A Historical Vindication of the Government of the Church of Scotland

The Contents of the first Treatise.
• Issachar’s Burden will stumble no solid and advised mind, p. 1.
• The Author of it is an excommunicate Prelat and Incendiary, obstinate in wickedness, p. 2. The most malicious enemy to the Parliament of England that ever yet has written, p. 3.
• A favourer of gross Popery and Arminianism, p. 4, 5, 6.
• Scotland's old Obligations to England, p. 7. England's late Obligations to Scotland, p. 8, 9. The Independents and Erastians in publishing this Book are many ways faulty, p. 10.
• The Title Issachar’s Burden, is a doltish reproach of this present Parliament, p. 11. the groundless calumnies of the title Page, p. 12. the discordall concord of Prelates, Erastians and Independents in the point of Supremacy, ibid. the publishing of this Book is a grievous injury to the Parliament, p. 13. a false and mad prophesy, p. 14. the whole Treatise is but an extract of the most false and venomous parts of Spotswoods Story, Ibid.
• The Church of Scotland, gives no more power to Congregational Elderships then the Independents and Erastians do allow, p. 15. the Prelates give much more ecclesiastical power to Lay-men then we to ruling Elders, p. 16
• We give to Deacons no power of jurisdiction, we wish there were Doctors in all populous Congregations, Elders in some few Congregations for a time have a Dispensation, p. 17.
• No Eldership inflicts any civil punishment, Ibid. the Prelates confound miserably the spiritual and civil Offices, p. 18.
• Princes plead not for exemption from Ecclesiastic jurisdiction, p. 19. No Presbytery did ever enter in any process with the supreme Magistrate, p. 20. the Moderators of our Assembly are Preachers, p. 21.
• Our expectants are not Lay-Preachers, p. 22. the Presbytery of Edinburgh usurps no power over any other, Ibid. King James aversion from Presbytery, and affection to Episcopacy, makes not this the better, nor that the worse, Ibid. No Presbytery did ever keep any State with the King, p. 23
• The Presbytery doth not inquire in secret faults, but known crimes it does not pass by, p. 24.
• The Presbytery meddles not with matter of trade or debt, or anything civil, p. 25. they never did dilapidat any Benefice, p. 26. nor favor Gentlemen in their wickedness, they never did countenance any feud, all these were the Prelates crimes, p. 26, 27.
• Ministers generally were ever and still are, honored more in Scotland then anywhere else, p. 29.
• Master Robert Bruce vindicated, p. 30, 31.
• The reason of the Authors malice against the general Assembly, p. 32. His false and railing slanders against it, p. 33.
• The general Assembly exercises no power, but what the King and the Laws have authorized, Ibid. the Commissioners of Burroughs and Universities are Elders, Ibid. we a cribe to the King so much power in the Assembly as the Laws allow, p. 34. the Assembly alters no Law, only it supplicates the King and Parliament to alter such Laws as confirm evident errors, p. 35. the Prelates quarrelling against ruling Elders is absurd, Ibid.
• The Assembly and Parliament in Scotland use not to differ, p. 36.
• The vindication of J. Knox & the first reformers from base calumnies, p. 37
• The suspension of the Queen Regents authority was an Act merely of the State which did nothing prejudge the Sovereignty, p. 38.
• The Presbyterians have often supported, but never hurt royalty, p. 39.
• John Knox did never preach for the pulling down of any Church, p. 40.
• The arms of Scotland against the tyranny of the French were necessary and just, p. 41. the Author very wicked and popish, Ibid.
• Cardinal Beton by all Law and reason deserved death, p. 42.
• An account of the tumult at Edinburgh for the Service-book, p. 43, 44.
• Our Assemblies did ever defer all loyal subjection to the King, p. 45.
• Master Henderson was ever free from all disloyal and Papal humors, Ibid.
• Our first reformation was authorized by Parliament, p. 46.
• Episcopacy was never approved by any lawful Assembly in Scotland, p. 47. the short confession of faith was subscribed by King James in the year 1580 the Presbyterial Government was fully agreed unto before that time, ibid. the King and his Counsel did set up the Presbyteries over all the Land at the same time, p. 48.
• The general Assembly did never approve of Abbots and Pryors, ibid.
• The Ministers of Scotland were wont to preach to the King and State free and seasonable Doctrine, but in all wisdom and humility, p. 49.
• Preachers of treason are censurable both by the Church and State, p, 50.
• The Erastian and Prelatical principles brought great trouble on the Ministers of Scotland, p. 51.
• The case of James Gibson, p. 52. Mr. David Black his case, ibid.
• A clear vindication of the Assembly at Aberdeen in the year 1605. p. 53, 54, 55.
• Mr. Welsh and Mr. Forbes pitifully oppressed, p. 56.
• Bancroft a persecutor of the Scottish Presbyterians, ibid.
• Mr. Andrew and Mr. James Melvils oppressed, p. 57.
• The Scottish Discipline is far from all rigor and tyranny. p. 58.
• A Narration of the Roads of Ruthen and Stirling, p. 60.
• The Assembly meddles not with Laws, nor with any civil Courts, p. 61. Mr. John Graham his case, p. 62, 63.
• The great controversy betwixt the Church and the King was the infinite extent of the Prerogative, p. 64. the Presbytery is a great bar to keep out Democracy and tyranny both from Church and State; it is a singular help both to Kings and Parliaments, p. 65. Mr. Catherwoods vindication, p. 66.
• The Commissioners of the general assembly unjustly slandered, p. 67. A full account of the 17. day of December, p. 68, 69, 70, 71. Mr. James Melvile vindicated from assisting of Bothwell against the King, p. 72.
• A Declaration upon all the twelve Articles imputed to us, p. 73, 74, 75, 76.
• No shadow of Episcopacy remains in any well reformed Church, p. 77, 78.
• The Dutch Superintendents are very far from the English Bishps, p. 79.

