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It were very meet, yea, not only were it meet, but it is also necessary for us to consider what the Lord has been doing to us, and to consider what has been his dealing and dispensation with us this time past; and then, upon the other part, to consider what we have been doing with the Lord our God. The Lord has done as much to us in his providence as can be done to a people in the outward dispensation of the means of grace; what can the Lord do more thus than he has done, or what has the Lord done more to any people than he has done to us? If the Lord said this upon good grounds to his own Israel: “What can I do more unto my vineyard? I have dug it, I have hedged it about, etc., and thus and thus have I done to it.” Surely it may be as truly said of us, what can the Lord do more unto us? And again, upon the other part, (I mean for external duties, and bands in the service and worship of God,) what can we ourselves do more to God? We have sworn a covenant with the Lord in his sight and his holy angels, and in the sight of many witnesses beside; (for each one has many witnesses, they have the whole congregation to be witnesses to that which they have done): and after we have given our oath, we have sealed it with a seal at the sacrament. I would have every one of you but to ask at your own consciences, what you would have the Lord to do more to you, and to see but if he can do any more in the external means; and see what you can do more unto the Lord: indeed there can be no more done outwardly.
And then, when you have condescended upon this, I would have you to take it to heart both what God has done to you, and his obligation, as also your own obligation whereby you have bound yourselves to him. For if all this be done on all sides, and yet your hearts be never a bit drawn nearer to God than they were before, then you were never so near to a judgment and vengeance as now. You know when man deals with man thus—gives him his promise for anything, has made a band for it, sworn to it, and subscribed it, and sealed it with his seal, and yet for all that, proves false, perfidious, and perjured—either that he was never minded to do according to these things, or by proving light, although he had a purpose, yet goes from it again—you would think such a man unworthy to live among the company and society of honest men. And yet if you live among the society of God’s people, and profess to be of them, and make not conscience of so many obligations, certainly you may be counted unworthy to live among God’s people, if you make not conscience of these. And therefore I would exhort you, in the name of Jesus Christ, to consider what the Lord has done to you, and to consider also how you have bound yourselves to him again, that so there may be a change into the heart by that, and that change in the heart may be evidenced by your life and conversation; that so the world about you may see, albeit they could not know it before, that you are the people of God, and walk as the people of God. As you would wish a blessing from God, I exhort you again and again most earnestly to do it: and humble yourselves now before the Lord your God, and crave pardon of him that you have not done it the time bygone, and beseech him to put his Spirit within you, that hereafter you may walk as it becomes, through Jesus Christ.