The covenant being first renewed at Edinburgh, they provided next, that it should also be renewed through the kingdom; and for this purpose, copies thereof were sent with all convenient speed to the several presbyteries, together with suitable exhortations, and instructions for renewing of the same in every parish of their bounds; and by this means it came to pass, through the good hand of their GOD upon them, that in a little time almost every parish through Scotland did, with much solemnity, cheerfulness and alacrity, renew the same, and publicly with uplifted hand avouch the LORD to be their GOD. And as this solemn action was everywhere accompanied with remarkable evidences of divine power and presence in a plentiful effusion of a spirit of grace and supplication; so the joy of the LORD herein became their strength, and greatly increased the faith and hopes of all the church's real friends, that as the LORD had begun, so he would also make an end, and carry on his work to perfection, amid the terrible threatenings both of king and court; his majesty being highly displeased that his authority was contemned, and no concurrence of his royal pleasure sought in the renovation of the Covenant: but their righteousness in this particular was brought forth as the light, when the legality of this and their other proceedings was afterward attested to the king by the ablest lawyers in the kingdom. The zealous contenders for the church's liberties, by supplications, reasonings, and proposed articles, for enjoying what they much longed for, at last obtained, before the foresaid year 1638 expired, a lawful and free General Assembly (constituted in the name of the LORD JESUS CHRIST, the alone King and Head of his church), consisting of able members, both ministers and elders, who would not suffer an infringement upon their regular manner of procedure, or right to act as unlimited members of a free court of CHRIST, notwithstanding the constant attacks made upon their freedom by the king's commissioner, and protestations by him taken against their regular procedure, which issued in his Erastian declaration of the king's prerogative, as supreme judge in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, and renewing all his former protestations in his royal master's name; further protesting in his own name, and in the name of the lords of the clergy, that no act passed by them should imply his consent, or be accounted lawful, or of force to bind any of the subjects; and, then in his majesty's name dissolving the assembly, discharging their proceeding any further, and so went off. But the assembly judging it better to obey GOD than man; and to incur the displeasure of an earthly king, to be of far less consequence than to offend the Prince of the kings of the earth, entered a protestation against the lord commissioner's departure without any just cause, and in behalf of the intrinsic power and liberty of the church; also assigning