And the reasons are, 1. 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; so it is the highest demonstration of man's love to God, to bind himself by oath and covenant to be God's. There is nothing obligeth God more to us, than to see us willing to tie and bind ourselves unto His service: and therefore, they that in this sense are anti-covenanters are sons of Belial, that refuse the yoke of the Lord, that say, "Let us break His bands asunder, and cast away His cords, from us;" such as _oderunt vincula pietatis_, which is a soul-destroying, and a land-destroying sin. 3. Because that the union of England, Scotland and Ireland, into one covenant, is the chief, if not the only preservative of them at this time. You find in our English chronicles, that England was never destroyed, but when divided within itself. Our civil divisions brought in the Romans, the Saxons, Danes and Normans; but now the anti-covenanters divide the parliament within itself, and the city within itself, and England against itself; they are as stones separated from the building, which are of no use to itself, and threaten the ruin of the building. Jesus Christ is called in Scripture, the "Corner-stone," which is a stone that unites the two ends of the building together. Jesus Christ is a stone of union: and therefore they that sow division, and study unjust separation, have little of Jesus Christ in them. When the ten tribes began to divide from the other two tribes, they presently began to war one against another, and to ruin one another: the anti-covenanter, he divides and separates and disunites. And therefore he makes perilous times. My chief aim is at the second doctrine,