d.

Deut. i. 13; Deut. xvi. 18; Isa. i. 26.

Likeas, all lieges are bound by the laws of the land inserted in the
National Covenant, to "maintain the authority of Parliaments, without
which neither any laws nor lawful judicatories can be established." Yet
as our fathers had reason to complain "that neither had the privileges
of the Parliament nor liberties of the subject been duly tendered; but
some amongst them had laboured to put into the hands of the king an
arbitrary and unlimited power destructive to both; and many of them had
been accessory to those means and ways whereby the freedom and
privileges of Parliaments had been encroached upon, and the subjects
oppressed in their consciences, persons and estates;" so afterwards, all
alongst the tract of tyranny and persecution, they had rather the name
and show than the real power and privileges of lawfully constituted
Parliaments; having advanced the royal prerogative to such a boundless
pitch of arbitrariness, and being so corrupted, that faithful men and
honest and honourable patriots were excluded, and those admitted who by
the law of God and man should have been debarred; and so prelimited that
the members behoved to take such oaths (for instance, the declaration
and test, abjuring and condemning the Covenants) as engaged them to be
perjured and conjured enemies both to our religion and liberty, which
both the electors of Members of Parliament and the elected did sinfully
comply with; neither did the body of the land make conscience of
recovering these rights and privileges thus perverted and polluted; but
in stupid subjection did own those for representatives who betrayed
their liberties, and made laws to enslave the nation and entail slavery
upon, posterity. On the other hand, they that disowned them did not make
conscience of preserving those rights and privileges of supreme
judicatories, when inadvertently and unadvisedly they put in such
expressions and styles in some of their declarations as do not belong to
private persons, but only to such judicatories. And not only then, but
since the Revolution, have there been many ways taken for corrupting and
depriving the Members of Parliament; as that all members and electors of
members have been obliged to take the oath of allegiance, with the
assurance to such as did, and do, in their dominions, support Prelacy
and exercise an Erastian supremacy over the church of Christ.

And now, last of all, by the means of th