I am prone to beleeve and hope, That many who took the Covenant, are yet firme to this judgment, That such latter Vowes, Oaths, or Leagues, can never blot out those former gravings, and characters, which by just and lawfull Oaths were made upon their Souls. That which makes such Confederations by way of Solemn Leagues and Covenants more to be suspected, is, That they are the common road, used in all factious and powerfull perturbations of State or Church: when formalities of extraordinary zeal and piety are never more studied and elaborate, then, when Polititians most agitate desperate designes against all that is setled, or sacred in Religion, and Laws, which by such scrues are cunningly, yet forcibly wrested by secret steps, and lesse sencible degrees, from their known rule and wonted practise, and comply with the humours of those men, who ayme to subdue all to their own will and power, under the disguises of Holy Combinations. Which cords and wythes will hold mens Consciences no longer, then force attends and twists them: for every man soon grows his own Pope, and easily absolves himself of those ties, which, not the commands of Gods Word, or the Laws of the Land, but only the subtilty and terrour of a Party casts upon him; either superfluous and vain, when they were sufficiently tied before; or fraudulent and injurious, if by such afterligaments they find the Imposers really ayming to dissolve, or suspend their former just and necessary obligations. Indeed such illegall ways seldom or never intend the engaging men more to duties, but only to Parties; therefore it is not regarded how they keep their Covenants in point of piety pretended, provided they adhere firmly to the Party and Design intended. I see the Imposers of it are content to make their Covenant like Manna (not that it came from Heaven, as this did) agreeable to every mans palate and rellish, who will but swallow it: They admit any mens senses of it, the divers or contrary; with any salvoes, cautions and reservations, so as they cross not their chief Design, which is laid against the Church and me. It is enough if they get but the reputation of a seeming encrease to their Party; so little do men remember that God is not mocked. In such latitudes of sense, _I_ beleive many that love Me, and the Church well, may have taken the Covenant, who yet are not so fondly and superstitiously taken by it, as now to act cleerly against both all piety & loyalty: who first yeelded to it, more to prevent that imminent violence and ruine, which hung over their heads in case they wholly refused it, then for any value of it, or devotion to it.