to resist such wickedness, did wink at it. O how righteous is the Lord now in turning our harps into mourning! Though alas! we will not suffer ourselves to this day, to see the shining righteousness of this retribution: And though we be scourged with scorpions, and brayed in a mortar, our madness, our folly in these irreligious frolics, is not yet acknowledged, let be lamented. Yet albeit, neither in this day when then the covenant was not only broken, but cassed and declared of no obligation, nor afterward when it was burnt (for which Turks and Pagans would have been ashamed and afraid at such a terrible sight, and for which the Lord's anger is burning against these bold burners, and against them who suffered it, and did not witness against it) was there any public testimony by protestation or remonstrance, or any public witness? though the Lord had some then, and some who came out afterward with the trumpet at their mouth, whole heart then sorrowed at the sight; and some suffered for the sense they shewed of that anniversary abomination, for not keeping which they lost both church and liberty. It is true the ordinary meetings of presbyteries and synods were about that time discharged, to make way for the exercise of the new power conferred on the four prelates who were at court, re-ordained and consecrated thereby renouncing their former title to the ministry. But this could not give a discharge from a necessary testimony, then called for from faithful watchmen. However the reformation being thus rescinded and razed, and the house of the Lord pulled down, then they begin to build their Babel. In the parliament 1662, by their first act they restore and re-establish prelacy, upon such a foundation as they might by the same law bring in popery, which was then designed; and so settled its harbinger diocesan and erastian prelacy, by fuller enlargement of the supremacy. The very act begins thus: 'For as much as the ordering and disposal of the external government of the church, doth properly belong to his majesty as an inherent right of the crown, by virtue of his royal prerogative, and supremacy in causes ecclesiastic—whatever shall be determined by his majesty, with advice of the archbishops, and such of the clergy as he shall nominate, in the external government of the church (the same consisting with the standing laws of the kingdom) shall be valid and effectual. And in the same act all laws are rescinded, by which the sole power and jurisdiction within the church doth stand in the church assemblies, and all which may be interpreted, to have given any church power, jurisdiction, or government to the office-bearers of the church, other than that which acknowledgeth a dependence upon, and subordination to the sovereign power of the king as supreme.' By which, prelates are redintegrated to all their privileges and pre-eminencies, that they possessed 1637. And all their church power (robbed from the officers of Christ) is made to be derived from, to depend upon, and to be subordinate to the crown prerogative of the king: whereby the king is made the only fountain of church power, and that exclusive even of Christ, of whom there is no mentioned exception: And his vassals the bishops, as his clerks in ecclesiastics, are accountable to him for all their administrations; a greater usurpation upon the kingdom of Christ, than ever the papacy itself aspired unto. Yet, albeit here was another display of a banner of defiance against Christ, in altering the church government of Christ's institution into the human invention of lordly prelacy, in assuming a power by prerogative to dispose then of the external government of the church, and in giving his creatures patents for this effect, to be his administrators for that usurped government; there was no public, ministerial, at least united testimony against this neither. Therefore the Lord punished this sinful and shameful silence of ministers, in his holy justice, though by men's horrid wickedness; when by another wicked act of the council at Glasgow, above 300 ministers were put from their charges; and afterwards, for their non-conformity in not countenancing their diocesan meeting, and not keeping the anniversary day, May 29, the rest were violently thrust from their labours in the Lord's vineyard, and banished from their parishes, and adjudged unto a nice and strange confinement, twenty miles from their own parishes, six miles from a cathedral church, as they called it, and three miles from a burgh; whereby they were reduced into many inconveniencies. Yet in this fatal convulsion of the church, generally all were struck with blindness and baseness, that a paper proclamation made them all run from their posts, and obey the king's orders for their ejection. Thus were they given up, because of their forbearing to sound an alarm, charging the people of God, in point of loyalty to Christ, and under the pain of the curse of the covenant, to awake and aquit themselves like men, and not to suffer the enemy to rob them of that treasure of reformation, which they were put in possession of, by the tears, prayers, and blood of such as went before them; instead of those prudential fumblings and firstlings then and since so much followed. Wherefore the Lord in his holy righteousness, left that enemy (against whom they should have cried and contended, and to whose eye they should have held the curse of the covenant, as having held it first to their own, in case of unfaithful silence in not holding it to his) to call them out of the house of the Lord, and dissolve their assemblies, and deprive them of their privileges, because of their not being so valiant for the truth, as that a full and faithful testimony against that encroachment might be found upon record. Nevertheless some were found faithful in that hour and power of darkness, who kept the word of the Lord's patience, and who were therefore kept in and from that temptation (which carried many away into sad and shameful defections) though not from suffering hard things from the hands of men; and only these who felt most of their violence, found grace helping them to acquit themselves suitably to that day's testimony, being thereby prevented from an active yielding to their impositions, when they were made passively to suffer force. However that season of a public testimony was lost, and as to the most part never recovered to this day. The prelates being settled, and re-admitted to voice in parliament, they procure an act, dogmatically condemning several material parts and points of our covenanted reformation, to wit, these positions, 'That it was lawful for subjects, for reformation or necessary self-defence, to enter into leagues, or take up arms against the king: And particularly declaring, that the national covenant, as explained in the year 1638, and the solemn league and covenant, were and are in themselves unlawful oaths, and were taken by and imposed upon the subjects of this kingdom against the fundamental laws and liberties thereof, that all such gatherings and petitions that were used in the beginning of the late troubles, were unlawful and seditious: And whereas then people were led unto these things, by having disseminated among them such principles as these, That it was lawful to come with petitions and representations of grievances to the king, that it was lawful for people to restrict their allegiance under such and such limitations, and suspend it until he should give security for religion, &c. It was therefore enacted, that all such positions and practices founded thereupon, were treasonable.—And further did enact, that no person, by writing, praying, preaching, or malicious or advised speaking, express or publish any words or sentences, to stir up the people to the dislike of the king's prerogative and supremacy, or of the government of the church by bishops, or justify any of the deeds, actings, or things declared against by that act.' Yet notwithstanding of all this subversion of religion and liberty, and restraint of asserting these truths here trampled upon either before men by testimony, or before God in mourning over these indignities done unto him, in everting these and all the parts of reformation, even when it came to Daniel's case of confession, preaching and praying truths interdicted by law; few had their eyes open (let be their windows in an open avouching them) to see the duty of the day calling for a testimony. Though afterwards, the Lord spirited some to assert and demonstrate the glory of these truths and duties to the world. As that judicious author of the Apologetical Relation, whose labours need no eulogium to commend them. But this is not all: for these men, having now as they thought subverted the work of God, they provided also against the fears of its revival: making acts, declaring, 'that if the outed ministers dare to continue to preach, and presume to exercise their ministry, they should be punished as seditious persons; requiring of all a due acknowledgement of, and hearty compliance with, the king's government, ecclesiastical and civil; and that whosoever shall ordinarily and wilfully withdraw and absent from the ordinary meetings for divine worship in their own churches on the Lord's day, shall incur the penalties there insert.' Thus the sometimes chaste virgin, whose name was Beulah to the Lord, the reformed church of Scotland, did now suffer a violent and villainous rape, from a vermin of vile schismatical apostates, obtruded and imposed upon her, instead of her able, painful, faithful, and successful pastors, that the Lord had set over her, and now by their faintness and the enemy's force, robbed from her, and none now allowed by law to administer the ordinances, but either apostate curates, who by their perjury and apostacy forfaulted their ministry, or other hirelings and prelates journeymen, who run without a mission, except from them who had none to give according
