_Fourthly_, The parties entering into, and engaging themselves in a covenant, expressed by their several degrees and functions, Princes, Levites, priests. And were these all? All whom this verse specifies, and enow to bring in all the rest? Where the governors and the teachers go before in an holy example, what honest heart will not follow? And the next chapter shews us, all who were honest hearted, following this holy example, verse 28: "And the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the porters, the singers, the Nethinims, and all they that had separated themselves from the people of the lands, unto the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, every one having knowledge, and having understanding: They clave unto their brethren, their nobles, and entered into," &c. _Fifthly_, The outward acts by which they testified their inward sincere consent, and engaged themselves to continue faithful in that covenant: First, writing it. Second, sealing to it. Third, (in the tenth chapter, ver. 29.) "They entered into a curse." Fourth, "Into an oath, to walk in God's law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe to do all the commandments of the Lord their God, with the statutes and judgments. And that they would not give their daughters to the people of the land," &c: with divers many articles of that covenant, tending both to their ecclesiastical and civil reformation. I begin with the first point, the nature of a covenant. Concerning which, we may receive some light from the notation of the original words; 1. For a covenant. 2. For the making of a covenant. The Hebrew _Berith (a covenant)_ comes from _Barah_, which signifieth two things: _First_, To choose exactly, and judiciously. _Second_, To eat moderately, or sparingly. And both these significations of the root _Barah_, have an influence upon this derivative _Berith_, a covenant: the former of these intimating, if not enforcing, that a covenant is a work of sad and serious deliberation, for such are elective acts. Election is, or ought to be made, upon the rational turn of judgment, not upon a catch of fancy, or the hurry of our passions.