r the covenants
themselves, we made no material alteration in them, as judging it a work
more proper for an assembly of divines, or representative body of church
and state (had they been upright and faithful in this cause) than for
us, who, as we are called by others in contempt, must own ourselves in
truth to be, _but a handful of weak and most illiterate people_, and but
as babes in comparison of the first framers of our covenants; only that
we might make them in some measure accomodable to the present lamentable
circumstances, whereinto we are involved by our iniquities, we have
annotated some few necessary alterations upon the margin, wherein the
judicious will find that we have in nothing receded from the scope and
substance of the covenant, but only in the phrase; for instance, where
the covenant binds to _the defence and preservation of the king's
majesty and government_, in regard we have no king nor supreme civil
magistrate so qualified, as God's law and the laudable laws of this
realm require, to whom we might, for conscience sake, subject ourselves,
in a consistency with our defending the true reformed religion in all
its parts and privileges: Therefore, we can only bind ourselves to
_defend and preserve the honor, authority and majesty of lawful
sovereigns, or supreme magistrates, having the qualifications aforesaid,
when God shall be pleased to grant them to us_. Where no judicious
person will say that there is any substantial alteration as to the
_matter of the duty_, but only as to the object to whom the duty is to
be performed; there being none such in being as can justly claim, or to
whom we may with a good conscience pay such an allegiance.

Having mutually agreed concerning these prerequisites to this sacred
action, that the same might be orderly gone about, and might not be
performed in a clandestine way, so as to preclude any upright-hearted
friends to the covenanted reformation from joining with us in that so
necessary a duty, there was public intimation made of the design a
competent space of time before, upon a day of humiliation, and likewise
upon the Lord's day immediately preceding the work.

As for the particular way and manner, method and circumstances of the
work, we had not given any narrative of them; but that some, who came
with an evil eye, to spy out our liberty, for criticizing, not for
joining or profiting, have in part misrepresented the same, and may
further do so; therefore, to o