Covenant

“ I salute you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in token or remembrance of the everlasting covenant, in which covenant I receive you to fellowship, in a determination that is fixed, immovable, and unchangeable, to be your friend and brother through the grace of God in the bonds of love, to walk in all the commandments of God blameless, in thanksgiving, forever and ever. ”

“ We are a nation in covenant with God, we have the books of the covenant, the Old and New Testament; we have the seals of the covenant, baptism, and the Lord's supper; we have the messengers of the covenant, the ministers of the Gospel; we have the angel of the covenant, the Lord Jesus Christ, fully, freely, and clearly set out before us in the ministry of the word: but alas! are not these blessings amongst us, as the ark was amongst the Philistines, rather as prisoners, than as privileges, rather in testimonium et ruinam, quam in salutem; rather for our ruin, than for our happiness? ”

“ The Covenant with God, when kept, produces holiness, tenderness, charitableness, and divinest sympathy; turns life into an overflowing fountain of goodness. They, who follow the Banner of the Covenant in spirit and in truth, will aim at the very climax of Christian character, moral culture, and heroic service through Jesus Christ. ”

“ Have respect to the covenant.' In a word, Let your case be the worst out of hell, this covenant contains all salvation as a covenant of grace, of all grace, of all sorts of cures for all sorts of cases; and if you can get yourself wrapt within the bond of this covenant, by believing and pleading it; then you draw God upon your interest, so that your concern is his concern, your interest is his interest, your cause is his cause, as the Psalmist shews here, ver. 22. 'Arise, O God, plead thine own cause.' Stand ever upon his honour, and he will do his own work in his own time. ”

“ Therefore, roll up thy sleeves to serve the Covenant, make the hearts firm in the Covenant of the beloved Lord, create harmony and agreement among the believers and impart to them the glad-tidings of the confirmation which they will receive from God if the differences of opinion be removed and if they unite and agree, be firm in spreading the fragrance of God, divulging the traces and chanting the signs of God. ”

“ Then God entered into a covenant, here called a covenant of life,—perhaps you would call it an agreement,—with the newly married pair, that if they would render perfect obedience to his one command, and not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they might enjoy all the pleasures of the beautiful garden, and a whole eternity of joy and bliss. ”

“ Here we see that a covenant is of no force while the covenant sacrifice, that which ratifies it, is alive, which means that the covenants of promise were of no force without the death of Christ, the real covenant sacrifice. ”

“ Lord, appear thou for their help, and shorten these days for the elect's sake, lest they faint under the burden, and put forth their hands to iniquity.—I desire this day to covenant with thee, in opposition to all the power civil, and ecclesiastic, that has eaten out the life of Christianity, and stands in opposition to thee and thy precious truths,—and engage never to own them, till they be for thee. ”

“ Thanks, all thanks to our new covenant Head for the stability of the covenant; we change, but he changeth not. He himself is the covenant given to the people, and because he lives, his people shall live also, in spite of Satan and his colleague sin in our hearts: sin may, and does bring his people into captivity, but it shall not keep them in bondage for ever. The time of deliverance shall come, when they shall revive as the corn. ”

“ Walk, therefore, with a sure step and engage with the utmost assurance and confidence in the promulgation of the divine fragrances, the glorification of the Word of God and firmness in the Covenant. Rest ye assured that if a soul ariseth in the utmost perseverance and raiseth the Call of the Kingdom and resolutely promulgateth the Covenant, be he an insignificant ant he shall be enabled to drive away the formidable elephant from the arena, and if he be a feeble moth he shall cut to pieces the plumage of the rapacious vulture. ”

“ That the matter of the covenant is not only just and unexceptionable, and such as puts no hardship upon them, but kind and gracious, and such as gives them the greatest privileges and advantages imaginable. ”

“ A covenant is a solemn compact or agreement between two chosen parties or more, whereby with mutual, free, and full consent they bind themselves upon select conditions, tending to the glory of God, and their common good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the power and virtue of the loadstone draws the iron so the virtue of an exalted Christ draws the iron bar of the will: "Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power." O then plead it, saving, Lord, Have respect to the Covenant. ”

“ If the power of religion or solid reason, if loyalty to the king and piety to their native country, or love to themselves and natural affection to their posterity, if the example of men touched with a deep sense of all these, or extraordinary success from God thereupon, can awaken an embroiled, bleeding remnant to embrace the sovereign and only means of their recovery, there can be no doubt but this solemn league and covenant will find, wheresoever it shall be tendered, a people ready to entertain it with all cheerfulness and duty. ”

“ The great intentions of this commission speak abundance of comfort to the children of men. He was given for a covenant of the people, for a mediator, or guarantee, of the covenant of grace, which is all summed up in him. God, in giving us Christ, has with him freely given us all the blessings of the new covenant. Two glorious blessings Christ, in his gospel, brings with him to the Gentile world—light and liberty. ”

“ We acknowledge the covenant under which we live; we believe it, and are honest in our believe [belief] ; and we will honor that covenant by obedience to the laws of God. If we do not, our words and our actions contradict each other. By our acts, by our coming together, by our leaving our homes, our friends and our birthplaces that were dear to us according to the customs and belief of the world, we have declared our desire to serve the Lord. ”

“ Because you shall find in scripture, That when any nation did enter into a solemn religious covenant, God did exceedingly bless and prosper that nation after that time, as "That thou shouldst enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, that He may establish thee to-day for a people to Himself, and that He may be unto thee a God." And therefore to be a covenant-refuser, is to make our miseries perpetual. 2. Because it is the highest act of God's love to man, to vouchsafe to engage Himself by oath and covenant to be his God ”

