60 SECOND SERMON sacrifices, which were ordained for the stirring up of spiritual affections, and praises unto God, and also to intimate the vanity of ceremonial without real services. The beast on the altar was but a carnal, but the faith of the heart and the confession of the mouth was a reasonable sacrifice. No point more insisted on in the prophets than this, Isa. i. xv. Mich. vi. 6 S. Amos iv. 4. v. 5. Psa. 1. 13. 15. lxix. 30, 31. &c.- They had idolatrously dishonoured God with their calves of Dan and Bethel, and they had carnally and superstitiously placed all worship and holiness in the calves of the altar : but now they resolve to worship God neither politically, after human inventions, nor carelessly, with mere outward ceremonies, but spiri- tually, and from inward affections : for the lips are moved by the heart. Now thanksgiving is further called the calves, or sacrifices of the lips, to intimate, that after all God's rich mercies upon us in pardoning our sins, and in multiplying his grace and spiritual comforts upon us, we, like beggars, have nothing to return but the bare acknowledgments and praises of our lips ; words for wonders, and those words too his own gifts ; we can- not render them to him, before we have received them from him, Psa. cxvi. 12, 13. Mat. xii. 34. 1 Chron. xxix. 16. " Asshur shall not save us." Unto the general con- fession of sin intimated in those words, " Take away all iniquity," here is added a particular detestation of their special sins, with a covenant to forsake them ; lest waxing wanton with pardon and grace, they should relapse into them again. The sum is to confess the vanity of carnal confidence, betaking itself to the aid of men, to the strength of horses, to the superstition of idols for safety and deliverance. All which they
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