Wherefore the presbytery, amidst their many difficulties, partly noticed in the introduction, as a court of the true Presbyterian Covenanted Church of Christ in Scotland, constituted in the name of the lord Jesus Christ, the alone king and head of his church, judicially to commemorate:  Likeas, they did, and hereby do acknowledge, with the utmost gratitude, the great goodness and tender mercy of our God unto our church and land; who, in consequence of that early new covenant grant, made by Jehovah to his eternal son, to give him the heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession, caused the day spring from on high to visit us.  Our glorious Redeemer, that bright and morning Star, having, by his almighty power, shaken oft the fetters of death, wherewith it was impossible that he could be held, and, as a victorious conqueror, leading captivity captive, ascended into the highest heavens, and there sat down on the right hand of God, did very soon discover his cordial acceptance of, and superlative delight in, possessing his Father’s extensive grant, by stretching forth the lines of his large and great dominion unto the distant nations of the world, involved in the thickest darkness of stupidity and idolatry; and, in a particular manner, did, as the glorious sun of righteousness, graciously illuminate this remote and barbarous isle, causing the refulgent beams of gospel light to dissipate the gross darkness that, covered the people, which prevailed so far (according to very authentic historical accounts), that, about the beginning of the third century, those of the highest dignity in the nation, voluntarily enlisted themselves under the displayed banner of Christ, the captain of salvation, and became nursing fathers and nursing mothers to his church, employing their power to root out Pagan idolatry, and bring their subjects under the peaceful scepter of the son of god.  This plant of Christianity having once taken root, did, under all the vicissitudes of divine providence, grow up unto a spreading vine, which filled the land, and continued to flourish, without being pressed down with the intolerable burden of prelatical or popish superstition:  the truths and institutions of the gospel being faithfully propagated and maintained in their native purity and simplicity by the Culdees some hundreds of years before ever that man of sin and son of perdition, by the door of prelacy, stepped into the temple of God in Scotland.  Those early witnesses for Christ, having no other ambition but that of advancing piety and the doctrines which were according to godliness, were therefore called Culdees, that is, Cultores Dei, or worshipers of God.  The doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the house of god being thus established, continued for many years, taught and exorcised, according to divine institution.  But, in process of time, the Church of Christ