THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT:
SERMON AT WESTMINSTER.
BY JOSEPH CARYL.[12]
"And because of all this, we make a sure covenant, and
write it; and our princes, Levites, and priests, seal unto it." —Nehemiah ix. 38.
The general subject of this verse, is the special business of this day. A solemn engagement to the Lord, and among ourselves, in a sure covenant. Wherein we may consider these five things.
First, The nature of a covenant, from the whole.
Secondly, The grounds of a covenant, from those words, "because of all this."
Thirdly, The property of a covenant, in that epithet, Sure—"we make a sure covenant."
Fourthly, The parties entering into, and engaging themselves in a covenant, expressed by their several degrees and functions, Princes, Levites, priests. And were these all? All whom this verse specifies, and enow to bring in all the rest? Where the governors and the teachers go before in an holy example, what honest heart will not follow? And the next chapter shews us, all who were honest hearted, following this holy example, verse 28: "And the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the porters, the singers, the Nethinims, and all they that had separated themselves from the people of the lands, unto the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, every one having knowledge, and having understanding: They clave unto their brethren, their nobles, and entered into," &c.
Fifthly, The outward acts by which they testified their inward sincere consent, and engaged themselves to continue faithful in that covenant: First, writing it. Second, sealing to it. Third, (in the tenth chapter, ver. 29.) "They entered into a curse." Fourth, "Into an oath, to walk in God's law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe to do all the commandments of the Lord their God, with the statutes and judgments. And that they would not give their daughters to the people of the land," &c: with divers many articles of that covenant, tending both to their ecclesiastical and civil reformation.