For the better facilitating of Our other Services, and the more peaceable and plausible progress in all Businesses recommended to you, We allow you at any time you shall find most convenient, after the opening of the Assembly, to declare, That, notwithstanding Our Own Inclination, or any other Considerations, We are contented, for Our People’s full satisfaction, to remit Episcopacy and the Estate of Bishops to the Freedom of the Assembly, but so as no respect be had to the Determination of the Point in the last Assembly.
But in giving way to the abolishing of Episcopacy, be careful that it be done without the appearing of any Warrant from the Bishops; and if any offer to appear for them, you are to inquire for their Warrant, and carry the Dispute so, as the Conclusion seem not to be made in prejudice of Episcopacy as unlawful, but onely in satisfaction to the People, for settling the present Disorders, and such other Reasons of State; but herein you must be careful that Our Intentions appear not to any.
You shall labour that Ministers deposed by the last Assembly, or Commissions flowing from them, for no other cause but the subscribing of the Petition or Declinator against the last Assembly, be, upon their Submission to the Determinations of this Assembly, reponed in their own Places; and such other Ministers as are deposed for no other faults, that they be tried of new; and if that cannot be, strive that Commissions may be directed from this Assembly for Trying and Censuring them according to the nature of their Process.
That immediately upon the Conclusion of this Assembly, you indict another at some convenient time, as near the expiring of the Year as you can; and if you find that Aberdeen be not a Place agreeable, let Glasgow be the Place, and if that cannot give content, let it be elsewhere.
The General Assembly is not to meddle with any thing that is Civil, or which formerly hath been established by Act of Parliament, but upon His Majesties special Command or Warrant.
We will not allow of any Commissioners from the Assembly, nor no such Act as may give ground for the continuing of the Tables or Conventicles.
In case Episcopacy be abolished at this Assembly, you are to labour that We may have the power of chusing of so many Ministers as may represent the 14 Bishops in Parliament; or if that cannot be, that 14 others, whom we shall present, be agreed to, with a Power to chuse the Lords of the Articles for the Nobility for this time, untill the Business be further considered upon.
We allow that Episcopacy be abolished, for the Reasons contained in the Articles, and the Covenant 1580, for satisfaction of Our People, be subscribed, provided it be so conceived that thereby Our Subjects be not forced to abjure Episcopacy as a point of Popery, or contrary to God’s Law or the Protestant Religion; but if they require it to be abjured as contrary to the Constitution of the Kirk of Scotland, you are to give way to it rather than to make a Breach.
After all Assembly-business is ended, immediately before Prayers you shall, in the fairest way you can, protest that, in respect of His Majesties Resolution of not coming in Person, and that His Instructions to you were upon short advertisement, whereupon many things may have occurred wherein you have not had His Majesties Pleasure, therefore and for such other Reasons as occasion may furnish, you are to protest that, in case any thing hath escaped you, or hath been condescended upon in this present Assembly, prejudicial to His Majesties Service, that His Majesty may be heard for redress thereof in his own time and place.
We will not allow that, either by the Commissions already granted, nor upon no other Bill or Petition, any part of the burden of the Charges of the last Business be laid upon any of Our good Subjects, who have stood by Us, and have refused to subscribe their Bonds and Covenants.