.. ple of the Lord, Jer. vii. 4. We are the children of Abraham; forget not thy covenant....And how often have not similar sentiments been cherished in our hearts? How often has not the same language been heard proceeding from our lips? How often, at the moment we violate our baptismal vows at the moment, we are so far depraved as to falsify the oath of fidelity we have taken in the holy sacrament; how often, in short, does it not happen, that at the moment we break our covenant with God, we require him to be faithful by alleging....the cross....the satisfaction....the blood of Jesus Christ. Ah! wretched man! fulfil thou the conditions to which thou hast subscribed; and God will fulfil those he has imposed on himself. Be thou mindful of thy engagements; and God will not be forgetful of his. Hence, what constitutes the essence of a covenant is, the mutual stipulations of the contracting parties. This is what we engaged to prove.

IV. Moses required the Israelites to consider, in renewing their covenant with God, the extent of the engagement: That thou shouldest enter into cove nant with the Lord thy God, and into his oath; that he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself; and that he may be unto thee a God. This engagement of God with the Jews implies, that he would be their God; or, to comprehend the whole in a single word, that he would procure them a happiness correspondent to the eminence of his perfections. Cases occur, in which the attributes of God are at variance with the happiness of men. It implies, for instance, an inconsistency with the divine perfections, not only that the wicked should be happy, but also that the righteous should have perfect felicity, while their purity is incomplete. There are miseries inseparable from our imperfection in holiness; and, imperfections being coeval with life, our

happiness will be incomplete till after death. On the removal of this obstruction, by virtue of the cove-、 nant, God having engaged to be our God, we shall attain supreme felicity. Hence our Saviour proved by this argument, that Abraham should rise from the dead, the Lord having said to Moses, I am the God of Abraham; God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, Mat. xxii. 32. This assertion, I am the God of Abraham, proceeding from the mouth of the Supreme Being, was equivalent to a promise of making Abraham perfectly happy. Now he could not be perfectly happy, so long as the body to which nature had united him, was the victim of corruption. Therefore, Abraham must rise from the dead.

When God engaged with the Israelites, the Israelites engaged with God. Their covenant implies, that they should be his people; that is, that they should obey his precepts so far as human frailty would admit. By virtue of this clause, they engaged not only to abstain from gross idolatry, but also to eradicate the principle. Keep this distinction in view: it is clearly expressed in my text. Ye have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold. Take heed, lest there should be among you man or woman, or family, or tribe, whose beart turneth away from the Lord, to go and serve the gods of these nations. Here is the gross act of idolatry. Lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood. Here is the principle. I would not enter into a critical illustration of the original terms, which our versions render gall and wormwood. They include a metaphor taken from a man, who, finding in his field weeds pernicious to his grain, should crop the strongest, but neglecting to eradicate the plant, incurs the inconvenience he wished to avoid.

The metaphor is pertinent. In every crime we consider both the plant, and the root productive of