and profanity, the natural consequent of perfidy, the
ordinances having been changed, perverted and corrupted, and the
covenant not only broken, but burnt ignominiously, and the adherence to
it made criminal; yet, for all this, there has not been a time found for
renewing them these twenty-three years; and that ministers, at whose
door it chiefly lay to stir up the land to this work, have many of them
been as careless as others, waiving and putting off a stumbled and
offended people, expressing some concernedness for this duty, with these
and the like pretexts, that it was not a fit time, nor the land in a
case for it (too sad a truth), but not laboring to get the land brought
to be in a case and disposition for it, by pressing the obligation, and
plainly discovering the violations thereof; so that, instead of being
brought to a fitter condition for this duty, the covenants are almost
forgotten and quite out of mind, so that the succeeding generation is
scarce like to know that ever there was a covenant sworn in Scotland.
And more particularly, that the godly, who are dissatisfied with, and
dissent from the defections and corruptions of the times, have
discovered so little concern about the work of reformation, and cause of
God, which the covenants oblige us to own, defend, and promote. All
which laxness and remissness is for a lamentation, and ought to be
lamented and mourned over by the people of God.

In the exhortation, he pressed upon us who are embodied together to
renew our _covenant-engagements_, by giving an open and public testimony
of our adherence to the _covenants, national_ and _solemn league_, that
we should labor to attain a suitable frame, and serious consideration of
the weightiness, solemnity, and awfulness of the work we were then
undertaking: enforcing the same by several cogent motives, as namely,
because in renewing these covenants we are called to remember our
baptismal and personal vows, whereby we had renounced the devil, the
world and the flesh, and devoted ourselves to the Lord to be his people;
which if they were slighted and forgotten, there could be no right,
acceptable, and comfortable entering into _national covenants._ And
likewise because of the weightiness of the duties engaged to in our
_national covenant_, and in the _solemn league_ and _covenant_, which
he proved to be a covenant that ought to be renewed by us in this nation
no less than our _national covenant_, in regard it was a r