The Contents of the second Treatise.
• THe Opposites of Presbytery blinded with malice, have hurt themselves and no other by the reprinting of this false Declaration, p. 1.
• Adamson confesseth himself to be the Author thereof, but King James did disclaim it, p. 2. whatever in it is contrary to Presbytery, is condemned by the Parliament of Scotland, p. 3.
• It is hazardous for a Prince to take upon himself the faults of his Officers, p. 4. the indignation of the people in Scotland was never against King James, but oft against his Court, and that upon just grounds, p. 5.
• King James was far from Erastianism, p. 7.
• Cleer grounds for Mr. Melvils justification, p. 9. his flight no argument of guiltiness, p. 11. A great cause of the rooting out of Episcopacy, ibid. Mr. Melvils Declinator and Protestation cleared, p. 12.
• What supremacy is lawful, p. 13. the Erastian supremacy is more then a Turkish tyranny, p. 14. if either King or Parliament admit of it, it will overthrow both, and the whole Nation with them, p. 15.
• King James revoked what here is published, and King Charles also, p. 17.
• The Presbyterial Government was established in Scotland on a divine right, with the allowance of K. James and K. Charles in divers Parliaments, p. 18
• The reprinters of this Declaration seem to be contemners of Oaths, Laws and all rights divine and bumane, p. 20.
• A full account of the French Banquet, p. 21.
• The Prelates and Erastians extremely unjust against the Presbytery, p. 24.
• The general Assemblies approbation of the Road of Ruthven very innocent, p. 25
• The Road of Stirling cleared, p. 27.
• Episcopacy was not established at the Conference of Leeth, 1572. p. 16.
• It was lawful for the Assemblies to call to fasting, p. 28.
• The reprinters of this Declaration make no conscience of their Covenant; p. 29.
• King James his full and honest Declaration against Erastianism, p. 31.
• The pretended intentions were not the Kings but the Prelates, p. 32.
• The reprinters of this Writ are either hypocrites or Apostates, ibid.
• Caesaro papisme is an Antichristianism, worse then that of the Pope, p. 33.
• Prelates and Erastians their Sympathy and Antipathy, p. 34.
• King James against all toleration of heresies or schisms, p. 35. Also much contrary to our present Anarchy, p. 36.
• The retarders of government are enemies to themselves and to the welfare of England p. 37.
• The Recanta • ion of Patrick Adamson pretended Archbi. of St. Andrew's, p. 37
• Mr. Patrick Adamson's own Answer and refutation of the Book falsely called The Kings Declaration, p. 41.
• Two pious and prophetical Letters of Mr. Jo. Welsh, which he wrote out of his prison after the sentence of death was pronounced against him and other gracious Ministers for their testimony against Erastianism & Prelacy, p. 45.

The Authors out of which the chief testimonies of the subsequent Vindication are taken.
• The Acts of Parliament printed at Edinburgh by Robert Walgrave in the year 1597.
• The Acts of the second Parliament of King Charles printed at Edinburgh by Robert Young, 1641.
• The Acts of the general Assembly at Edinburgh 1632. printed at Edinburgh by Evan Tyler 1642.
• One of the Registers of the Church of Scotland, Manuscript.
• A collection out of the Registers of the Church of Scotland by Mr. David Catherwood, wherein, beside other things, are Mr. Andrew Melvils process, the Animadversions of the Commissioners of the general Assembly upon Adamsons Declaration delivered to the King; Also a Reverend Divines censure at that time upon the same Declaration; Also King James his true Declaration.
• Knox History.
• Altare Damascenum.
• Adamsons Recantation.
• Mr. Welsh his Letters.
• The Ecclesiastic History of Scotland written by John Spotswood, pretended Archbishop of St. Andrew's, licensed for the Press under the hands of Secretary Stirling and Windebank.
• Issachar’s Burden, under the name of an Answer to a Letter, &c. Also Sacr • Sancta Regum Majestas, both printed at Oxford 1644. by Mr. John Max well pretended Bishop of Ross.

THE UNLOADING OF ISSACHARS BURTHEN.

WHen from divers good hands it was brought to me, that Presbyterial Government began to be evil spoken of by many, & to be suspected by some who hitherto had not been unfriends to it, through the occasion of a late Pamphlet Intituled Issachar’s burden; which some Sectaries with all care and diligence do put in the hands of the prime Members of both Houses of Parliament, and others whom they conceive to have any influence in the affairs either of Church or State, either of City or Country: The word of the old Philosopher came in my mind, a short sighted man, is a quick judge; who sees few things, does soon and rashly give out his sentence.

That this nameless Pamphlet printed by a Malignant at Oxford, and reprinted by the industry of Sectaries at London, should be able to open the mouth, or touch the heart of any considerate man with the least suspicion against the Government of the Reformed Churches, seems to me a little strange, and will do so, as I suppose, to others who shall be pleased to consider with me some circumstances of that writ; first the Author, secondly, those whom he professes to tax, thirdly, its Publishers, fourthly, the matters contained therein.

