That the power of this, and all future Representatives of this
Nation, is inferior only to theirs who choose them, and doth extend,
without the consent or concurrence of any other person or persons,
to the enacting, altering, and repealing of laws, to the erecting
and abolishing of offices and courts, to the appointing, removing,
and calling to account magistrates and officers of all degrees, to
the making war and peace, to the treating with foreign States, and,
generally, to whatsoever is not expressly or impliedly reserved by
the represented to themselves.
Which are as followeth.
1. That matters of religion and the ways of God's worship are not at
all entrusted by us to any human power, because therein we cannot
remit or exceed a tittle of what our consciences dictate to be the
mind of God without wilful sin: nevertheless the public way of
instructing the nation (so it be not compulsive) is referred to their
discretion.
2. That the matter of impresting and constraining any of us to serve
in the wars is against our freedom; and therefore we do not allow
it in our Representatives; the rather, because money (the sinews of
war), being always at their disposal, they can never want numbers of
men apt enough to engage in any just cause.
3. That after the dissolution of this present Parliament, no person
be at any time questioned for anything said or done in reference
to the late public differences, otherwise than in execution of the
judgments of the present Representatives or House of Commons.
4. That in all laws made or to be made every person may be bound
alike, and that no tenure, estate, charter, degree, birth, or place
do confer any exemption from the ordinary course of legal proceedings
whereunto others are subjected.
5. That as the laws ought to be equal, so they must be good, and not
evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people.
These things we declare to be our native rights, and therefore are
agreed and resolved to maintain them with our utmost possibilities
against all opposition whatsoever; being compelled thereunto not
only by the examples of our ancestors, whose blood was often spent in
vain for the recovery of their freedoms, suffering themselves through
fraudulent accommodations to be still deluded of the fruit of their
victories, but also by our own woeful experience, who, having long
expected and dearly earned the establishment of these certain rules
of government, are yet made to depend for the settlement of our peace
and freedom upon him that intended our bondage and brought a cruel
war upon us.