And now, last of all, by the means of this fatal Union with England, in terms and upon conditions inconsistent with our covenanted Union, engaged to in the League and Covenant; the nation’s sovereignty and independency are given up, the rights of Parliament entirely lost, or vanished into a shadow, little preferable to no Parliament; so few being to represent this nation in the Parliament of Great Britain, as can never be able to prevent, by their number of voices, any act which it shall please the English to make, how destructive soever the same be to our sacred or civil concerns.  Which treaty of Union was concluded in a Parliament as manifestly prelimited, as any which ever was seen in Scotland; the members were corrupted with bribes and preferment, and so engaged to act contrary to the will and mind of those whome they did represent, and to comply with that stratagem hatched by the English, for enslaving this poor nation, and denuded it of its privileges, as well sacred as civil.  And alas! how insignificant were the endeavours then used to prevent that course, and preserve the privileges of the Parliament and liberties of this kingdom? only some faint addresses, all other attempts being laid aside at their Queen’s command, by her proclamation, as treasonable convocation of the lieges.

Again, the subject’s liberties, both as men and as Christian, which the scriptures allow, we should preserve,

I Sam. xiv. 25; Acts xxii. 25,28; xxv. 11,16,27; Gal. v. 1.

Have been miserably encroached upon by arbitrary government, whereby the subjects have been oppressed in their consciences, persons and estates, by all the oaths and bonds pressing conformity with the corruptions, novations, and usurpations the government of church and state, and persecutions for recusancy, and by impositions of the freedom of secret thoughts, which no law of men can reach, which yet in the time of the late persecution were extorted, by threatening of death and manifold tortures; the church’s liberties have also been invaded by the ecclesiastical supremacy, declared by a blasphemous law inherent to the crown, which law, though it be not now in force, is yet still kept up in practice by the indiction, prorogation, and dissolution of Assemblies, and prescribing diets and causes of fasting and thanksgiving in the magistrate’s name and authority, to which ecclesiastical supremacy, usurped by the magistrate, this backslidden church hath always subjected, and now to discover to the world that they are not ashamed of this surrendering of our Lord’s prerogative to his enemies they have, in their Assembly, holden at Edinburgh, Anno 1710, most explicitly and fully subscribed to this ecclesiastical supremacy, in their Act for observation of fasts, wherein they affirm, “that it is much for the honor of God that fasts whether appointed’ by the church, or the civil magistrate, be duly observed.”