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We all and every one of us being by the good hand of our God upon us, now, after a long and due deliberation, determined to testify to the world, for the glory of God, and the exoneration of our consciences, in the matter of our duty, our adherance to the whole of our attained Reformation, by renewing these our vows and Covenant-engagements with God, and knowing that it is a necessary preparative for the right performance of that so great and solemn a duty, that we be duly sensible of, and deeply humbled for the many heinous breaches thereof, which these nations, and we ourselves in particular are guilty of; do therefore, with that measure of sorrow and repentance which God of his mercy shall be pleased to grant us, desire to acknowledge and confess our own sins and violations of these vows, and the sins and transgressions of our fathers; to which we have also an example left us by the Cloud of witnesses, which through faith and patience have inherited the promises, ever since the Lord had a visible national church upon earth, and more especially by our progenitors in this nation; as, for instance, in the year 1596, "Wherein the General Assembly, and all the kirk judicatories, with the concurrence of many of the nobility, gentry and burgesses, did with many tears acknowledge the breach of the National Covenant, and engaged themselves into a reformation, even as our predecessors, and theirs, had done in the General Assembly and Convention of Estates in the year 1567."
In the exhortation, he pressed upon us who are embodied together to renew our covenant-engagements, by giving an open and public testimony of our adherence to the covenants, national and solemn league, that we should labor to attain a suitable frame, and serious consideration of the weightiness, solemnity, and awfulness of the work we were then undertaking: enforcing the same by several cogent motives, as namely, because in renewing these covenants we are called to remember our baptismal and personal vows, whereby we had renounced the devil, the world and the flesh, and devoted ourselves to the Lord to be his people; which if they were slighted and forgotten, there could be no right, acceptable, and comfortable entering into national covenants.
Whence all the people of God, who are called to be united and "perfectly joined together in the same spirit, and in the same mind;" and especially they who have been lamentably divided one from another, by their manifold defections from God, and from their covenant-engagements, ought to be strongly inclined, moved, and engaged to this duty; from this consideration, the upright covenant-renewing is a usual mean of land-uniting and church-uniting dispositions amongst the people of God.
Answer, Without the concurrence of church and state, a covenant cannot be taken or renewed nationally, speaking strictly; yet a few may publicly declare their adherence to their covenant-engagements by renewing them, not only without the consent and concurrence of authority, but against it; and there are several precedents for so doing, both before and since the established reformation.
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