essary instructions and warnings, murdering their
souls.

6. Because they were, and are, upon all these accounts, scandalous, and
the object of the church's censure: And though through the iniquity of
the times, their deserved censure hitherto hath not been inflicted, yet
they stand upon the matter convict, by clear scripture-grounds, and by
the standing acts, and judicial decision of this church, in her supreme
judicatories.

7. Because this hearing and submitting to them, was required as a badge,
test, and evidence of due acknowledgment of, and hearty compliance with
erastianism and prelacy, or his majesty's government ecclesiastic, Act
parl. 1. Char. II. July 10th, 1663, which made it a case of confession
to withstand it.

8. Because, by our covenants, we are obliged to stand at a distance,
from such courses of defection, and to extirpate them, yet, in
contradiction hereunto, we were commanded by the rescinders of the
covenants, to hear the prelatic curates, as a badge of our yielding to
the rescinding of the covenants.

9. Because this course was offensive and stumbling, both in hardning
those that complied with prelacy, and weakning the hands of those that
opposed it, and inferred a condemning of their sufferings upon this
head. Especially,

10. When communion with them was so stated, that therein was not only a
case of controversy among the godly, in which always abstinence is the
surest side, not only is the judgment of many a case of confession,
which it is always dangerous to contradict and condemn, but undeniably a
case of competition, between the true church of Scotland, her ministers
and professors, owning and adhering to her holy establishments, claiming
a divine right to their offices and privileges, contending for the
church's reformation; and a schismatical party, setting up a new church,
in a new order, under a new head, robbing them of their offices and
privileges, and overturning the reformation.

II. We must presume to plead also, That enquiry be made into the heinous
and heaven-daring affront done to the holiness of God, in the horrid
violation of our holy covenants, national and solemn league; not only
how the popish, prelatical, and malignant party, have broken them,
enacted the breaches of them by law, burnt them and endeavoured to bury
them, by making it a capital crime to own their obligation, and by
bringing in and substituting in their room, conscience-ensnaring anti
covenants, oaths,