(1.) We are to join herein with suitable acts of faith and prayer, as the nature of the ordinance calls for them, and to adore the persons of the Godhead whose name and glory is mentioned therein. And we are to apply ourselves to God, for the grace of the covenant, that is signified thereby, that he would be our God, as well as the God of the person who is particularly given up to him in baptism. We are also to bewail the universal depravity of human nature, and that guilt which we bring with us into the world, which is signified in infant-baptism; and this, together with the habits of sin, which we have contracted, is confessed by those who are baptized when adult, which we cannot but see a great deal of, in our daily experience. We ought also to entertain becoming thoughts of the virtue of the blood of Christ, and of the power of the Holy Ghost, which alone can take away the guilt of sin, and render this ordinance effectual to salvation; which we are not only to desire with respect to the person baptized, but that we ourselves may be made partakers of that grace, which we equally stand in need of. (2.) We ought to confess before God, with sorrow and shame, how defective we have been, as to the improvement of our baptismal engagements; so that, though we have been devoted to him, our hearts and affections have been very prone to depart from him; and we ought to adore and acknowledge the goodness and faithfulness of God, in that, though we have been unstedfast in his covenant, through the treachery and deceitfulness of our hearts; yet he has been ever mindful thereof, and made good the promises contained therein, to all his servants who have put their trust in him. 2. Our baptism is to be improved by us in the time of temptation, in order to our resisting it, and preventing our being entangled and overcome thereby. (1.) If the temptation takes its rise from the world, or we are thereby induced to lay aside, or be remiss in our duty to God, from the prosperous circumstances in which we are therein, we should consider, that in having been devoted to God in our infancy, or given up ourselves professedly to him, when adult, it has been intimated and acknowledged, that he is our portion, better to us than all we can enjoy in the world; and therefore we ought to acquiesce in him as such, and say, _Whom have I in heaven but thee; and there is none_, or nothing, _upon the earth that I desire besides thee_, Psal. lxxiii. 25.