Thou art made up for ever; all salvation, as you heard, is wrapped up in this one word, I am the Lord thy God. And in the faith of it thou mayest go through the valley of the shadow of death, without fearing any evil; for thy God is with thee, he will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

But I shall not farther insist in pressing this exhortation with arguments. One would think that no man who believes a future state of eternal happiness or misery, needs to be much urged to know and acknowledge God in Christ as his God, upon this new grant of sovereign grace; this being the very hinge upon which a comfortable eternity turns. All I shall do farther, in prosecuting this exhortation, is, to answer a few objections which carnal reason and unbelief will very readily muster up against this doctrine and exhortation.

Object. 1. May one say, I have lost all claim and title to the Lord as my God, by violating the holy law; and I think I hear God saying to me with a frown, "How shall I put thee among the children," who hast forfeited thy relation to me? and therefore I dare not own and acknowledge him as the Lord my God. Answ. It is indeed true, that you and I, and all mankind, have lost our title and relation to him as our God by the first Adam, and the breach of the first covenant: and since the fall of Adam, God never said to any sinner upon a law-ground, I am the Lord thy God; no, when a sinner looks at that quarter, his hope and strength perishes for ever from the Lord. But, O sirs, here is a new covenant, a new gift or grant that God makes of himself, which does not go upon the ground of our obedience to the law as its condition, but upon the ground of sovereign grace, reigning through the righteousness of God-man: here, I say, is a new claim of right presented to the guilty sinner, I am the Lord thy God; "I will be unto them a Father, and they shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." These and the like absolute and indefinite promises are universally dispensed to all and every one as the ground of faith. And, lest any sinner, through a sense of guilt, should fear to lay hold upon this new claim of right, here is the warrant subjoined and annexed to the claim, Thou shalt have no other gods before

me.

Object. 2. I am afraid lest God be not saying this to me in particular, I am the Lord thy God; and therefore dare not jay hold of it. I fear lest he be not requiring me in particular, by this commandment, to know and acknowledge him as my God. Answ. It is by these and the like groundless surmises and insinuations, that an evil heart of unbelief turns us away from the living God, and from taking hold of his cove

nant. But pray, tell me, in good earnest, do you think to dispute away the binding obligation of the very first commandment of the law of God? for, as was said, at the same time that you refuse to take hold of this covenant-grant, you disobey the first and leading precept of the law. Why, will you own the obligation of the other commandments of the law, and reject this? I suppose there are none of you but will readily acknowledge, that you in particular are bound to honour your parents, not to kill, steal, commit adultery, &c. You may with as good reason say or think, that these other precepts do not bind you in particular, as imagine that you are not particularly bound by the first to know and acknowledge a God in Christ as your God. Why so much prejudiced against the first and chief commandment of God beyond all others? What account can be rendered for it, that men should thrust away from them the first commandment of the very law of nature, when grafted into the gospel-covenant, and made so subservient to their eternal salvation? I know of no solid reason that can be given for it but that of the apostle, "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not."

Object. 3. I cannot refuse that the command, Thou shalt have no other gods before me, is binding upon me in particular; but I can never think that it is to me in particular that God is saying, I am the Lord thy God. Answ. Who authorized you, or any of Adam's race, to put asunder what God has joined? I am sure it is not by God's warrant that this is done ; and therefore you may easily divine that it is from a worse source. It is the great plot of Satan to break that connexion which God has laid between the gospel and the law; for he knows very well, that if the gospel be separate from the law, or the law from the gospel, in the matter of practice, not one of the commandments of the law can be obeyed to purpose. And this first command in particular, if it be disjoined from the gospel-promise laid in the preface, I am the Lord thy God, can no more be obeyed by a sinner, than if he were commanded to pull the sun or moon out of the firmament. Pray consider, while you own the obligations of the precept, and mean while refuse your interest or concern with the preface, you acknowledge your obligation to obedience, and yet at the same time cast away the foundation upon which your obedience is to stand; thus you build without a foundation, and how can that building stand? It will fall, and great will be the fall of it. And, therefore, in the name of God, I proclaim that this promise, I am the Lord thy God, is to you, and your seed, and to all that are afar off. Did not God speak to every individual in the camp, when he uttered these words,

I am the Lord thy God; as well as when he added, Thou shalt have no other gods before me? The same is he saying to you, and me, and every one of us; and therefore let us not cast away our own mercy; to us, as well as unto them, "belong the adoption, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the promises."

