all, but one of his own making, by a packed cabal of his own complices, a parliament, wherein himself presided as commissioner, enacting materially his succession, and rescinding all these ancient laws: which act of succession (which is all the legal right he can pretend to in Scotland) because it cannot be justified, therefore his right cannot be owned, which is founded upon the subversion of our ancient laws. But as he cannot be our legally crowned king, so he is not so much as formally crowned. And therefore before his inauguration, whatever right to be king (whom the representatives may admit to the government) he may pretend to, by hereditary succession, yet he cannot formally be made king, till the people make a compact with him, upon terms for the safety of their dearest and nearest liberties, even though he were not disabled by law. He might, as they say, pretend to some right to the thing, but he could have no right in the thing. The kings of Scotland, while uncrowned, can exercise no royal government; for the coronation in concrete, according to the substance of the act, is no ceremony (as they, who make conscience itself but a ceremony, call it) nor an accidental ingredient in the constitution of a king, but as it is distinctive, so it is constitutive: it distinguished Saul from all Israel, and made him from no king to be a king; it is dative, and not only declarative; it puts some honour upon him that he had not before. 3. Though the laws should not strike against his coronation, and though the representatives legally should take the same measures with him that they took with his brother, and admit him upon the terms of the covenant; yet after such doleful experiences of such transactions with these sons of Belial, who must not be taken with hands, nor by the hand, it were hard to trust, or entrust them with the government, even though they should make the fairest professions; since they, whose principles is to keep no faith to heretics (as they call us) and who will be as absolute in their promises as they are in their power, have deservedly forfeited all credit and trust with honest men; so that none could rationally refer the determination of a half crown reckoning to any of them, far less own them and their government in the management of the weightiest affairs of state, since their malversations are written in such bloody characters, as he that runs may read them. At least it were wisdom, and is our duty, to take our measures from the general assembly's procedure with the other brother, before his admission to the government, to suspend our allegiance to him, until authority be legally devolved upon him, and founded upon, and bounded by terms, giving all security for religion and liberty.