ce, to be reputed and
looked upon as malignants and disaffected to the covenanted cause of God?
It seems the more needful to speak somewhat of this, 1. Because some
ministers are become slack and silent in this point, as if now there were
no need of watchfulness and warning against any such party, 2. Because the
expressions of many of the people of the land run that way, that there are
now no malignants in Scotland, and that it is but a few factious ministers
that will still keep up these names, that they may more easily, with
others of their own stamp, weaken and divide the kingdom, for carrying on
of their own ends, 3. Because the inclinations and resolutions of the
public judicatories, in reference to most of the party who carried that
name, do clearly import that they do think they are no more to be looked
upon as malignants, as appears from several of their papers, especially
the letter written for satisfaction to the presbytery of Stirling. And
therefore this must be laid down as the foundation of what follows. That
there is still in the land, not only a few persons, but a party
considerable for number, power, and policy, who are malignant and
disaffected to the covenant and cause of God. We would join heartily in
the desire of many, that these and other such like odious names of
different parties and factions were taken away, but we cannot join in the
reasons of this desire which are ordinarily given. We wish the name
malignant were obsolete and antiquate, if so be the thing itself, which is
such a root of bitterness, were extirpated out of the church. Yea, though
the thing itself remained, if men would hate it for itself, and account it
more odious and hateful than the name imports, we would be glad it were no
more heard of, because we find this prejudice, by all such appropriated
names, that people generally look upon that which goes under that name as
the only sin, and as if there were not that root of bitterness, in all
which it grows out of, in any, and so conceive themselves good Christians
if they fall not under that hateful appellation of malignants. But seeing
this bitter fruit of enmity, against godliness and the godly, comes to
more ripeness and maturity in many of this generation than in others, who
yet are unconverted, and seeing it hath been the custom of the church of
God in all generations, to discriminate many more ungodly and known haters
of godliness and his people from the common sort of natural