Object. 4. What if all that is intended in these words, I am the Lord thy God, be only either an assertion of divine sovereignty, or of an external federal relation to Israel as the seed and posterity of Abraham, and the only visible church? And if so, where is there a foundation in them for me to believe in him as the Lord my God? Answ. I am far from excluding any of these things the objection mentions as comprehended in these words, I am the Lord thy God: and I grant, that if no more were included in them, I do not see how they could be a foundation of special and saving faith to me, or any else. But that it is otherwise, will not readily be denied by any, if they consider what it is God requires of us in the first command, as inseparably connected with the preface. Pray consider it a little. Is this all that God calls for by the first precept of his law, to know and acknowledge him as our sovereign Lord-Creator, or that he is a God to the visible church by external federal relation? No doubt, these are truths indispensable to be believed: but there is more required; namely, to believe that he is the Lord our God in Christ, and to worship and glorify him accordingly. The external federal relation that God bears to the visible church, becomes special when this promise is applied by a saving faith; hence this is the common argument with which Israel is urged to believe and repent through all the Old Testament; particularly Psal. lxxxi. 9-11. And whenever saving faith was acted, by which their return to him was influenced, they commonly fasten upon and apply this fundamental promise in my text, Jer. iii. 22. So that, I say, there is more in these words, I am the Lord thy God, than a bare assertion of divine sovereignty, or of his covenant-relation to Israel as a visible church; there is in them a glorious new covenantgrant or gift that God makes of himself to us in Christ as our God, to be applied by a saving faith: and when such a faith is acted upon it, the native echo of the soul to it is, "This God is my God." I believe it, because he himself hath said it, and said it not to others only, but to me in particular. "I will say, It is my people; and they shall say, The Lord is my God." It is true, indeed, no man can speak this dialect of faith without the Holy Spirit; but to say that there is not sufficient ground for a particular applicatory faith in the bare word or promise of God, abstractly considered, is to apologize

for the unbelief of the hearers of the gospel, and to run into the error of the enthusiasts, who suspend the duty of believing, not upon the word of God, but upon the work and light of the Spirit within.

Object. 5. If this promise be made to every one in the visible church, how shall the veracity of the Promiser be salved, or vindicated, seeing there are many who come short of it, many to whom he never becomes their God in a special Covenant-relation.

To this objection I might answer, by way of retort, How is it that the unbeliever makes God a liar, if the promise be not made to him in particular? For if the promise, and the faithfulness of the Promiser, be not to him, he cannot be blamed for not believing, or not setting his seal to a promise never made to him. Can he be condemned for not intermeddling with a thing that does not belong to him? Again, I ask, How was it that God, in a consistency with his faithfulness, made unbelieving Israel to know his breach of promise, Numb. xiv. 34, after he had made a grant or gift of the land of Canaan to them, and promised to bring them into it, while yet they never were allowed to enter it, but dropped their carcasses in the wilderness; God having sworn that they should not enter into his rest. The faithfulness of God, in breaking his promise that he had made to that generation, is salved by landing the blame upon their own unbelief; "they believed not his word, they trusted not in his salvation." They gave more credit to the false lying report of the wicked spies, than to the word and promise of him for whom "it is impossible to lie;" and because they "made God a liar," therefore his promise made to them turned to be of no effect to them. In like manner, a promise is left us of entering into a spiritual and eternal rest; but mean time most have reason to fear lest God make them to know his breach of promise, by excluding them out of that promised rest, because of their unbelief. The faithfulness of God is not in the least impeached hereby, because the unbeliever calls his faithfulness in question, and rejects his promise, as a thing not worthy of regard. Can a man be charged with unfaithfulness, in not bestowing himself and his estate upon a woman to whom he has made a promise of marriage, if the woman to whom it was made refuse his offer and promise? The faithfulness of the bankers of Scotland is engaged in particular to the bearer of their note; but if the bearer shall tear the note, or throw it away as a piece of useless paper, their veracity is nowise impeached, though they never pay that man the sum contained in their note; so here.

Object. 6. If I could find the marks and evidences of saving

grace once wrought in my soul, then indeed I could acknowledge and believe the Lord is my God; but till then I dare not, neither do I think it my duty. Answ. I do own that none can warrantably draw this conclusion that they are in a state of grace, within the bond of the covenant, or savingly interested in the Lord as their God, till they have examined the matter at the bar of the word, and upon trial have found such marks of grace as warrant them to draw such a conclusion. But this is not the question now under consideration. The question at present is, Whether it be lawful and warrantable for a poor sinner, who is so far from finding any works of grace or gracious qualifications in himself, that he can see nothing but sin and misery, feels himself to be an heir of hell and wrath: whether, I say, it be his duty, upon the footing of this covenant-grant and promise, I am the Lord thy God, to know, believe, and acknowledge the Lord as his God? And if this be the question, which it must be, it is all one as if it were asked, whether it be the immediate duty of such a person to obey the first command of the moral law as it stands under a covenant of grace? or, Whether a person is to forbear obedience to the first command in the law of God, till he find gracious qualifications wrought in his soul. To affirm which, were upon the matter to say, that the first commandment of the law does not enjoin the first duty of religion; but that something is to be done before we do the thing that God requires of us in the first place as the foundation of all other acts of obedience; and that is, to know and believe that God in Christ is our God, by virtue of a covenant of grace contained in these words, I am the Lord thy God. Such strange absurdities we inevitably run ourselves into, when we keep not in the cleanly path of faith chalked out to us in the word.

Object. 7. We fear that this way of teaching [would] lead us in to a presumptuous confidence: and therefore we are are afraid to meddle with it. Answ. God teaches no man to presume when he requires him to have no other gods before him. Your approved Catechism does not teach you to presume, when it tells you, that God in this commandment requires you to know and acknowledge him as God, and as your God; and that because he is the Lord, and our God, therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments. But, besides, as I told you in the use of trial, the man who in a presumptuous way lays claim to the Lord as his God, either lays claim to him out of Christ, or he does it not upon the footing of the faithfulness of God engaged in the covenant; or else, while he says with his mouth that the Lord is his God, says to the man, "What hast thou to do to make mention of