The Author, as uncontroverted fame since its first publication at Oxford makes manifest, is Mr John Maxwell late Bishop of Ross, from whose gracious pen a little after this, did drop another piece of the like benign quality, Sacro-Sancta-Regum majestas; they must be of a greater then ordinary credulity, who can admit this man's testimony-against the Church of Scotland; for by the most solemn judicatories of that Land, he is declared infamous: by the general Assembly for many grievous offenses he with some other Prelates were delivered into the hands of Satan, but for more treasonable crimes this man by the Parliament of that Kingdom was declared an incendiary: a Censure put upon no other Prelate but him alone.

These no more heavy then just sentences were so far from bringing him to any show of repentance, that they filled his heart with bitterness and rage, to do, speak, and write what ever masice, hightned to the uttermost, could dictate.

In that most scurrilous and envenomed Satire Lysimachus Nicanor, his pen was thought to be principal; for this he got a warning from heaven so distinct and loud as any uses to be given upon earth, to reclaim him from his former errors: with his eyes did he see the miserable man John Corbet, who took upon him the shame of penning that rabble of contumelious lies against his Mother Church, hewed in pieces in the very arms of his poor wife; this Prelate himself in the mean time was stricken down and left with many wounds as dead by the hand of the Irish, with whom he had been but too familiar: All this did not humble his stout spirit; so dangerous is it to be put in the hands of the Devil by the servants of God according to their Masters warrant; for no sooner did he recover of his wounds, but he went for Oxford of purpose to cast • oil in that flame, in the first kindling whereof he had been a prime instrument.

How little faith ought to be given to this man I might show by seven years old Stories; its well known that he above all men living did move and encourage Canterbury to force upon Scotland the Liturgy and Canons; what ever Popery or Tiranny is found in either, he was a prime Author and full consenter thereto: the erroneous Tenants of the Canterburian party, especially their gross Popery in the heads of Transubstantiation, Justification and Purgatory, were according to his mind, as the supplement of Ladensium Autocatacrisis demonstrates: how near he and his two most intimate friends Forbes and Synserfe were to the open profession of Popery, does appear by the avowed defection to Rome of their chief Scholars and most familiar dependents, Forbes his Son, Synserfe his brother, Menteith the great Achates of all the three Bishops.

But leaving these elder stories, behold what new stuff he lays out in his two Pamphlets; in matters of State these are his maxims; all resistance to Kings in any imaginable case of the most extreme Tyranny is simply unlawful, though the Religion. Laws, Liberties of whole Kingdoms were totally subverted. Let Princes do what ever miseniese can come in the heart of the worst men, subjects are to suffer all, and have no right allowed by God to make any opposition farther then by tears and prayers . That the defensive war of the Parliaments of both Kingdoms is a most real Rebellion and Treason; that all who have died in that quared are certainly damned; that the Covenant is a damnable Conspiracy; that all Covenanters are Traitors and Rebels both to God and the King; that their Covenant puts them upon the principles of Ravtitack and Faux, to kill Kings and blow up Parliaments . That the Arms of the Irish Rebels were no more unjust, then these of the British who opposed them; that the Irish Cessation was lawful and commendable . That the Marquess of Ormond for piety and prudence has not his match upon earth . That for military virtue he is equal to Scipio, Hannibal, and Caesar. That the Legislative power is in the King alone: That his Monarchy makes him above all Laws, and lets him be tied to none, but gives him power to alter and abolish them at his pleasure . To diminish anything of this Pretogative is to destroy Monarchy, to dethrone the King and to take his Crown from him. For Parliam • n • s to meddle with any part of this power is a sacrilege which God will revenge . When through weakness or imprudence, a Prince is cheated or enforced to give away to his Parliament any part of his power, himself or any of his posterity, when ever occasion offereth, may lawfully take it back, notwithstanding of any promise, oath or law made to the contrary .

You see with what a Statesman we have to do, for his Religion hear a part of it, Episcopacy is a necessary and fundamental truth, of Divine. Institution and Commandment . All Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction belongs to the Bishops alone by Divine Right, no Presbyter ought to be a member so much as of a Provincial Assembly . That the Kings consent to the abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland, is the true and great cause of all the troubles which since that time hath befallen him and his subjects . That Abots, Priors and their Religious Houses of Monks and Friars are lawful in the Church . That Patriarchs and Cardina's are Church Dignities highly to be reverenced . That the Pope by Divine Right is as true a Bishop as any other Bishop in the world, but by human Ecclesiastic Right he is greater then any other . That Presbytery is worie then Popery and Iesuitisme, that it were much better for any King to put his Dominions under the yoke of the Pope and Jesuits, then of Presbyteries and Synods . That the first Reformation in Scotland, France, Holland, Germany, and where ever the supreme Magistrate was not the Author and Actor of the work, was unorderly and sin ull, an action seditious and treasonable, a great cause of all the mischiefs that from that time to this have come upon the Churches, All controversies of Religion, ought to be decided by the writs of the fathers, It is but precise Puritanism to refuse the Apocrypha books, It is presumption for any man upon earth to meddle with the questions of Election and Predestination. All necessity takes away Freedom from the Will. the Schoolmen do rightly teach that the Sacraments confer grace by some extrinsical supervenient power, men's sins are washed away by doing of Penance, Ministers are Priests, all who have adhered to the Parliament are Sectaries and mad ones, .

