Yea, which is yet more to our purpose, when the first covenant proved not, but miscarried, not by any fault that was in the Covenant-Maker, no, nor simply in the covenant itself; for, if man could have kept it, it would have given him life; I say, when it was broken, God makes a new covenant with His people. "Not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, which My covenant they brake.... But this shall be the covenant, ... I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be My people." Because they could not keep the first covenant, God made a second that should keep them. Oh! that while we are making a covenant with our God, He would please to make such a covenant with us; so would it be indeed a "perpetual covenant, that should not be forgotten." Well, you see we have a covenanting God, a covenant-making God, and a covenant-renewing God; be we "followers of God, as dear children:" let us be a covenanting people, a covenant making, a covenant-renewing people; and as our God, finding fault with the first, let us make a "new covenant, even a perpetual covenant, that shall never be forgotten." A _fifth_ motive to quicken us to this duty, may be even the practice of the Antichristian state and kingdom; popery hath been dexterous to propagate and spread itself by this means. What else have been all their fraternities and brotherhoods, and societies, but so many associations and combinations politic, compacted and obliged, by oaths and covenants, for the advancing of the Catholic cause, whereby nations and kingdoms have been subdued to the obedience of the Roman mitre? And prelacy (that whelp) hath learned this policy of its mother papacy (that lioness) to corroborate and raise itself to that height, we have seen and suffered by these artifices; while, by close combinations among themselves, and swearing to their obedience, all the inferior priesthood, and church-officers, by ordination engagements and oaths of canonical obedience, a few have been able to impose their own laws and canons, upon a whole kingdom; yea, upon three kingdoms, it being an inconsiderable company, either of ministers or people (the Lord be merciful to us in this thing) that have had eyes to discover the mystery of iniquity, which these men have driven; and much more inconsiderable, that have had hearts to oppose and withstand their tyranny and usurpations. And why may not God make use of the same stratagem to ruin their kingdom, which they used to build it? Yea, God hath seemed to do it already, while in that place where they cast that roaring canon, and formed their cursed oath, for the establishing their Babel prelacy, with its endless perpetuity. In the very same place hath this covenant been debated and voted, once, and a second time, by command of public authority, for the extirpation of it root and branch, and the casting of it out for ever, as a plant which "our heavenly Father hath not