EXTRACT FROM A SERMON BY RALPH ERSKINE, A.M.
“Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.”—GAL. iv. 28.
THE mystery of right vowing and covenanting is here. It is the business of one that hath an interest in Christ, and that, under the conduct of the Spirit of promise as a spirit of praise and gratitude, offering to the Lord thanksgiving, and paying his vow to the Lord; through grace, vowing a grateful service in heart, lip, and life, to the Lord that hath saved him from the guilt of sin, the wrath of God, and the power of corruption; the man’s resolving hereupon thankfully to give to the Lord the love of his heart, the calves of his lips, and the obedience of his life.
O, sirs, pray that God may graciously covenant with you, otherwise you will never gratefully covenant with Him. Your covenanting will be vain till He comes and discovers to you the nature, freedom, and fulness of the covenant of grace that stands fast with Christ. And let believers themselves remember always that they never go to confound God’s covenant of grace with their covenant of gratitude: for your covenant of gratitude—even when entered into rightly, upon the main—yet may be a thousand times broken. But woe would be to you for ever if the covenant of grace could be once broken; nay, but that is impossible, for it stands between two unchangeable parties—God and Christ. However, as the spirit of gratitude is necessary before there can be any personal covenant of gratitude, so I despair of ever seeing the National Covenant rightly renewed till the spirit of praise and gratitude be poured out. Therefore, if you would wish for a great reformation day—a covenanting day—O cry for the return of the Spirit of promise as a spirit of praise and gratitude. Though the Lord owned our solemn covenanting days—however many make a jest of them now-a-days, and though some did enter into these Covenants under the influence of the spirit of gratitude—yet the general want of this spirit, even in those that thus covenanting with the Lord, may be one of the causes why our Covenants were afterwards so fearfully broken and burnt.
I knew once a gentleman who, after his first conviction, made a covenant, and wrote it, signed it, and laid it up in his chest, but afterwards turned more loose than ever, till, casting off all bonds, he went home one day and burnt his covenant with God; whereupon he took loose reins to his lusts for a time, till the Lord accidentally ordered his hearing another sermon. The minister was directed to speak to the following strain, though he in the meantime was resolved to be hardened against all that the minister should say. Well, but the Lord put these or the like words in the minister’s mouth, namely, “Perhaps there is someone here that, under convictions, formerly hath made a covenant, and he hath afterwards gone to such a height of wickedness that he hath burnt his covenant.” The poor gentleman knew that none in all the world but God and his own conscience were privy to that story, and therefore he was obliged to acknowledge it was God Himself speaking to him. Then began a sound work of conviction, and thereupon a discovery of Christ to his conversion. Then he knew how he was to dedicate his life to the Lord under the conduct of a Spirit of gratitude.
I apply this to the case of Scotland, though it may be applied to all personal cases. Scotland entered into covenant with God, but though the Lord helped some of our forefathers to act honestly and from a spirit of gratitude, yet the most part of these generations, as well as their posterity, were strangers to the spirit of gratitude. And what came of the Covenant? Behold, it was not only broken, but burnt; and God is saying to Scotland, “O Scotland, Scotland, you have broken Covenant; you have forgotten the Covenant; you have played the harlot with many lovers; yea, you have burned the Covenant of your God!” And till God send the spirit of conviction, discovering our sin, and thereafter the spirit of gratitude, making us regularly to engage unto duty—like children of promise that have got the Spirit of promise as a spirit of gratitude—there is little hope of powerful covenanting days. O cry for the return of the Spirit for this end!