By this little taste of the man's Spirit, we may see their wisdom who bring in such a witness to testify against the Reformed Churches; and how good friends they are either to the Parliament or to the true Religion, who recommend this writer with so loud praises to the diligent perusal of simple people.

The 2d circumstance I offered was, the object of this calumnious writ, whom does it undertake to defame? the Church of Scotland; It is possible for any gracious Englishman to applaud this injury.

Who did so heartily concur and so much assist the first planting of the Church of Scotland as that renounced Queen Elizabeth and the state of England? our History tells us that in all the assaults of that Church from the Popish and Prelatical party, we were not only comforted by the encouragements of the English Anti-episcopal Divines, Cartwright, Hildersham and all the rest of the old Non-conformists cordially sympathizing with us, but also the Queen and State by continual Letters, and many gracious Embassages, did ever support our cause, and assist us when we needed both with Armies and Monies: knowing that notwithstanding of all our differences with the Prelates, yet we were most firm for the Protestant cause and welfare of England, against all Enemies both at home and abroad.

When lately the Canterburian designs were on foot to change the Religion, and enslave the state of all the three Kingdoms to an absolute and Turkish Monarchy, or at least such a tyranny as this day is exercised by the French and Spanish Kings, did not Scotland at that time (when no party at all in England, nor Ireland would or durst appear) take their lives in their hands, and with courage for the liberty of the whole Isle set their f • ces against these Popish Tyrants? did they not with such piety, prudence, moderation and valor manage that common cause, that the blessings of all England and of all Protestants, yea of all in Europe of what ever profession, who loved the just liberty of the subject, did rest upon their heads?

Thereafter when that wicked faction glad to be rid of them, and to give them all their desires according as they were pleased to d • mand them, did turn their Arms from them upon the good subjects of England and Ireland, and in both, had well near accomplished their design: Ireland having no considerable Army to oppose the barbarous murderers, and the Army that was after some faint opposition, joining with the Rebells against the Parliament. In England the North and West being totally lost, the Kings great and victorious Armies ready to swallow up the remnant, no friend upon earth appearing for the gracious party, their lamentable and desperate condition was by their Commissioners with sighs and tears represented to Scotland. Where their Brethren were so touched with compassion, that laying aside all thoughts of hazard which was extremely great, they resolved to engage all they had, life, wealth peace, and what else is dear, for to rescue the English out of the pit of their visible, imminent and otherwise unavoidable ruin. They sent to Ireland an Army of ten thousand well appointed men, who banished the Barbars out of Ulster, where they were strongest, and out of the most of Conaught, keeping so much of that Isle in possession of the English, as made it easy for them when ever they thought fit to regain the rest.

They sent into England a gallant well-armed & governed company of twenty thousand effective, who by God's blessing, themselves alone, did ruin the Kings main & greatest Army under New-castle, and joining with others of the Parliaments forces at Long-Marston, did so break and defeat the prime of all the rest of the Kings forces met together, that they were never afterable to bring to the fields any Army very considerable, either for number or courage. Much occasion of action was not thereafter afforded, yet the keeping quiet of all the new conquests by North Trent, and the holding the neighbouring Associations in awe til the Parliaments forces at their leisure did take up the rest of the country, was no small service.

In these actions the Scots did spend very much precious blood, many of them did endure much hardship both in England and Ireland, and at home by the Pestilence; by a prevailing Enemy, by intestine discouragements and divisions, all flowing from their friendship with England, they were overwhelmed with greater miseries then their fathers had seen for many hundred years, and which grieved them more then all things else, they were entertained by too many of them for whom they suffered all these evils with so great unkindness, they were loadned with so many calumnious and contumelious aspersions, the Reformation of Religion their greatest aim went so far back before their eyes, that their provocations were great, to provide at last for themselves while something yet at home did remain to them to be preserved. But beholding visibly in their retreat and provision for themselves, the certain ruin of their unadvised friends, they chose rather to put up with patience all their sufferings and quietly to wait on till the ruin of the Enemy, and settling of their brethren's estate by their help, might open the eyes of all, and bring the most perverse to Repentance for their misbehaviour towards the instruments of their welfare; especially when they did see the invincible fidelity of the Scots unbrangled with the greatest temptations.

Though in all their late inexpressible extremities they had received no assistance at all from England, nor much importuned them for it, though to their greatest grief they did see the Gangrene of Heresy and Schism without the application of any true remedy, overspreading all England so fast, that the infection of Scotland with this Pestilence seemed unavoidable, though the current of affairs did seem to run in that channel, that the person and family of the King, the authority of the Parliament, the Liberties of the City and Kingdom might be cast ere long into no mall hazard; our Army also and Nation for no other cause but their constant resolutions to keep to their first principles, did seem to stand in a very near possibility to be to ally destroyed; yet for all this they were far from any rash or unjust conclusion, their eyes were towards the Lord, they did wait for his deliverance, and when by him an opportunity was put in their hands to right themselves with the disadvantage of others, yet they did manage that occasion with so much justice, wisdom, dexterity and success, that all the world they hope is satisfied with their honesty, as of men who minded nothing more then the saving of the whole Isle from these calamities that visibly were imminent; the re-establishing of the King in his throne, the confirming of the Parliament, City, and Country in all their rights, the settling of Religion and peace according to the word of God, and the Laws of the Land, and their own quick return to their homes in very easy and equitable terms, enriched with nothing so much a with a conscience of well deserving, with the blessings of all England, with the commendation of Neighbor nations, and with the hopes of the Posterities favorable construction of their whole deportment in this great action. That such a people as this should be traduced and defamed by contumelious Libels in England, and that at London with the contentment or patience of any, it would seem a matter very strange, if the most absurd and strange things were not here long ago become common.

