5. If the testimonies of the Lord be your heritage, then you will live upon them, and make them the storehouse from whence you fetch all your supplies, as righteousness, peace, comfort, and spiritual strength ; nay, all your outward maintenance. This will be comfort in straits, strength in duty, provision for your families. There are two sorts of the children of God, either those that are in prosperity, or those that are in want, and both live on the covenant. A child of God that hath a plentiful afBuence of outward comforts, yet he doth live upon God, 1 Tim. iv. 5, to them that believe, for everything is sanc- tified by the word and prayer. Though God hath supplied them mth mercy, yet they have their right ; all comforts and blessings owe their rise from the promise. I take them immediately out of God's hand, from a God in covenant with me ; and so I use the blessing and praise God. Otherwise, if you look only to present sujiplies, you live by sense, not by faith. Every one is to say, ' Give us this day our daily bread,' to fetch out his supplies from God every day, rich men as Avell as others, when you see you have a right and liberty by Christ. So God's leave and God's blessing go along with all ; by this means rich men live upon the covenant. Ay ! but chiefly in want ; the word
144 SERMONS UPON rsAL:\r cxix. [Ser. CXXII.
quiclcened and slrcngthencd liiiii when lie was in distress and in want of all tlun<^s. Do you find the word afiford maintenance in distress and want of all thin,i^s ? The covenant is a Ktorehouse that never fails, AVheu all else lails, God is alive still, and the promises are the same ; when the field yields no meat, when there are no calves in the stall, etc., yet then you can live upon your covenant interest, and comfort yourselves in the Lord your God, Ilab. iii. 18. Thoug-h the course of nature may fail, yet the covenant of God doth not tail, for that is beyond the course of nature, or beyond the common providence of God. When you can see that all the accidents which fall out in the world can never take your portion from you, you have enough to live upon ; when you see more in the ])romises than the creature can take away from you, and can see all made up in God. As the children of Israel in the wilderness had no house, but, Lord, ' thou art our dwelling-place,' Ps. xc. 1. Faith gets a living from promises when nothing comes to hand in sense and outward feeling ; and nothing can be taken from us but what the covenant can restore again, and to fetch, quickening and support from heaven.
Use 3. For exhortation, to })ress you to take God's promises for an heritage ; the poorest, that are born to nothing, may put in for a share. Take those motives : —
1. Consider every man hath an heritage, he hath a chief good : Ps. iv. 6, ' Many say, Who will show us any good ?' There is something that man takes to be his happiness. The soul in itself is a chaos of desires ; like a sponge that sucks and thirsts, it hath not sufficiency in itself ; it was made for something without ourselves. Now man, being such a needy creature, is always looking abroad for a happiness, for a portion to maintain and keep him up in comfort and life, Every man must have a portion. Men are not men without looking after something to maintain them as a portion. Now there is no portion like this, like the testimony of the Lord ; there is none so full as this, God's covenant notion is all-sufficiency ; here is all things to be found in God. When God came to indent with Abraham, ' I am God all- sufficient.' He that hath the testimony of the Lord for his portion, hath God's all-sufficiency engaged to give him everything he stands in need of.
2. This is a portion will go along with you wherever you go. If you go into exile, a foreign land, into prison, into the grave, your heritage will follow you there. Your estate, though it lay in jewels, cannot be carried safe with you ; but this portion you may carry with you, they cannot plunder and deprive you of it. There is a notable expression : Prov. xiv. 14, ' A good man shall be satisfied from him- self.' A very strange* expression : it is the highest sacrilege and usurp- ation that can be to be sufficient to ourselves ; it is an encroachment upon God. ]\Ian, when he first fell from God, self was the next pre- tender. To seek that in ourselves which is only found in God, how is it meant a good man shall be satisfied from himself ? What ! shall the Lord be laid aside ? shall he be sufficient to his own happiness ? No ; it is not meant in opposition to God, but in opposition to external things that lie without him. He is satisfied from himself ; that is, from the comfort God lets into his own heart. A godly man is in-