been as careless as others, waiving and putting off a stumbled and offended people, expressing some concernedness for this duty, with these and the like pretexts, that it was not a fit time, nor the land in a case for it (too sad a truth), but not laboring to get the land brought to be in a case and disposition for it, by pressing the obligation, and plainly discovering the violations thereof; so that, instead of being brought to a fitter condition for this duty, the covenants are almost forgotten and quite out of mind, so that the succeeding generation is scarce like to know that ever there was a covenant sworn in Scotland. And more particularly, that the godly, who are dissatisfied with, and dissent from the defections and corruptions of the times, have discovered so little concern about the work of reformation, and cause of God, which the covenants oblige us to own, defend, and promote. All which laxness and remissness is for a lamentation, and ought to be lamented and mourned over by the people of God. In the exhortation, he pressed upon us who are embodied together to renew our _covenant-engagements_, by giving an open and public testimony of our adherence to the _covenants, national_ and _solemn league_, that we should labor to attain a suitable frame, and serious consideration of the weightiness, solemnity, and awfulness of the work we were then undertaking: enforcing the same by several cogent motives, as namely, because in renewing these covenants we are called to remember our baptismal and personal vows, whereby we had renounced the devil, the world and the flesh, and devoted ourselves to the Lord to be his people; which if they were slighted and forgotten, there could be no right, acceptable, and comfortable entering into _national covenants._ And likewise because of the weightiness of the duties engaged to in our _national covenant_, and in the _solemn league_ and _covenant_, which he proved to be a covenant that ought to be renewed by us in this nation no less than our _national covenant_, in regard it was a religious, just, and holy covenant made betwixt God and the three kingdoms, though it cannot now be taken in the same consideration and extent, as at the first framing it was, viz.: As a league betwixt us and the representative body of the kingdoms of England and Ireland: where he took occasion to go over the several articles of the covenant, showing the nature and weightiness of the duties.