It is the duty of a subject to swear allegiance to his lawful sovereign; at least he must stand prepared to do so when required. So is it with nations. Not only are the inhabitants of a nation, as occasion calls for it, to enter into sacred confederation with one another, in order to secure and defend their valued rights and privileges; but the nation, as such, through the medium of its authorized functionaries and by its usual forms of legal enactment, ought publicly to avow its attachment to the Lord Jesus Christ as its King and Prince, to recognise his legal authority, and to bind itself to his service by an oath."[222] They cast contempt on an ordinance of God, who do not, both in an ecclesiastical and a civil capacity, enter into Covenant with him. The Mediator is, at once, King of Zion and King of nations. The people of God are members of his Church, and also of civil society,--over which, as well as over the Church, he rules. For an individual, merely as a member of his Church, to acknowledge God, is to do his duty but in part. When the rulers in a nation as rulers, and the people as subjects, do not Covenant, they appear regardless of a part of character which, for the glory of God, they should maintain not less tenaciously than their ecclesiastical relations; they fail of availing themselves of the benefit of a most powerful system of motives to serve God, as his willing creatures, in a relation in which, as well as in the fellowship of the Church, they are called to obey him; and though they even attempt to honour him as King of Zion, yet, in failing to testify to the utmost of their capacities to his dominion, refusing to acknowledge him in this exercise as Governor among the nations, dishonour him in both, and tend to rob him of the glory which belongs to him as Head over all things to the Church, which is his body.