so solemnly engaged to maintain; whereby, as ignorance must be
increased, so prejudices are also gradually begotten in their winds
against the truth in the purity thereof. And this, through the many
mistaken notions at present prevailing among the different contending
parties of professors in these nations, concerning the distinct
ordinances of divine institution, viz., the ministry and magistracy, or
ecclesiastical and civil government; and, more especially, the
presbytery reckon themselves, and all professing their allegiance unto
Christ and his cause, obliged to maintain the testimony of our ancestors
for the divine institution and right constitution of civil government,
according to the law of God, as what they found to be, and still is,
indispensably necessary for the outward defense and preservation of
righteousness and true religion; and because the very foundation and
ends of this ordinance have been doctrinally subverted, and the
generation taught the most licentious principles concerning it, by a
body of professed witnesses among ourselves: and this they design to do,
without (as they are slanderously reported of by some) laying aside
themselves, or withdrawing others, from the study of internal and
habitual or practical holiness.

5. To wipe off the reproach of that odium cast upon the presbytery and
community belonging thereto, by some who invidiously call them a
headless mob, whose principles cannot be known, anti-government men, men
of bloody principles, &c., than which nothing can be more unjust:
seeing, as a body distinct from all others, they have still stood upon
the footing of the covenanted establishment, as has been frequently
declared to the world, and as the constitution of the presbytery bears;
so that they can no more be said ever to have wanted a proper testimony
exhibiting their principles to the world, than the reformed church of
Scotland, whereof they are a part.