WE all and every one of us under-written, protest, That, after long and
due examination of our own consciences in matters of true and false
religion, we are now thoroughly resolved in the truth by the word and
Spirit of God: and therefore we believe with our hearts, confess with
our mouths, subscribe with our hands, and constantly affirm, before God
and the whole world, that this only is the true Christian faith and
religion, pleasing God, and bringing salvation to man, which now is, by
the mercy of God, revealed to the world by the preaching of the
blessed evangel; and is received, believed, and defended by many and
sundry notable kirks and realms, but chiefly by the kirk of Scotland,
the King's Majesty, and three estates of this realm, as God's eternal
truth, and only ground of our salvation; as more particularly is
expressed in the Confession of our Faith, established and publickly
confirmed by sundry acts of Parliaments, and now of a long time hath
been openly professed by the King's Majesty, and whole body of this
realm both in burgh and land. To the which Confession and Form of
Religion we willingly agree in our conscience in all points, as unto
God's undoubted truth and verity, grounded only upon his written word.
And therefore we abhor and detest all contrary religion and doctrine;
but chiefly all kind of Papistry in general and particular heads, even
as they are now damned and confuted by the word of God and Kirk of
Scotland. But, in special, we detest and refuse the usurped authority
of that Roman Antichrist upon the scriptures of God, upon the kirk, the
civil magistrate, and consciences of men; all his tyrannous laws made
upon indifferent things against our Christian liberty; his erroneous
doctrine against the sufficiency of the written word, the perfection of
the law, the office of Christ, and his blessed evangel; his corrupted
doctrine concerning original sin, our natural inability and rebellion to
God's law, our justification by faith only, our imperfect
sanctification and obedience to the law; the nature, number, and use of
the holy sacraments; his five bastard sacraments, with all his rites,
ceremonies, and false doctrine, added to the ministration of the true
sacraments without the word of God; his cruel judgment against infants
departing without the sacrament; his absolute necessity of baptism; his
blasphemous opinion of transubstantiation, or real presence of
Christ's body in the elements, and receiving of the same by the wicked,
or bodies of men; his dispensations with solemn oaths, perjuries, and
degrees of marriage forbidden in the word; his cruelty against the
innocent divorced; his devilish mass; his blasphemous priesthood; his
profane sacrifice for sins of the dead and the quick; his canonization
of men; calling upon angels or saints departed, worshipping of imagery,
relicks, and crosses; dedicating of kirks, altars, days; vows to
creatures; his purgatory, prayers for the dead; praying or speaking in a
strange language, with his processions, and blasphemous litany, and
multitude of advocates or mediators; his manifold orders, auricular
confession; his desperate and uncertain repentance; his general and
doubtsome faith; his satisfaction of men for their sins; his
justification by works, opus operatum, works of supererogation,
merits, pardons, peregrinations, and stations; his holy water,
baptizing of bells, conjuring of spirits, crossing, sayning, anointing,
conjuring, hallowing of God's good creatures, with the superstitious
opinion joined therewith; his worldly monarchy, and wicked hierarchy;
his three solemn vows, with all his shavelings of sundry sorts; his
erroneous and bloody decrees made at Trent, with all the subscribers or
approvers of that cruel and bloody band, conjured against the kirk of
God. And finally, we detest all his vain allegories, rites, signs, and
traditions brought in the kirk, without or against the word of God, and
doctrine of this true reformed kirk; to the which we join ourselves
willingly, in doctrine, faith, religion, discipline, and use of the holy
sacraments, as lively members of the same in Christ our head:
promising and swearing, by the great name of the LORD our GOD, that we
shall continue in the obedience of the doctrine and discipline of this
kirk, and shall defend the same, according to our vocation and power,
all the days of our lives; under the pains contained in the law, and
danger both of body and soul in the day of God's fearful judgment.
And seeing that many are stirred up by Satan, and that
Roman Antichrist, to promise, swear, subscribe, and for a time use the
holy sacraments in the kirk deceitfully, against their own conscience;
minding hereby, first, under the external cloak of religion, to corrupt
and subvert secretly God's true religion within the kirk; and
afterward, when time may serve, to become open enemies and persecutors
of the same, under vain hope of the Pope's dispensation, devised
against the word of God, to his greater confusion, and their double
condemnation in the day of the Lord Jesus: we therefore, willing to
take away all suspicion of hypocrisy, and of such double dealing with
God, and his kirk, protest, and call the Searcher of all hearts for
witness, that our minds and hearts do fully agree with this our
Confession, promise, oath, and subscription: so that we are not moved
with any worldly respect, but are persuaded only in our conscience,
through the knowledge and love of God's true religion imprinted in our
hearts by the Holy Spirit, as we shall answer to him in the day when
the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed.
And because we perceive, that the quietness and
stability of our religion and kirk doth depend upon the safety and good
behaviour of the King's Majesty, as upon a comfortable instrument of
God's mercy granted to this country, for the maintaining of his kirk,
and ministration of justice amongst us; we protest and promise with our
hearts, under the same oath, hand-writ, and pains, that we shall
defend his person and authority with our goods, bodies, and lives, in
the defence of Christ, his evangel, liberties of our country,
ministration of justice, and punishment of iniquity, against all enemies
within this realm or without, as we desire our God to be a strong and
merciful defender to us in the day of our death, and coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ; to whom, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, be all
honour and glory eternally. Amen.
