A COVENANT FOR RELIGION, KING & COUNTRY.  
Made by the Lords, Knights, Gentlemen, Burgesses, Ministers, and Commons of the Kingdom of SCOTLAND.  
Wherein they declare how they are bound in conscience to defend the true Protestant Religion, and the King's Person, with the Laws of the Kingdom.  
Whereunto is annexed, His Ma.tie entertainment at Hereford on Saturday last, being the first of October.  
With a worthy Speech spoken to his Majesty by the Recorder of Hereford. Wherein is manifested to His Majesty the lamentable condition that this Kingdom will be in, if War should continue.  
Withal declaring the resolution of that City, to stand for the King and Parliament.  
LONDON, Printed for Henry Hutton. Oct. 7. 1642.   

A Covenant for RELIGION, KING, and COUNTRY, made by a new Ordinance of Counsel at the desire of the general assembly of SCOTLAND.  
weal, and every one of us underwritten, protest that after long and due examination of our own consciences in matters of true, & false religion, are now throughly resolved of 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 received, believed, and defended by many and sundry notable Kirks and Realms; but chiefly by the Kirk of Scotland, the King's Majesty, and our Estates of this Realm, as Gods eternal truth and only ground of our salvation; as more particularly is expressed in the Confession of our faithstablished and confirmed by many Acts of Parliaments, and now of a long time hath been openly professed by the King's Majesty, and whole body of his Realm, both in Burgh and Land. To the which Confession and form of religion we willingly agree in our consciences 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 & confuted by the word of God, and Kirk of Scotland: but in especial, 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, and 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 judgement 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 Sacrifices for the sins of the dead and the quick, his Canonization of men calling upon Angels or Saints departed, worshipping of imagery relics, and crosses, dedicating of kirkes, Altars, days, vows to creatures, his purgatory, prayers for the dead, praying or speaking in a strange language, with his processions, and blasphemons lettany, 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, baptising of bells, conjuring of saints, crossing, fanning, anointing, conjuring, hallowing of God's good creatures with the superstitous opinion, joined there with his worldly Monarchy, and wicked Hierarcy, his three solemn vows, with all his shavelings of sundry sorts, his erroneous and bloody decrees made at Trent, with all the subscribers, & approvers of that cruel and bloody and band conjured against the Kirk of God; and finally we detest all 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, prominsig and swearing by the name of God our Lord, That we shall continue in the obedience of the doctrine and discipline of this Kirk, and shall defend the same according to our vocation, 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 judgements. 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, deceitful against their own consciences, minding thereby first under the Externall 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 Christ.  
We therefore willing to take away all suspicion of hypocrisy, and of such double dealing with God & his Kirk, protest, and call the searcher of 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 for any worldly respects, but are persuaded only in our consciences through the knowledge & love of God's true Religion printed 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, written, and pains, that we shall defend his royal 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 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.   

A Worthy Speech spoken to the Kings most Excellent Majesty by the Recorder of Hereford.  
MOst gracious Sovereign, according to our Allegiance we are here assembled to entertain your Majesty, and to give that welcome which shall become us your distressed Subjects, yet loyal liege-people.  
We with all joy acknowledge, that the Sun never appeared more welcome to the half starved traveller, benumbed with the cold moisture of a hoary morn, where the white dew like to congealed Pearl hangs on his hair, (by which he does appear almost a frozen Statue,) then now your gracious presence is to us, almost despairing, frozen up with fear, with visible appearances of danger, death, and destruction, rapine, and thousands more calamities, such, as will bring terror in the mere relation.  
O my dread Sovereign, let but your Servant put into your mind the dire effects of War, when flourishing Cities shall be turned to dust, nay this yet flourishing Kingdom shall become it's own destroyer, buried in the tomb of blood and slaughter, when our young infants shall be rudely torn from the sad mothers, breast whose shrieks and cries serve as sad music to the sacrifice, when our young virgins and our wives shall be subject to bloody cruelty, when death shall triumph, and the friends of Rome, (whose only aims are to destroy the Laws, religion of the Kingdom, nay the King too, if not prevented) yourself most gracious Sov●raigne must suffer with your Subjects, if their hellbred designs should ever take effect, therefore great King, now while you may, return, and join in peace with those, who like to teeming mothers long for your wished presence, or like to loving children, who finding the want of an indulgent parent, with an excessive sorrow mourns his absence, even so your Council with an industrious care and loyal sorrow mourn for your sacred self, because your splendent favour hath been kept so long from shining on them, their actions like to flowers in a dry summer, want the dew of your high favour, which should make them flourish with natural sweetness, wherefore they are enforced to use sOme art to bring them to a growth, and make them useful for the general good, but would you deign to cast one splendent beam on their endeavours, and to lend a hand to raise their drooping hopes, than peace should flourish: those that seek for war, should fall into that pit themselves have digged: O then Dread sovereign abandon strait those achan's of the Land, let not atscintion or domestic strife revel within this Kingdame, but let peace, a bleffed religious peace be strait embraced, so shall your Crown and Throne endure for ever, and joy shall circumvent you, your Subject's fear shall cease, and you shall see, let Law have power who is an enemy to England's peace, and what they are that strive to ruin England could their Plots but thrive. I fear I have displeased (if not your Majesty, yet some of your retinue) which if I have, I must conclude that they are guilty of what I mention, for otherwise what need they seem offended at that which they are free of? As touching what Your Majesty shall command, we are ready to obey, so far as Law, or Religion will give way; but if any command shall happen contrary, our lives and fortunes shall be exposed to the most eminent danger, in opposition of any such command. Thus trusting in Your Majesty's Royal disposition, we rest, (according to our bounden duty) Your Majesty's loyal and obedient Subjects, in which we are resolved to live and die.   
FINIS.