“ Seeing the king is now upon the renewing of the covenants, it should be remembered that we enter into covenant, according to our profession therein, with reality, sincerity, and constancy, which are the qualifications of good covenanters. Many doubt of your reality in the covenant, let your sincerity and reality be evidenced by your stedfastness and constancy; for many have begun well, but have not been constant. ”

“ O come and give thy consent to this covenant and bargain this day: let thy presence shew thy satissaction in it, that I may win to the faith—that not only I have covenanted with thee, but that thou hast condesended in thy. people that had jeoparded their lives in the high places of the fields taking chearfully the spoiling of their goods;—these are they that have buried the work of the Lord sadened the hearts of their poor affliction brethren buried the Covenant and the Reformaation work, which was the glory of our land. ”

“ A tie or obligation, whereby the heart, otherwise shifty, is bound to the work intended, sometime by a single promise, sometime by an oath or vow, and sometime more publicly by a solemn covenant. And this last and highest degree is that which the prophet speaks, at least in this sense I take it. This is that engagement of soul, whereby a man prevents his starting aside: and this is that first phrase that was to be opened. ”

“ The covenant you have made is a righteous covenant. Because of the change made in your hearts through faith in His name, and because of the covenant you have made, you will be called The Children of Christ, for today you have been spiritually born of Him, and have become His sons and daughters. ”

“ The promise of the Covenant of Redemption was, a people elected to the blessings of time and eternity, these blessings themselves, and all the countenance which the surety should receive in fulfilling his work of righteousness, and all the glory that should come to him as the Mediator—God and man—in obtaining for his people and bestowing upon them the benefits of the great salvation. ”

“ Since the law as a covenant has been superseded by a covenant better adapted to our guilty and helpless circumstances, let us make a proper use of the mercy, acquaint ourselves with its demands, and abound in the holiness it enjoins. ”

“ God would not swear to the covenant of Works, He intended not to honour it so much, it was not to continue, it was not worthy of an oath of His; but to the Covenant of Grace, which is the Gospel, He swears, and repents not of it. God swears for the salvation of men, and of kingdoms: and if kingdoms swear, what subject of an oath becometh them better than the preservation and salvation of kingdoms, by establishing the kingdom of a Saviour amongst them, even our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who is a Mediator and Saviour for nations as well as particular persons? ”

“ THe Covenant of Grace is that free and gracious Covenant which God of his meere mercy in Jesus Christ made with man a miserable and wretched sinner, promising unto him pardon of sinne and eternall happinesse, if he will return from his iniquity, embrace mercy reached forth, by faith unfained, and walke before God in sincere, faithfull and willing obedience, as becomes such a creature lifted up unto such injoyment, and partaker of such pretious promises. ”

“ Covenant, in the spiritual sense, signifies conjunction; for when it is said that two persons make a covenant together, it means that they make an agreement in regard to some act or thing, and so far as both parties are faithful to the agreement, their minds are in a kind of conjunction. Now, the law of the Divine commandments is a covenant between God and man; a covenant, in which God promises, expressly or impliedly, that if man will do what is there commanded, and refrain from doing what is there forbidden, he shall be gifted with eternal life and its blessedness. ”

“ As I have come to see it, as a result of my researches, the very idea of a "covenant" in primitive thought is a union of being, or of persons, in a common life, with the approval of God, or of the gods. This was primarily a sharing of blood, which is life, between two persons, through a rite which had the sanction of him who is the source of all life. ”

“ God promiseth freely to recompence the good of obedience, which is already due, and might be exacted without promise of reward; man promiseth to pay that debt of duty, which he oweth unto the Lord, in respect of the manifold relations, wherein he stands obliged unto him. The forme of the Covenant stands in a Promise and restipulation, To will and to nill the same things is the sure bond of all amity and friendship. ”

“ This day you are to take a covenant by the lifting up of your hands unto the most high God, which is a most emphatical ceremony, whereby we do as it were call God to be a witness and a judge of what we do, and a rewarder or revenger, according as we keep or break this covenant. If we keep it, the lifting up of our hands will be as an evening sacrifice; if we break it, the lifting up our hands will be as the lifting up of the hands of a malefactor at the bar, and will procure woe and misery, and wringing of hands at the great day of appearing. ”

“ For they that be in Covenant are in phrase of Scripture the people of God, that is, such with whom God hath contracted Covenant, and who in like manner have sworne unto the words of the Covenant, God stipulating, and they accepting the condition. God as an absolute Soveraigne hath right and authority over all men: but in a certaine and peculiar reason they are called his people, who receive his Commandement, and acknowledge him to be their Lord and Saviour. ”

“ O Lord I desire to close all by giving myself up to thee, and all mine; accept, Lord Jesus Christ, and help to perform, and own me as thy covenanted child, protesting humbly,that failing on my part (against which I resolve, as thou knowest) shall not make void this covenant, I having accepted of thy offer, upon thy own terms, and will henceforth wait for what is good, that when thou comest I may rejoice in thee, crying, this is my God and I have waited for him, as witness my hand at Blackness castle December, 1687. ”

“ That which promotes personal holiness, must needs promote national holiness. The consideration that we are in the bonds of a covenant, is both a bridle to stop us from sin, and a spur to duty. When we provoke God to bring evil upon us, He stays His hand by considering His covenant. ”