The third circumstance considerable, is the instruments and present publishers of this writ • . That a Bishop at Oxford should have been countenanced in writing a Satire against the Scots, whom all the Malignants did hare as the chief and first Authors of the miscarriage of their great design, we do not marvel: but that at London our sworn and covenanted Brethren should be avowed proclaimers of Scotland's disgrace, it is a piece of singular and unexpected unkindness: Our Brethren whether Independents, or Erastians or both who have procured this Edition, and with so much sedulity make it pass from hand to hand, though they had been pleased to cast behind their backs all the good offices which this last century of years have past betwixt the Kingdoms, though they had banished all gratitude towards the Scots for their late actions and sufferings: though their conscience had permitted them to have trod underfoot all the Oaths and Covenants whereby they stand expressly tied to defend the Reformation of the Church of Scotland against the common Enemy: Yet I would know of them how they are become thus unadvised to let their indignation against the Scottish Presbytery swell up so high, as for their hatred thereunto, to venture the destruction of the Parliament of England, to declare all the Members of both Houses at Westminster damnable Traitors, because dying in the act of Rebellion without Repentance; but all who have perished on the Malignant side to be a kind of Martyrs as being unjustly killed for their duty to God and the King; to bring back Bishops to the house of Lord's, to put into their hands alone, and that by Divine Right all the Ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the whole Church of England. And if they were resolute in their hatred of Presbytery, thus far to miscarry, I would further know if either the Erastians or Independents have any principles for the reduction of Poperty, for the re-erection in England of Abbots Cardinals and Popes: And if men against their own principles must needs run thus mad, yet that they should be permitted to act according to their madness in the day-light, under the eye and nose of so wise, just and prudent a Parliament, it is and will be long hereafter a matter of very great admiration, especially to them who at the same time did behold some other writs for much smaller reflections, purged with the hand of the Hangman by fire in many public places, and their publishers how well deserving soever otherwise both of Church and State, stigmatized with notes of high infamy.

These three considerations are but proemicall, the fourth concerning the particular matter of the Treatise is the principal: If I should examine everything it would be tedious, yet shall I touch upon every passage that I conceive to be material.

This second Edition has a new Title Page, and some additions in the Preface: In the very inscription Issachar’s burden, there is a salt Gybe at the present Government; that which the Proverb wont to appropriate to the Peasants of France, that they were strong Asses willing to bear all Burthens so they might live in peace in that fat soil, by this good Patriot is contumeliously applied to England; it now is the Ass, crouching under two burdens, if Presbyterie be the one, the Parliament must be the other; these be the two unsupportable burdens pointed at along all the Authors Writs: the two light burdens which he everywhere cries up are Monarchy screwed up to the highest pin of Tyrannicall Prerogative and Episcopacy in all its Papal Privileges, both well fastened upon the Asses back by the cords of a Divine Right: whoever for the love of peace in a plentiful Land will set their shoulders under this double burden, are Issachar’s Asses indeed; but truly the Scots have not merited this commendation, for their Land is not among the most plentiful, nor have their backs been very patient of such burdens, but rather then to crouch under them, they have kicked at their drivers, and have taught their riders to be more wary then they were wont in overloading their poor Asses.

What is added in the Title, that the Presbyterial Government of Scotland is Tyrannicall, and inconsistant with Monarchy, that it is so much worse then Episcopacy, as the bite of a Scorpion is worse then a Rod, we shall believe it when the subsequent Treatise makes it good, which doubtless shall be done when the Author has demonstrate his assertion, that Popery and Jesuitisme are burdens much more easy and rather to be chosen then the Scottish Presbytery, in the mean while till the proofs come, just men will allow us to take all this, but for the bellows of a stomach overcharged with firy and enraged humors.

In the Preface, to show his skill in the Politicks, he first sets down as two most friendly Companions, the Royal Prerogative and the Liberty of the People: but behold wherein here he insinuats, and elsewhere at length proclaims the knot and bond of their concord to consist: The King by his Prerogative is the only Law-giver both for Church and State, The people for all their Liberty, by Divine Institution, are appointed to obey and do their services, though both Church and State were never so injuriously oppressed by the cruellest Tyrants. So our Parliaments, our Church Assemblies, our defensive Arms must all be buried together in one Pit. This is the first ease that Issachar’s Ass gets of its burden, by the hand of this merciful driver.

