ers, for as we have great cause, so we desire grace
from the Lord, to be sensible of what accession we have with others in
the land, to the provoking of His Spirit, in not walking as becomes the
Gospel, according to our Solemn Engagements, neither proceeds it from
irritation or inclination (by choice or pleasure) to discover our
mother's nakedness or wickedeness, or that we love to be of a
contentious spirit, for our witness is in heaven (whatever the world may
say) that it would be the joy of our hearts, and as it were a
resurrection from the dead, to have these grievances redressed and
removed, and our backsliding and breaches quickly and happily healed,
but it is to exoner consciences by protesting against the defections of
the land, especially of Ministers: and seeing we can neither with safety
to our persons, nor freedom in our consciences, compear before the
Judicatories, while these defections are not acknowledged and removed,
so we must, so long decline them, and hereby do decline them, as
unfaithful judges in such matters: in regard they have, in so great a
measure, yielded up the priviledges of the Church into the hands and
will of her enemies, and carried on a course of defection contrar to the
Scriptures, our Covenants, and the acts and constitutions of this our
Church. And hereby we further protest and testify against whatever they
may conclude, or determine, in their ecclesiastick courts by acts,
ratifications, sentences, censures, &c., that have been, or shall be
made or given out by them, and protest that the same may be made void
and null, and not interpreted as binding to us or any who desire firmly
to adhere to the Covenanted work of Reformation.

But let none look upon what we have here said, to be a vilipending or
rejecting of the free, lawful, and rightly constitute courts of Christ,
for we do acknowledge such to have been among the first most effectual
means appointed of God for preserving the purity and advanceing the
power of reformation in the Church of Christ; the sweet fruits and
blessed effects whereof, this Church hath sometimes enjoyed, and which
we have been endeavouring and seeking after, and are this day longing
for.

We detest and abhorr that principle of casting off the ministry,
wherewith we are odiously and maliciously reproached by these who labour
to fasten upon us the hateful names of schismaticks, separatists,
despisers of the Gospel: but, herein as they do bewray their enmity