THE AUCHENSAUGH RENOVATION OF THE NATIONAL COVENANT AND SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT; WITH THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF SINS AND ENGAGEMENT TO DUTIES, AS THEY WERE RENEWED AT AUCHENSAUGH, NEAR DOUGLAS, JULY 24, 1712. (COMPARED WITH THE EDITIONS OF PAISLEY, 1820, AND BELFAST, 1835.) ALSO, THE RENOVATION OF THESE PUBLIC FEDERAL DEEDS ORDAINED AT PHILADELPHIA, OCTOBER 8, 1880, BY THE REFORMED PRESBYTERY, WITH ACCOMMODATION OF THE ORIGINAL COVENANTS, IN BOTH TRANSACTIONS, TO THEIR TIMES AND POSITIONS RESPECTIVELY. * * * * * PHILADELPHIA 1880. * * * * * PREFACE. The Reformed Presbytery, at a meeting in Philadelphia, October 6th 1880, "_Resolved_, That another edition of the Auchensaugh Deed be published," and appointed the undersigned a committee "to attend to this business with all convenient speed." This Presbytery, after forty years' experience, during which opportunities have been afforded for examining the opinions and practices of all parties, professing any regard for the Covenanted Reformation, is still deeply impressed with the conviction that the transaction at Auchensaugh 1712, is the only faithful renovation of our Covenants, National and Solemn League. The fidelity of our fathers in that hazardous and heroic transaction, it is believed, has ever since been the _occasion_ (not the _cause_) of all opponents manifesting their hostility to the whole covenanted cause, by first assaults upon that detested Bond. And that this is the real state of the case we proceed to prove by the following historical facts. _First._--In connection with remodeling the Testimony; or rather by supplanting it in 1806, the Terms of Communion, without submitting an overture, were also changed to harmonize with _Reformation Principles Exhibited_, by excluding the Auchensaugh Renovation from the fourth Term, where it had stood for nearly a century. The same party have for years excluded from their abstract of Terms the _Covenants themselves_. _Second._--In Scotland this faithful document was expunged in 1822, obviously to prepare the way for the adoption of a _"New Testimony"(!)_, which appeared 1837-9. The majority of the actors in that work who survive, are now in the Free Church! _Third._--At the time when defection was progressing in the R.P. Synod of Scotland, the sister Synod of Ireland strenuously resisted an attempt to remove the foresaid Bond from its place in the Terms. The Rev. Messrs. Dick, Smith and Houston in 1837, were faithful and successful for the time in resisting that attempt. Mr. Houston "_would ever resist any alteration_ in respect of the Auchensaugh Bond, regarding the objection laid against it as in reality aimed at the Covenants themselves." Yet as a sequel to their Renovation of the Covenants at Dervock 1853, the Auchensaugh Bond was subsequently "shown to the porch"--removed from the Terms! _Fourth._--At what was called