After these examples, which we judge “written for our learning,” we renew our own and our ancestors’ covenants, neither ecclesiastically nor nationally as representatives of either church or state, as they are now confederated against the Lord and his Anointed:  but we appear publicly as a “despised remnant,” avowing allegiance to Zion’s only King and “Prince of the kings of the earth,” pledging adherence to those public deeds of our progenitors, in which the divine ordinances of Church and State are exhibited; and in which they are exemplified as co-ordinate, mutually independent, friendly, and helpful to the family and to each other.  Thus acted the people of God under the covenant of grace in all ages; and so acted his servants at Auchensaugh, whose more immediate example we propose to follow.

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CONFESSION OF PUBLIC SINS.

All authentic history confirms the declaration of the Sacred Scriptures, That by one man sin entered into the world, and that there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not.  Yet there is mercy with God that he may be feared, and plenteous redemption to redeem Israel from all his trespasses.  But we are assured that “he that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”

Believing these teachings of God’s word, and in view of renewing solemn vows to him, we now give glory to the Lord God of Israel by making confession of our own and our fathers’ sins in violating our solemn covenants.  We acknowledge the heinous sins of repeated violation of our covenanted unity—­First, By joining in a military confederacy with the American Colonies in the revolutionary war of 1776. Second, Joining in a similar confederacy with Irish Papists and others to cast off the British government in 1798. Third, In a similar confederacy in the war between the United States and England in 1812. Fourth, By the like military association in the recent civil war:  and these sins were aggravated by framing oaths of allegiance or fidelity in the years 1812 and 1863.

Some of those who had violated their covenants by military association with the United Irishmen fled for refuge to the United States; and without undergoing censure became active agents in constituting a presbytery without authority had from the parent body in Scotland, 1798; and proceeded in 1806 to frame and publish Reformation Principles Exhibited, a work which removed landmarks which the fathers had set; and which with an abstract of Terms of Communion unpresbyterially introduced, unsettled the foundations and issued in the lamentable disruption of 1833.