to him alone ! Too true is that accusation which he
brings against us, that " we have played the harlot with many
lovers1" —
What then might we not expect, if God should deal with us according to our iniquities ? What, but that he should cast us off, and swear in his wrath that we should never more be received into his favour?]
Yet still does " God remember his covenant" to- wards her —
[" He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger for ever." He will not break his covenant, though we have broken ours : nor will he violate his oath, though we have violated ours times without number. " He will visit our transgressions with the rod, and our iniquity with stripes :" (and, if the chastening us with whips will not suffice, he will " chastise us with scorpions, even seven-fold more, for our sinsm) : " nevertheless his loving-kindness will he not utterly take from us, nor suffer his faithfulness to fail : his covenant will he not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of his lips : for once he has sworn by his holiness that he will not lie unto David n." He knew what we were, and what we should be also, if left to ourselves, before he chose us : yet did he bid us live, and spread his skirt over us, and entered into covenant with us0. It was on this very account that he in his covenant undertook to do for us all that related either to the pardoning of our guilt, or to the sanctifying of our nature5: and engaged, not only never to depart from us, but never to leave us to depart from himq. Of all this he has assured us by promise and by oath, on purpose that by " these two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have the strongest consolation, if we have fled for refuge to the hope that is set before usr." If our continuance in his favour had depended altogether on our stability, who would ever be saved at last ? (It is of the grounds of our security that we are now speaking, and not of the means : of them we shall speak in another place.) Our final stability must be the work of his grace, as much as our first inclination to serve him : all our good works from first to last must be wrought in us by hims : and when he chose us, he chose us to the end, and to the means ; or rather to the end by the mearis1: and "his gifts and calling are without repentance11." Our security then rests
1 Jer. iii. 1, m 1 Kings xii. 11. Lev. xxvi. 18.
n Ps.lxxxix.33— 35. ° Ezek. xvi. 6, 8. Isai. xlviii. 8.
p Jer. xxxi. 11, 12. i Jer. xxxii. 39 — 41.
r Heb. vi. 17, 18. s Isai. xxvi. 12.
1 2 Thess. ii. 13, 14. « Rom. xi. 29.
978.] god's faithfulness to his covenant. 443
upon the unchangcableness of our Godx, "whose compassions fail noty," and " with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning7." I again repeat, that he may hide himself from us, and for a long period too, as it may appear to us ; for it is both his right and his property to do soa: but " his anger" will endure but for " a little moment;" and though our "weeping may endure for a night, joy shall come to us in the morning V]
In a review of this subject,
1 . Let none, however desolate their condition may be, indulge despair —
[This is the true use to be made of this important sub- ject. Let not Jews despair of being restored to the favour of their God ; but let them plead with God, as their forefathers
didc and accept the invitation which God himself has
given them to return unto himd.