bonds, and engagements renouncing the former, and
obliging to courses contradictory thereunto: But that it may be
considered, how many ways ministers and professors, in this time of
tentation and tribulation, have been guilty of breach of these holy
covenants; particularly by consenting unto, subscribing, swearing, and
taking any of the new multiplied, mischievously contrived, capriciously
conceived, and tyrannically imposed oaths, tests, or bonds, in matters
of religion, since the overturning of the covenanted reformation and
establishment of prelacy; and by persuading people to take them, and
forbearing a necessary warning of the danger of them, and leaving people
in the dark to determine themselves, in the midst of these snares. All
which we plead and protest against, as sinful and scandalous:

1. Because all of them did infer, import, and imply a sinful unitive
conjunction, incorporation, association and confederacy with the people
of these abominations, that were promoting a course of apostacy from
God.

2. Because all of them were incapable of qualifications required in
sacred engagements, to be taken in truth, righteousness and judgment.

3. Because all of them, in the sense of the imposers, interpreted by
their acts and actings, were condemnatory of, and contradictory unto the
covenants, and some part of the covenanted reformation.

4. Because, by the ancient acts of assembly, all public oaths imposed by
the malignant party, without consent of the church, are condemned, July
28, 1648. Ante merid. sess. 18. and sess. 26 those ministers are
ordained to be censured, who subscribe any bonds, or take any oaths not
approven by the General Assembly; or by their counsel, countenance and
approbation, make themselves accessory to the taking of such bonds and
oaths by others.

III. In like manner, we dare not forbear to cry and crave, That it may
be considered, what wrongs Christ hath received from the Erastian and
Antichristian usurpation of the supremacy, encroaching upon the
prerogative of the Lord Jesus Christ, his incommunicable Headship and
Kingship, as Mediator, giving to a man a magisterial, and Architectonic
power, to alter and innovate, authorize and exauctorate, allow or
restrain, and dispose of the government and governors of the church,
according to his pleasure; invading the liberties of the gospel church,
introducing a civil dominion upon her government, contrary to its
nature, being only a ministerial