'West Kirk, August 13, 1650. The commission of the general assembly, considering that there may be just ground of stumbling, from the king's majesty refusing to subscribe and emit the declaration, offered to him by the committee of estates and the commission of the general assembly, concerning his former carriage and resolutions for the future, in reference to the cause of God and the enemies and friends thereof; doth therefore declare, That this kirk and kingdom doth not own or espouse any malignant party, or quarrel, or interest, but that they fight merely upon their former grounds and principles, and in the defence of the cause of God and of the kingdom, as they have done these twelve years past: And therefore, as they disclaim all the sin and guilt of the king and of his house, so they will not own him nor his interest, otherwise than with a subordination to God, and so far as he owns and prosecutes the cause of God, and disclaims his and his father's opposition to the work of God, and to the covenant, and likewise all the enemies thereof; and that they will with convenient speed take unto consideration the papers, lately sent unto them by Oliliver Cromwel, and vindicate themselves from all the falshoods contained therein; especially in these things wherein the quarrel betwixt us and that party is mistated, as we owned the late king's proceedings, and were resolved to prosecute and maintain his present majesty's interest, before and without acknowledgement of the sin of his house and former ways, and satisfaction to God's people in both kingdoms.'
'A. KER.'
'August 13, 1650. The committee of estates, having seen and considered a declaration of the commission of the general assembly, anent the stating of the quarrel wherein the army is to fight, do approve the same, and heartily concur therein.'
'THO. HENDERSON.'
In the third place: It is specified in the Causes of Wrath, as one of the steps of defection, Art. 9. Step. 5. 'That a treaty should have been closed with him, upon his subscribing demands, after he had given many clear evidences of his disaffection and enmity to the work and people of God: That these demands, which he was required to subscribe, did not contain a real security, a real abandoning of former malignant courses and principles, and cleaving to the work of God; it was not a paper or verbal security which we were bound to demand of him, but a real one; and to entrust him without this, was but to mock God, and to deceive the world, and to betray and destroy ourselves, by giving up all the precious interests of religion and liberty unto the hands of one, who was in a course of enmity to them: That both before, and in the mean time of the treaty, he had given evidences of his enmity in many instances there condescended upon particularly; that he authorized James Graham to invade this kingdom, and encouraged him by letters to go on in that invasion, even whilst he was in terms of a treaty with us, as appeared by bringing into our hands the authentic commission itself, and sundry letters under his own hand.' Next, in the same Causes of Wrath, among the sins of the ministry, in relation to the public, sect. 10, 11, 12, 13. 'That they agreed to receive the king to the covenant, barely upon writing, without any apparent evidences of a real change of principle: That they did not use freedom, in showing what was sinful in reference to that treaty, but went on therein when they were not satisfied in their consciences, for fear of reproach, and of being mistaken: That they were silent in public, and did not give testimony, after a discovery of the king's commission to James Graham for invading the kingdom: That they pressed the king to make a declaration to the world, whilst they knew by clear evidences that he had no real conviction of the things contained therein.'
PERIOD VI.
Containing the Testimony through the continued tract of the present deformation from the year 1660 to this day.
Now comes the last catastrophe of the deformation of the church of Scotland, which now renders her to all nations as infamously despicable, as her reformation formerly made her admired and envied; which in a retrograde motion hath gradually been growing these 27 years, going back through all the steps by which the reformation ascended, till now she is returned to the very border of that Babylon, from whence she took her departure, and reduced through defection, and division, and persecutious to a confused chaos of almost irreparable dissolution, and unavoidable desolation. Through all which steps notwithstanding, to this day, Scotland hath never wanted a witness for Christ, against all the various steps of the enemy's advancings, and of professed friends declinings: though the testimony hath had some singularities, some way discriminating it from that of former periods; in that it hath been more difficult by reason of more desperate and dreadful assaults of more enraged enemies, more expert and experienced in the accursed art of overturning than any formerly; in that it hath been attended with more disadvantages, by reason of the enemies greater prevalency, and friends deficency, and greater want of significant asserters, than any formerly; in that it hath been intangled in more multifarious intricacies of questions, and debates, and divisions among the assertors themselves, making it more dark, and yet in the end contributing to clear it more than any formerly; in that it hath been intended and extended to a greater measure, both as to matter and manner of contendings against the adversaries, and stated upon nicer points; more enixly prosecuted and tenaciously maintained, and sealed with more sufferings, than any formerly; in that it hath had more opposition and contradiction, and less countenance from professed friends to the reformation, either at home or abroad, than any formerly. And yet it hath had all these several speciallties together, which were peculiar to the former testimonies, in their respective periods: being both active and passive, both against enemies and friends; and in cumulis stated against atheism, popery, prelacy, and erastian supremacy, which were the successive heads of the former testimonies, and also now extended in a particular manner against tyranny. And not only against the substance and circumstance, abstract and concret root and branch, head and tail of them, and all complying with them, conforming to them, or deduced from them, any manner of way, directly or indirectly, formally or interpretatively. This is that extensive and very comprehensive testimony of the present period, as it is now stated and sealed with the blood of many: which in all its parts, points and pendicles is most directly relative, and dilucidly reducible, to a complex witness for the declarative glory of Christ's kingship and headship over all, as he is Mediator, which is the greatest concern that creatures have to contend for, either as men or as Christians. The matter of this testimony, I shall give a short manuduction to the progress and result of its management.
During the exile of the royal brothers, it is undeniably known that they were, by their mothers caresses and the jesuits allurements, seduced to abjure the reformed religion (which was easy to induce persons to, that never had the sense of any religion) and to be reconciled to the church of Rome: and that, not only they wrote to the pope many promises of promoting his projects, if ever they should recover the power into their hands again, and often frequented the mass themselves; but also, by their example and the influence of their future hopes, prevailed with many of their dependents and attendants abroad, to do the like. Yet it is unquestionably known, that in the mean time of his exile, he renewed and confirmed, by private letters to presbyterians, his many reiterated engagements to adhere to the covenant, and declared that he was and would continue the same man, that he had declared himself to be in Scotland, (wherein doubtless,