factum_.

2. Because as the supremacy received much strength and increment from
the indulgence, so reciprocally it had its rise, spring, conveyance and
subsistence from the supremacy, from which it flowed, upon which it
stood, and by which at length it was removed. And in the grant and
conveyance of the indulgence, all the power of the supremacy was
arrogate, asserted and exerted, in first taking away the power of the
keys from Christ's stewards, and then restoring only one of them to some
few, with restrictions bounding, and instructions regulating them in the
exercise of that. The acceptance whereof, so clogged with these complex
circumstances, without a clear and distinct testimony, in that case of
confession, hath at least a great appearance (which should have been
abstained from) of a conniving at, submitting unto, complying with, and
homologating of that Erastian usurpation.

3. Because, as it was interpreted to be accepted in the same terms
wherein it was granted, without a testimony against the supremacy, so
the entry of those ministers to their churches, by this indulgence, was
prejudicial to the church's privilege: Some of them being fixed in
particular churches, whereunto they had no peculiar pastoral relation
before, and some transplanted from one church to another, without the
interposition of any ecclesiastic presbyterial authority, without the
free and orderly call of the people; being in many respects prelimited;
and in the way of patronages, at the council's pleasure and order: And
those that were restored to their own churches, being there admitted,
not by virtue of their old right and claim of an undissolved relation,
but by virtue of a new holding of the indulgence.

4. Because the embracing thereof, and the continuing therein, was a
faint yielding to prevailing Erastianism, and a course of defection from
former integrity of ministerial freedom and faithfulness, in which the
servants and witnesses of Jesus Christ were famous and eminent in former
times, who for writing, preaching, and protesting against the
ecclesiastic supremacy in the magistrate, and all Erastian courses, did
bear the cross of Christ, with much stedfastness; yea, a receding from,
and foregoing of a very material part of the cause and testimony of the
church of Scotland, which, till then, did constantly wrestle against
such encroachments: And in this respect scandalous, because hardening to
Erastian enemies, stumbling to many fri