228 SIXTH SERMON are yea and amen, and faith cloth not put certainty into the promise of God, Rom. iii. 3, 4. 2 Tim. ii. 13. but into the heart of, man concerning the promises, Rom. iv. 16. 2 Tim. i. 12. but God's seal is a con- firmation and making efficacious the promise of man, which otherwise would vanish into a lie.; all our sufficiency is from him, we can neither will, nor do any thing further than we receive from him both to will and to do. Pharaoh made promise after promise, and brake them as fast, Exod. viii. 8. 28. ix. 28. Israel makes promises one while, and quickly starts aside like a deceitful bow, as ice which melts in the day, and hardens again in the night, Psa. lxxviii. 34. 38. Jer. xxxiv. 15, 16. to -day they will, and to-mor- row they will not again ; they repent to-day, and to- morrow they repent of their repenting ; like the sluggard in his bed, that puts out his arm to rise, and then pulls it in again. So unstable and impotent is man in all his resolutions, till God say amen to what he purposeth, and establisheth the heart by his own grace, Heb. xiii. 9. When the waters stood as a wall on the right hand and on the left of Israel, as they passed through the Red Sea, this was a work of God's own power ; for water is unstable, and cannot keep together by its own strength, nor be contained within any bounds of its own. So great a work is it to see the mutable wills and resolutions of men kept close to any pious and holy purposes. The point we learn from hence is this, that our conversion and amendment of life is not sufficiently provided for by the band, obligation, or covenant of our own, whereby we solemnly promise and undertake it, except God be pleased by his free grace to esta- blish and enable the heart unto the performance of it : or thus, a penitent man's conversion and covenant
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