In the next two Paragraphs he advances the Royal Prerogative to an external Episcopacy, no man I know, in this is his opposite; but while he makes this external Episcopacy no less then a true headship over the Church, and the denial of it in this sense to be a dethroning, an uncrowning, a stabbing, a trampling underfoot of Kings, I know no living man agreeing with him herein. It is certain, Queen Elizabeth and King James and their Bishops did reject this odious and Papal Prerogative of headship over the Church; also how far either your Erastian or Independent friends will go along with you in the present discourse, you will reckon at your leisure among yourselves. You tell the Erastians that Kings for all their Prerogative, yet have no more power of Excommunication and Ecclesiastic censures, then of preaching the Word and Administring the Sacraments; you tell them also that the Royal Prerogative reaches not to the making of a Church Canon, nor to the degrading or silencing of a Preacher, but only to the calling of an Assembly of Divines for these works which are part of their proper and spiritual charge. You tell your Independent friends that the Magistrate has power assigned to him by God, to imprison and punish all, who either by their Heretical or Schismaticall Tenants trouble the peace of the Church: It is like these morsels will not be a food of very easy digestion to their tender stomachs.

The next three Paragraphs are but mere invectives (as justly you style your own language,) against the Parliaments of both Kingdoms, for abolishing Episcopacy, for defending their own lives and liberties against your Malignant Faction; you make them all to be men without any conscience, without all faith, all Religion, all honesty, wicked and Rebellious Hypocrites, shedders of innocent blood, destroyers of many brave spirits and Ancient Families, Authors of Massacres, murders, rapines; Villaines more cru • ll and bloody then Turks or Infidels, whom God will destroy as he did Core and his Complices for their insurrection against Moses and Aaron.

May we not here marvel at your partiality, who having seen with your eyes, the practices of the Rebels in Ireland, and of the Malignants at Oxford, you should yet have the conscience to bestow all this good language upon us and no word of it in all your Writs upon them; or shall we marvel at the Independents and Erastians wisdom, who think it fit upon some mal contentment with their friends to make themselves blazers of such railing and cursed calumnies against themselves and their whole party: or shall we marvel at the Parliament partence, who permits the Rabshakehs of Oxford to walk peaceably upon the Streets of London, and to be welcomed within every door though openly they cast upon all our faces the excrements of the worst of their passions.

In the last two Sections of the Preface, there is a Prayer and a Prophesy, we are prayed to believe and that without probations, that all the following Histories are mere Gospel, all most true and certain: of this so modest a desire, we have a good reason given us fides non extorquetur vi, sed ration & exemplis suadetur, Ergo we must give up our belief, and source our faith to assent to all that hereafter shall be said, though neither Scripture, Reason, nor Authority be so much as alleged for it; I take this Logic to be none of the best.

What is spoken of the Authors Gravity and Learning, we shall take it as we find it, he is as others of the faction for learning, neither with the first nor with the last, but for effronted boldness he is second I dare say to none of them all; as for piety none that ever knew him young or old, will swear him guilty of any such imputation. That he was an eye witness of the Stories he relates is evidently false, for all except a very few of his Relations, are of things past before his birth, at least before the years of his discretion, and what he reports of our late troubles he did not see, for then was he busy executing Canterburies commands in his Diocese of Ross, an out corner of our Kingdom, and so soon as that storm began to blow a little loud, he quickly fled out of the Land, whither he never yet returned, being conscious of his deservings, for of all the Scots Clergy, he alone was declared Incendiary, and him only did the justice of the Parliament of Scotland appoint to tread in the last footsteps of William Laud, as he had done in the former with great joy.

The Prophesy is a Prediction of England's total destruction, if Episcopacy be not restored the warrant of this Prophesy is as good as the former prayer a Bishops jest in the Counsel of Trent, and one of Aesop’s Fables, upon such grounds alone, does this severe Prophet pronounce from the heaven, England's destruction, were not a Scottish bit, as he calls it very fit for the mouth, and an English rod or spurr for the sides of such a presumptuous Prophet? we shall say no more to the Preface.

In the Treatise it self you draw your discourse to four heads, the Church Session or Congregational Eldership, the Classical Presbytery, Provincial Synod, and general Assembly, upon some of these four you draw in what ever disgraceful Story you have either heard or read of any Churchmen of Scotland opposite to your way. The great fountain of all your bitter waters, is that cistern which Spotswood of St Andrew's did endeavor all his life time to gather together; in that Collection the Authors great intention was to heap up all things he conceived might make the Presbyterial Government hateful, and the Episcopal lovely; but being certain of great contradiction from many who knew as much in affairs as himself, and were much more willing to speak truth without disguise, he kept in this book while he lived, that it might not see the light till after his death, when he was not to be argued with for any of his lying and malicious Narrations. This Manuscript falling in your hands, you draw out of it what is most venomous, and or that stuff make up this present book. There are long ago in Scotland prepared, sufficient Antidotes against the poison of the whole story, whereby any man may be furnished without difficulty towards the full confutation of your extracts; but the grossness of your Lyes did cry so loud at this time for an answer, that the patience of many good people admitted not of so long a delay as that I could be furnished from a far with any materials; yet out of the small store of my knowledge and memory of the affairs you speak of, and by some few helps which my present accommodations do furnish, I will venture to give you a sudden answer, which I hope shall prove satisfactory enough to all ingenuous Readers, who will not affect to cavil, if there shall be found any material defect, reply when you will, you shall have a rejoinder.

Upon your first head of Church Sessions you spend your first three pages, wherein you make us ascribe to our Congregational Elderships much undue and tyrannick power.

