4. Much tenderness and heart-melting is requisite to the right performing of this duty. So it was with covenant-renewing Israel and Judah, who were "weeping as they went to seek the Lord their God, and to make a covenant never to be forgotten." This brokenness of heart, and tender-melting frame may arise, both from the consideration of the many sins and iniquities whereby persons have provoked the Lord their God to anger, whence they come "to be like doves of the valley, every one mourning for his iniquity:" and likewise from the consideration of the grace and mercy of God, manifested in Christ Jesus, his condescension to enter into a covenant with sinful men, and readiness, upon his people's repentance, to pardon their former breaches; from the consideration of this transcendently free grace, an humble and sincere covenanter will be transported into an ecstacy of wonder and admiration; as the church is, Mic. vii. 18, 19, 20--"Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage?" &c. 5. Dependency and recumbency upon the Lord by faith, for strength to perform covenant engagements, is requisite to right covenanting, Isa. xxvii. 5--"Let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me." This is to "take hold of" God's covenant, Isa. lvi. 4. 6. Affection to God and the duties whereunto we engage, is requisite to right covenanting, and that in its flower and vigour, height and supremacy. Thus, 2 Chron. xv. 12, 15, Asa and the people "entered into a covenant, to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart, and with all their soul:--And all Judah rejoiced at the oath; for they had sworn with all their heart, and sought him with their whole desire." They had an affection to the work, and did it with complacency, not in dissimulation, so as not to design to perform it: nor through compulsion, with an eye to secular profit or preferment, as many in these lands did.