sion of the last drop of their blood: "These two prime
truths, Christ's headship and our covenants, being in the mouths of all
our late martyrs, when they mounted their bloody theatres;" and in the
comfort of suffering on such clear grounds, and for such valuable
truths, they went triumphing off the stage of time to eternity.

But alas! how have we their degenerate and renegade posterity followed
their example or traced their steps, yea we have rather served ourselves
heirs to them who persecuted and killed them, by our long accession to
their perjury and apostacy in a general and avowed denial of our most
solemn vows and oaths of allegiance to Jesus Christ. To mention nothing
more of the total extermination of our ancient and laudable
constitution, during the two tyrants reigns, with the many grave stones
cast thereon by the acts rescissory, &c. (which acts seem by no act in
particular yet to be repealed) and claim of right at the revolution,
whereby we have in a national way and capacity (whatever be the
pretences) declared ourselves to be on another footing than the footing
of the once-famous covenanted church of Scotland. How many are the
defections and encroachments annually and daily made upon our most
valuable rights and privileges! For since the revolution, the duty of
national covenanting has not only been slighted and neglected, yea
ridiculed by some, but even some leading church-men, in their
writings[10], have had the effrontery to impugn (though in a very sly
way) the very obligation of these covenants, asserting that there is
little or no warrant for national covenanting under the new Testament
dispensation: And what awful attacks since that time have been made upon
the crown-rights of our Redeemer (notwithstanding some saint acts then
made to the contrary) as witness the civil magistrate's still retaining
his old usurped power, in calling and dissolving the supreme
judicatories of the church, yea, sometimes to an indefinite
time.--Likewise appointing diets of fasting and thanksgiving to be
observed, under fines and other civil pains annexed; imposing oaths,
acts and statutes upon church-men, under pain of ecclesiastic censure,
or other Erastian penalties. And instead of our covenants, an
unhallowed union is gone into with England, whereby our rights and
liberties are infringed not a little, _bow down thy body as the ground
that we may pass over_.--Lordly patronage[11], which was cast out of the
church in