This famous covenant consisted first of a renunciation of Popery, formerly signed by James in his youth, and composed of many invectives, fitted to inflame the minds of men against their fellow-creatures, whom Heaven has enjoined them to cherish and to love. There followed a bond of union, by which the subscribers obliged themselves to resist religious innovations, and to defend each other against all opposition whatsoever: and all this, for the greater glory of God, and the greater honor and advantage of their king and country.[***] The people, without distinction of rank or condition, of age or sex, flocked to the subscription of this covenant: few in their judgment disapproved of it; and still fewer durst openly condemn it. The king's ministers and counsellors themselves were most of them seized by the general contagion. And none but rebels to God, and traitors to their country, it was thought, would withdraw themselves from so salutary and so pious a combination. * King's Decl. p. 47, 48, etc. Guthry, p. 28. May, p. 37. ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 111. Rush. vol. ii. p. 734. *** King's Decl. p. 57, 58. Rush. vol. ii. p. 734. May, p. 38. The treacherous, the cruel, the unrelenting Philip, accompanied with all the terrors of a Spanish inquisition, was scarcely, during the preceding century, opposed in the Low Countries with more determined fury, than was now, by the Scots, the mild, the humane Charles, attended with his inoffensive liturgy. The king began to apprehend the consequences. He sent the marquis of Hamilton, as commissioner, with authority to treat with the Covenanters. He required the covenant to be renounced and recalled: and he thought, that on his part he had made very satisfactory concessions, when he offered to suspend the canons and the liturgy, till in a fair and legal way they could be received; and so to model the high commission, that it should no longer give offence to his subjects.[*] Such general declarations could not well give content to any, much less to those who carried so much higher their pretensions. The Covenanters found themselves seconded by the zeal of the whole nation. Above sixty thousand people were assembled in a tumultuous manner in Edinburgh and the neighborhood. Charles possessed no regular forces in either of his kingdoms. And the discontents in England, though secret, were believed so violent, that the king, it was thought, would find it very difficult to employ in such a cause the power of that kingdom. The more, therefore, the popular leaders in Scotland considered their situation, the less apprehension did they entertain of royal power, and the more rigorously did they insist on entire satisfaction. In answer to Hamilton's demand of renouncing the covenant, they plainly told him that they would sooner renounce their baptism.[**] And the clergy invited the commissioner himself to subscribe it, by informing him "with what