This, therefore, is a mere groundless
pretense and evasion; and if it has any force at all, as a reason, it
strikes against the reformers who compiled these covenants. They are the
proper objects at whom through the sides of others it thrusts; for they,
at the framing of sundry of their covenants, and afterward at the
renovation of their covenant, did it both without the ecclesiastical
authority, and also without, and contrary unto, yea, at the hazard of
suffering the greatest severities from the civil authority on that
account. And yet the ecclesiastical judicatories of the church of
_Scotland_ afterward found it competent for them, as such, to approve of
these covenants, both as to the matter and form of them, without
branding and exploding them as a blending of matters civil and religious
together, as _Seceders_ have done. Again, as the covenants require no
other than a lawful magistrate; and seeing _Seceders_ acknowledge the
present as lawful, and that it is their duty to be subject to, and
support them as such, it is impossible to conceive any reason, why they
have not honored the present rulers with a place in their new and
artificial bond: unless perhaps this, that they were aware that would
have been so glaring a contradiction to these covenants they were
pretending to renew, as would doubtless have startled and driven away
from them a good many honest people, whom they have allured and led
aside by their good words and fair-set speeches; and yet it is pretty
obvious they have included the present rulers in their bond, and taken
them in an oblique and clandestine way, by swearing to the relative
duties contained in the fifth commandment, seeing they acknowledge them
as their civil parents.
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