VI. We shall also, according to our places and callings, in this common cause of Religion, Liberty, and Peace of the Kingdoms, assist and defend all those that enter into this League and Covenant in the maintaining and pursuing thereof, and shall not suffer ourselves, directly or indirectly, by whatsoever combination, persuasion, or terror, to be divided and withdrawn from this blessed union and conjunction, whether to make defection to the contrary part, or give ourselves to a detestable indifferency and neutrality in this cause, which so much concerneth the glory of God, the good of the Kingdoms, and the honour of the King; but shall all the days of our lives zealously and constantly continue therein against all opposition, and promote the same according to our power against all lets and impediments whatsoever; and what we are not able ourselves to suppress or overcome we shall reveal and make known, that it may be timely prevented or removed: all which we shall do as in the sight of God... [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 478-9, and Lords Journals, Sept. 18, 1643.--"Not so very illiberal either," I have said of the League and Covenant in the text; and reader of the Second Article, pledging to "endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, Superstition, Heresy, Schism, Profaneness," will naturally demur. This Article, however, was but a repetition of what all, of both nations, who might sign the Covenant, including the English Parliament, were, by past actions and resolutions, already pledged to, neck-deep or more. The illiberality is to be charged not upon this particular League and Covenant, but upon the entire British mind of the time, with individual theorists excepted. It belonged to the Royalists equally with the Parliamentarians; the only difference being that the objects for "extirpation" in _their_ policy were and had been the Calvinisms and Presbyterianisms that were now exulting in the power of counter-extirpation.--The most important Article of the six is the First, pledging to a recognition and defence of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and to an endeavour after a Reformation of Religion in England and Ireland "according to the Word of God," with a view to uniformity in the three Kingdoms. The insertion of the caution "according to the word of God" is said to have been owing to Vane, who did not want to pre-commit the English too much to exact Scottish Presbytery. The few other changes made by the English Parliament and Westminster Assembly in Henderson's original Edinburgh draft of the Covenant may be traced by a diligent reader in the proceedings of the Lords and Commons on this subject as recorded in their Journals between Aug. 31 and Sept. 15. The parenthetical definition of Prelacy in Art. II. was a suggestion of the Assembly's; the bringing in of Ireland into the Covenant seems to have been a notion of the Commons.]