le performing the exercise, in their practice they will verify the
prediction, "Unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear."

The exercise requires to be accompanied by confession of sin. It is as
sinners seeking forgiveness that men, however much they may have enjoyed
the blessings of the Covenant, perform it. Because of neglect or
forgetfulness of Covenant engagements, because of imperfections numerous
and great attaching to obedience rendered in fulfilling them, because of
misapprehensions of their nature and design, and the want of that holy
ardour that should never cease to urge to duties voluntarily engaged to,
because of innumerably varied infirmities manifested even while in a
Covenant state, confession behoves to be made. The Covenant of Grace was
revealed after the breach of that of Works. For removing the curse
entailed by sin, its revelation was designed. A right apprehension of
its design is accompanied by a sense of sin. When its terms are
accepted, hatred to all iniquity is professed; and, because of the power
of corruption in leading to disobedience, shame must be felt, and
acknowledgment be made before God. On these occasions a sin-offering was
wont to be _cut_.[161] The practice of making confession, then, was
fully illustrated in the conduct both of Ezra and Nehemiah, and of
Israel with them. Concerning Israel--attempting the service, it is said,
"They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them:
I will cause them to walk by the rivers of water in a straight way,
wherein they shall not stumble; for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim
is my first-born."[162] And the Gentiles, being not less chargeable with
sin than the seed of Abraham in the same circumstances, will not be less
called than those to acknowledge it; so that to them, as sons of the
spiritual Zion, may be applied the prophetic description of duty
contained in the words uttered concerning the other,--"In those days,
and in that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall come,
they and the children of Judah together going and weeping: they shall
go, and seek the Lord their God. They shall ask the way to Zion with
their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the
Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten."[163]

And, the vow is made in the exercise of prayer. The term ([Greek:
euche]) by which the Seventy render the word for a vow in the Old
Testament original, is