to heart; and then certainly you will not be so easily moved with such light and sleight reports: Nor will your Lordsh: thinke that either you or I can bee wounded by the order and command of so pious, mercifull, and so clement a Prince as is our dread Soveraigne, who hath showne himselfe to be so full of goodnesse, as we must of all men living prove the worst, if we be not thankfull to God, and him for it. This my letter your Lordsh: will be pleased to communicate to the rest who haue writ to me, and esteeme of me as Hammilt. 24[103] Sept. 1638. Your Lordships humble servant, HAMMILTOUN. For the Earle of Rothees. * * * * * 1638.—October 5. 79. _Explanation by the Bishop and Doctors of Aberdeen on signing the King’s Covenant._[104] First, we do heartily abhor and condemn all Errours truly Popish, or repugnant to the Holy Scripture, and consequently to the Uniform Doctrine of the Reformed Kirks, and to Our National Confession registered in Parliament An. 1567. Secondly, we do no ways hereby abjure or condemn Episcopal Government, as it was in the days, and after the days, of the Apostles in the Christian Kirk for many hundred of years, and is now conform thereto restored in the Kirk of Scotland. Thirdly, we do not hereby condemn nor abjure the Five Perth Articles, or any thing lawful of that sort, which shall be found by the Church conducible at any time for good Policy and Order, or which is practised by any sound Reformed Kirk. Fourthly, we still hold to that Clause of our great National Confession, (chap. 20. art. 21.) that the General Councils, and consequently the National Kirk of Scotland, have no power to make any perpetual Law which God before hath not made. Fifthly, by the adhering to the Discipline of the Reformed Kirk of Scotland, we mean not any immutability of that Presbyterial Government which was An. 1581. or of any other Humane Institution: but we do hereby understand that the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Discipline of the Kirk of Scotland doth not depend on the Pope of Rome, or any other Foreign Power; and hereby we do confess our constant Obedience to the Kirk of Scotland in all her lawful Constitutions. Sixthly, we do not presume by this our personal Oath either to prejudge the liberty of the Kirk of Scotland, to change and reform this foresaid short Confession, in some ambiguities and obscure expressions thereof, whereupon some men have builded inconvenient Interpretations and Doctrines, or to exime our selves from Obedience to the Kirk in that case. Seventhly, by this our personal Oath we do not take upon us to lay any further Bond upon our Posterity, than the Word of God doth, recommending onely our Example to them, so far as they shall find it agreeable to Gods Word. In this sense as is said, and not otherwise, do we subscribe the said Confession, and the general Bond annexed thereto, at Aberdeen Octob. 5. 1638.