ON HOSEA XIV: VERSES 2, 3. 89 this place under several considerations, for we may consider it, I. As the matter of a covenant or compact, which we promise to render unto God in acknowledgment of his great mercy in answering the prayers which we put up unto him for pardon and grace. It is observable that most of those psalms wherein David imploreth help from God, are closed with thanksgiving unto him, as Psa. vii. 17. xiii. 6. lvi. 12, 13. lvii. 7 -11. &c. David thus by a holy commerce insinuating into God's favour, and driving a trade between earth and heaven, receiving and returning, importing one commodity, and transporting another, letting God know that his mercies shall not be lost, that as he bestows the com- forts of them upon him, so he would return the praises of them unto Heaven again. Those countries that have rich and staple commodities to exchange and return unto others, have usually the freest and fullest traffic and resort of trade made unto them. Now there is no such rich return from earth to heaven as praise. This is indeed the only tribute we can pay unto God, to value, and to celebrate his goodness towards us. As in the flux and reflux of the sea ; the water that in the one comes from the sea unto the shore, Both in the other but run back into itself again : so praises are as it were the return of mercies unto themselves, or into that bosom and fountain of God's love from whence they flowed. And therefore the richer any heart is in praises, the more speedy and copious are the returns of mercy unto it. God hath so ordered the creatures amongst themselves, that there is a kind of natural confederacy and mutual negotiation amongst them, each one receiving and returning, deriving unto others, and drawing from others what serves most for the conservation of them H3
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