III. That they stood aloof from every appearance of a base compliance with them; not so much as to give them an interpretative sign of it; which, in their meaning, might be thought a recantation, though, abstractly considered, it might be capable of a more favourable construction; as the required burning of their bill was; which might have been thought a condemning of their accusations; but because that was not their adversaries sense of it, they durst not do it. Not like many now a-days, who will not be solicitous to consult that. Neither would they take any of their oaths, nor pay any of their ecclesiastical exactions, as we find in the articles brought in against the Lollards of Kyle, Knox's History of Reformation. These things are easily complied with now: and such as will suffer upon such things are condemned.
IV. That while the love of God and his blessed truth, and the precepts, promise, and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, did enable them unto all patience with joy, in a passive testimony, being by the call of a clear and necessary providence sent and set forth to be his witnesses; they did not indeed endeavour any resistance: yet we find they never resigned nor abandoned that first and most just privilege of resistance; nay, nor bringing public beasts of prey to condign punishment, in an extraordinary way of vindictive justice, for the murder of the saints. As, upon the murder of Mr. George Wishart, was done with Cardinal Beaton, who was slain in the tower of St. Andrew's by James Melvin: who, perceiving his consorts in the enterprize moved with passion, withdrew them, and said, 'This work and judgment of God, although it be secret, ought to be done with greater gravity.' And, presenting the point of the sword to the Cardinal, said, 'Repent thee of thy former wicked life, but especially of the shedding of the blood of that notable instrument of God, Mr. George Wishart, which albeit the flame of fire consumed before men, yet it cries for vengeance upon thee, and we from God are sent to revenge it; for here, before my God, I protest, that neither the hatred of thy person, the love of thy riches, nor the fear of any trouble thou couldst have done me in particular, moved or moveth me to strike thee, but only because thou hast been and remainest an obstinate enemy against Christ Jesus, and his holy gospel.' Of which fact, the famous and faithful historian Mr. Knox speaks very honourably, and was so far from condemning it, that while, after the slaughter, they kept out the castle, he, with other godly men, went to them, and stayed with them, till they were together carried captives to France. Yet now such a fact, committed upon such another bloody and treacherous beast, the Cardinal Prelate of Scotland, eight years ago, is generally condemned as horrid murder.
V. However, though in this dark period there be no noted instances of these witnesses resisting the superior powers, for reasons above hinted: yet, in this period, we find many instances of noble and virtuous patriots, their not only resisting, but also revenging to the utmost of severity, rigorous and raging tyrants, as may be seen in histories. For, before the corruption of antichrist came to its height, we find Ferchardus 1st, the 52d King, was drawn to judgment against his will, great crimes were laid to his charge, and among others the Pelagian heresy, and contempt of baptism, for which he was cast into prison, where he killed himself in the year 636; Eugenius 8th, the 62d King, degenerating into wickedness, and rejecting the admonitions of his friends, and especially of the ministers, was killed in a convention of his nobles, with the consent of all, in the year 765; Donaldus 7th was imprisoned, where he killed himself, in the year 859; Ethus, surnamed Alipes, the 72d King, was apprehended, and his wicked life laid out before the people, and then compelled to resign the government, and died in prison, in the year 875. Afterwards when the government was transmitted to the Stewarts, James the 2d, the 103d King, who killed William Earl of Douglas in the castle of Stirling, most treacherously, after he had pretended a civil treatment, was publicly defied by the Earl's friends, who took the King's public writ and subscription made to the said Earl, and tied it to a horse tail, dragging it through the streets; and, when they came to the market-place, they proclaimed both King and Nobles perjured covenant breakers; and thereafter, when Earl James his brother was desired to submit, he answered, 'He would never put himself in their reverence who had no regard to shame; nor to the laws of God or man, and who had so perfidiously killed his brother and his cousins.' James 3d, the 104th King, for his treachery and tyranny, was opposed and pursued by arms by his own subjects; who, finding himself under disadvantages, sent to the rebels (as he thought them, and called them) an offer of peace, and received this answer—'That seeing the King did nothing honestly, a certain war seemed better to them than a peace not to be trusted, that there was no other hope of agreement but one, that he should quit the government, otherwise it was to no purpose to trouble themselves with treaties.' Thereafter, in a battle, he was slain at Bannockburn by Gray, Ker, and Borthwick. The same King was also constrained, by the valour of Archibald Douglas Earl of Angus, called Bell the Cat, to reform the court, and put away some wicked sycophants from his council, and give way, though against his will, to the execution of judgment upon others: which was the occasion of that foresaid agnomen to the Earl: for he, with other nobles, in a meeting at Lauder, consulting how to reform and repress the insolency of the Court, had the apologue of the mice laid out before them; that the mice fell upon deliberating how to be rid of the cat, and concluded that the best way was to put a bell about her neck; but when it came to be put in execution, never a mouse durst undertake it: the Earl quickly made application, saying, I will bell the cat; and forthwith went out, and meeting Cochran, one of these wicked counsellors, took hold of him, and hanged him with a horse halter over the bridge of Lauder; and, rushing into the King's presence, proceeded to snatch Ramsay, another of the country's enemies, out of the King's arms; but that he yielded at length to the King's earnest entreaties to spare him. However we see how generously zealous these noble patriots were for the country's good, against tyranny, though they were ignorant of religion: yet this all along was still the character of the Scots in these days, none more terrible to tyrants, none more loyal to Kings than they.
PERIOD III.
Containing the TESTIMONY of the REFORMATION from POPERY.
As in the former, the testimony was mostly passive; so, in the following period, when they were encreased in number and strength that embraced the gospel, the Lord called, and spirited to an active testimony, for these two twins, religion and liberty, that were then sought to be stifled in the birth, and are now designed more declaredly to be destroyed, after they have grown up to some maturity: which, as it renders the cruelty of the present destroyers the more grassant and grievous, so it rubs the more indelible infamy on the shameful security and ass-like stupidity of this generation, that have received such an excellent testimony deposited to their trust, transmitted to them through a continued tract of the witnessings and wrestlings of their worthy ancestors, and now let it slip and slide through their feeble fingers; and does the more justify, yea magnify, the poor endeavours of the present sufferers, who, at least, when they cannot re-act these mighty works, in defending religion and liberty, do chuse rather to die than to resign the testimony, or quit the least privilege that their progenitors possessed them of: and though they be superciliously despised, as little insignificant nothings in the eyes of the bulk of the big