To this I answer in general; First, That we give no more power to congregational Elderships then the Churches of France, or Holland, of New-England ascribe to them, both in their doctrine and daily practice. Secondly, the power we ascribe to them cannot be challenged either by Independents or Erastians for the Independents great plea with us, is about the defect, that we give not power enough to that Court, with our excess herein they were never offended; as for the Erastians they will not question with us about any power which the Parliament will be pleased to allow unto that Eldership; now yourself doth know that our Church Sessions practice not any power, but that which the Acts of our Parliament do warrant, our liberty there is not astricted to any certain enumerate cases, but I dare say that in many years we will not have occasion in our Congregational Elderships to meddle in any case; which even this Parliament hath not already allowed, or will not (as I conceive) be willing upon the first Emergency to allow.

I grant you Prelates are here our opposites, but how justly, let equitable men judge; you tell us that congregational Elderships ought to have no power at all, because forsooth, the whole power of all spiritual jurisdiction, must reside in the Bishop alone: It is your principle that in all the Preachers and in all the Congregations of the whole Diocese yea of the whole Kingdom, there is not so much power as to give to any man for what ever crime, a public admonition; yet any Lay man in the Kingdom or out of the Kingdom, whom the Bishop is pleased to make his Officiall or Chancellor, may keep a Court in any part of the Diocese, and therein pass a sentence of Excommunication against the best Pastors and chief Members of any Congregation; because the Scots since their first Reformation could never by any Art, nor by any Force, be gotten enslaved to such a Tiranny; therefore it is, that you, your Colleagues, and your Fathers, have been offended with them, and in your anger have invented these calumnies which here you are pleased to object.

The first particular crime which ye lay to our charge is, That we do give some power of spiritual jurisdiction to ruling Elders and that by a Divine Right; We grant the charge, and think it easy to demonstrate the warrant of our Tenet both from Scripture, and the practice of all the ancient, and all the reformed Churches; but it is needless here to digress into that debate, for this is not your main quarrel with us that we give some power or jurisdiction to those you call Lay-Elders, but that we ascribe any part of jurisdiction to any at all beside the Bishop, for you know it is an Article of the Prelatical Creed, That a preaching Elder hath no more interest in jurisdiction then a lay Elder, that for this kind of power, Priest and people are all alike; That neither of them of themselves by virtue of their office have any dram thereof, yet by virtue of a Commission from the Bishop either of them is capable of a pleni-potency, and are able to do the acts of the highest spiritual jurisdiction; what the Jesuits were wont to ascribe unto the Pope in the Church universal, That the Bishop takes to himself in his own Diocese: he, and he alone, by Divine right, is the head, the sun, the fountain, the only receptacle of all spiritual jurisdiction which he keeps to himself, or communicates to be execute by others; for the time, the measure, the persons, according to his own good pleasure. The Erastian principle is only different in this, that they pull the Pope and the Bishop out of the chair, that there may be room to set down the Magistrate in their place.

What you speak of the Deacons, it is a mistake; for albeit they be present in the Eldership to receive their directions for the poor, yet they do not voice in any well governed Eldership, nor do they claim any power in jurisdiction: Concerning Doctors, that populous Congregations wants them, it comes not from any design, but for want either of means or of Idoneous and willing persons.

What you speak of the yearly election of Elders, the matter is this; There is not in any Congregation of Scotland which I do know, a yearly election of Elders, but in populous Cities, where the Elders are many and diverse of them unable to attend that charge, without the hurt of their estate, the most of them being Merchants and Tradesmen, who must travel for their livelihood; they have a liberty to be free from that service every two year, if so they be content to attend upon a call every third year, the Levites attended the service of the Temple but a few months in the year: What is right or wrong in this custom of some few of our Congregations, we are willing to debate it, and as it shall be found just or unjust, to keep or change that practice, for in such things we love not to be contentious.

In your three last Sections ye do cast upon the Eldership in hand, a rabble of incongruous practices; what you bring of pecuniary mulcts, imprisonments, banishments, jogges, cutting of hair, and such like, it becomes neither you to charge, nor us to be charged with any such matters: No Church-assembly in Scotland assumes the least degree of power, to inflict the smallest civil punishment upon any person; the General Assembly it self bath no power to fine any creature so much as in one groat: It is true, the Laws of the Land, appoint • ecuniary mulcts, imprisonment, joggs, pillories, and banishment for some odious crimes, and the power of putting these Laws in execution is placed by the Parliament in the hands of the in • eriour Magistrates in Burroughs or Shires, or of others to whom the Counsel Table gives a special Commission for that end; ordinarily some of these civil persons are ruling Elders, and sit with the Eldership: So when the Eldership have cognosced upon the scandal alone of criminal persons, and have used their spiritual censures only to bring the party to Repentance, some of the Ruling Elders, by virtue of their civil office or commission will impose a Mulct, or send to Prison or stocks or banish out of the bounds of some little circuit, according as the Acts of Parliament or counsel do appoint it. But that the Eldership should employ its Eccclesiastick and Spiritual power for any such end, none of us do defend. That either in Scotland or anywhere else in the world, the hair of any person is commanded to be cut by any Church judicatory for disgrace and punishment, is (as I take it) but a foolish fable. That any person truly penitent is threatened in Scotland, with Church censures for non-payment of Monies, is in the former Category of calumnies.

