present courses of revolting and backsliding from him; which courses of declension and grievous apostatizing from God and his covenant, all the three kingdoms and in special this nation, and every individual therein capable of such a work, are, without all controversy, called to bewail and confess before God, and by speedy amendment to turn from them, in order to avert judgments, and turn away justly impendent wrath and long threatened strokes. The consideration of these blessings and benefits, on the one hand, which followed the zealous entering into, and sincere performing of these sacred oaths; and upon the other hand the sense we desire to retain of the plagues and curses, threatened by God in his word against covenant-breaking inflicted upon covenant-breakers in former ages, and foreign nations, and visibly impending upon us in these nations, for our perfidious dealing in God's covenant; hath moved us a _poor insignificant handful of people_, unworthy indeed to be called the posterity of our zealous reforming ancestors, though heartily desirous to be found adhering to the same standard of doctrine, worship, discipline and government to which they adhered, to attempt this solemn and weighty duty of renewing (in our capacities and stations) these covenant obligations, that we might at least give some discovery of our respect to the cause of God, for the advancement and preservation whereof these covenants were first entered into, and afterwards again and again renewed by our religious progenitors, and by the whole representative body of the three kingdoms, who had any zeal for the interest of religion. And that we might, for our parts, be in some measure instrumental to transmit a testimony for the work of God in our land to the succeeding generation. Neither do we want, besides these general motives, some special inducements to this undertaking. As 1. Because these national covenants, having been nationally broken, and their funeral piles erected by wicked and perfidious rulers in the capital cities of the kingdom, with all imaginable ignominy and contempt, have long lien buried and (almost) quite forgotten under these ashes; most people either hating the very name and remembrance of them, or at least being ashamed honorably to avouch their adherence to them, and afraid to endeavor a vigorous and constant prosecution of the duties contained in them: So that it is high time that every one should do his utmost towards a reviving of them. 2. Because many openly declare their sorrow and grief that ever these covenants should have been entered into: malignants calling them a conspiracy, attributing every miscarriage of the persons engaged in them to the covenants themselves as their native effects; and others, who would take it ill to be called malignants, making them the causes of all the tyranny, rapine, bloodshed and persecution of the late reigns, as having raised the spleen of the