What Iniquity Has This Nation Found In Me, To Depart From Me?

He has given us a good land for our possession, and to that end has taken away the land from its former inhabitants to give it to us, that we might possess it. He in a remarkable manner has cast out the heathen before us, and here has planted us and settled us, and has as it were set his tabernacle in the midst of us. He has given the free and full enjoyment of his word and ordinances, which before in our bondage, in the land from whence we came, we were denied. And here God has entered into covenant with us. Our forefathers on their first coming and settling here, did solemnly enter into covenant with God, and were often renewing their covenant. There is probably no people in the world, whose case in the manner of our becoming a distinct covenant people, is so parallel with that of the church of Israel as this people. God's providences towards this land in the first settling of it were as it were its solemn espousals to Christ. We have now greatly departed from God, and are gone far from him. The land in great measure is departed from that purity in its principles and doctrines, and there appears in multitudes a great hankering after Arminian doctrines, which are such principles as do exceedingly tend to eat out the heart and destroy the life of religion.