Now give me leave to shew you what a sword-procuring and soul-undoing sin, this sin of covenant-breaking is; and then the reason of it. Famous is that text, "And I will send My sword, which shall avenge the quarrel of My covenant." The words in the Hebrew run thus, "I will avenge the avengement," which importeth this much, that God is at open war and at public defiance with those that break His covenant: He is not only angry with them, but He will be revenged of them. "The Lord hath a controversy with all covenant-breakers." "The Lord will walk contrary to them." First, God takes His people into covenant, and then He tells them of the happy condition they should be in, if they did keep the covenant; but if they did break covenant, He tells them, "that the Lord will not spare him; but the anger of the Lord and His jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven, and the Lord shall separate him. And when the nation shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto the land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then shall men say. Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers." This was the sin that caused God to send His people Israel into captivity, and to remove the candlestick from the Asian churches. It is for this sin, that the sword is now devouring Germany, Ireland, and England. God hath sent His sword to avenge the quarrel of His covenant.