ORD herein became their strength, and greatly
increased the faith and hopes of all the church's real friends, that as
the LORD had begun, so he would also make an end, and carry on his work
to perfection, amid the terrible threatenings both of king and court;
his majesty being highly displeased that his authority was contemned,
and no concurrence of his royal pleasure sought in the renovation of the
Covenant: but their righteousness in this particular was brought forth
as the light, when the legality of this and their other proceedings was
afterward attested to the king by the ablest lawyers in the kingdom.

The zealous contenders for the church's liberties, by supplications,
reasonings, and proposed articles, for enjoying what they much longed
for, at last obtained, before the foresaid year 1638 expired, a lawful
and free General Assembly (constituted in the name of the LORD JESUS
CHRIST, the alone King and Head of his church), consisting of able
members, both ministers and elders, who would not suffer an infringement
upon their regular manner of procedure, or right to act as unlimited
members of a free court of CHRIST, notwithstanding the constant attacks
made upon their freedom by the king's commissioner, and protestations by
him taken against their regular procedure, which issued in his Erastian
declaration of the king's prerogative, as supreme judge in all causes,
ecclesiastical as well as civil, and renewing all his former
protestations in his royal master's name; further protesting in his own
name, and in the name of the lords of the clergy, that no act passed by
them should imply his consent, or be accounted lawful, or of force to
bind any of the subjects; and, then in his majesty's name dissolving the
assembly, discharging their proceeding any further, and so went off. But
the assembly judging it better to obey GOD than man; and to incur the
displeasure of an earthly king, to be of far less consequence than to
offend the Prince of the kings of the earth, entered a protestation
against the lord commissioner's departure without any just cause, and in
behalf of the intrinsic power and liberty of the church; also assigning
the reasons why they could not dissolve the assembly until such time as
they had gone through that work depending upon them. This was given in
to the clerk by Lord Rothes, and part of it read before his grace left
the house, and instruments taken thereupon. Then, after several moving
and pathetic