But suppose that all your alleagations were true, yet how congruously does a challenge of this kind come from your mouth? do you think that all civil employments are incompatible with spiritual offices? How many Ministers did you get to be Justices of Peace? you yourself were a judge of Common-pleas; your colleague S. Andrew's, was Chancellor of the Kingdom; you know the Treasurers white staff was very near to your hands, and for the missing of it what stir you made: Many of you were Lord's of Council, and all of you Lord's both of Parliament, and temporal Lordships and Regalities, where your Baylies kept Court in your names, diverse of your Coat with your good liking, have been Secretaries of State, Keepers of the Privy Seal, Leger Ambassadors with foreign Princes: your brethren over Sea in France, and Spain, Germany and Italy, are Admirals of Royal Navies, are Generals of Land forces, are Princes of Temporal Estates, according to these principles that I think you do approve, according to your Cannons in Scotland, and your ordinary practice in England. Great sums of money were exacted in your spiritual Courts, and pocketed up for private uses; how many have been excommunicate there, for non-payment of a shilling, and refused absolution, till their fine was paid with increase? what do you speak to us of a pecuniary mulct, of a very small and unconsiderable value taken up by the Magistrate, and employed only in pious uses? Why do you speak to us of cutting of Beards, when your Prelates do burn the cheeks; how many gracious souls have been starved to death in your Episcopal dungeous? how many thousands have you banished out of Bricaine, out of Europe, for no fault at all but their zeal to the truth of God? how many hundred thousand hath your pride and obstinacy in error, caused to be slain within these seven years; in the next age ignorant men may be pardoned to deny these things, but it were great impudence this day to deny them, when yet we do stick in the Pit of these troubles, wherein the madness of you Prelates hath cast us.

Your objection about the Baptism of Bastards is vain; for we refuse not that Sacrament to any of them, if either of the Parents profesie Repentance, and undertake for the Christian education of their child, but the ground of your quarrelling in this Point is, that we cannot follow your Popish Doctrine, that we refute to profess the actual regeneration of all baptized Infants, and that we dare not put all unbaptized persons in the state of unregeneration and damnation.

Your next head concerns the Classical Presbytery; your first Objection against it, which a little thereafter, and oft elsewhere you do ingeminate, is, That the King and his family are subject to its Jurisdiction: I would gladly know if among the rest of the Prelatical absurd ties this were one: That Christian Princes and Magistrates are fully exempted from all Ecclesiastic jurisdiction; sometimes your party would seem to speak so, as if every Magistrate, at least every Prince were such a God upon earth that none might say to any of them, Sir, what are you doing, though they were running to hell themselves, and drawing at their heels, all they were able: This is so gross a flattery, that all advised Princes abhor it, and confess themselves to be subject to Ecclesiastical Discipline as well as others; for they know if they should exempt themselves from this part of Christian religion, they should presently be in hazard or loosing the benefit of all the rest; for Christianity is a body of Articles so straitly joined, that either all must be received or none.

You yourself (though among the absurdest of all your faction) do confess so much as any Presbyterian in the world did ever think of: you say that the Crown and Scepter is subject, not only to the directive power of the Church (expound the Church as you will, for a Congregational Classical or National Eldership, it is alike for the present Question) but also to the authoritative power of the same whereby the Church does proceed not only in foro interiori conscientsae but also exteriori • ccl • siae to censure as it finds cause.

Thus far you and the most Monarchik of the Prelates go; that in doctrine any Presbyterian Divine went ever further, I do not know, but in practice never one of them went so far: Some Bishops have actually excommunicate the best of the Emperors upon their enormous Scandalls; but that any Presbyterian did ever so much as begin a process with any Prince, when they had the greatest provocations thereto, it cannot be shown to this day. The Church of Scotland notwithstanding all the cross actions of King James or King Charles against them, in overturning not only the accidentals, but many of the substantials of their Religion, and in persecuting them without all cause, with fire and sword, and all the calamities of a bloody war, yet did they never so much as bethink themselves of drawing against any of them, or any of their kindred or special servants, the sword of Church censures. The Church of France always wholly Presbyterian, when Henry the fourth one of their Members apostatised from them to the Pope, did never so much as enter into a consultation of delivering him into the hands of Satan. Without all peradventure, Presbyterians are much more tender then any other Christians of what ever name, to meddle with Magistrates by the censures of the Church.

In the next Paragraph you flee out again upon the ruling Elders, as if it were absurd for any of their coat to sit in Ecclesiastical Judicatories; all the ground of your quarrel is, their want of an Episcopal Commission; with this qualification you can admit any Lay-man not only to sit in Ecclesiastical Iudicatories, but to sit there as sole and only judge; you can make them your Vicar generals before whom all the Clergy of your Diocese must stand to be examined and judged, for the discharge of their duty in all Ecclesiastic administrations. The Prelates have no question with the Presbyterians about the persons of Laymen as they call them, whether they may be Members of Spiritual Courts, but about their calling, both grant the lawfulness of the thing, but the Prelates do found it upon a Commission from themselves, The Presbyterians press their calling from God and the Church according to Scripture.

What you object of Lay men moderating our Presbyteries and Assemblies, is no more then the ordinary practice of our Prelates; how often has Sir Nathaniel Brent and other Gentlemen merely Civilians, sitting not only as Prolocutors, but a • Vicar generals, and so only Judges, before whom the whole Clergy of the Diocese of London or of Canterbury, have appeared as my Lord Bishops subjects for their trial and censure: albeit in Scotland we never had any such custom as you object; for the Moderators of our Church meetings do begin and end with solemn prayers, now ruling Elders have not a calling to pray publicly in the Church; also they are but assistants in Discipline, the principal charge lies upon the laborers in the Word and Doctrine; we do not allow to an Assistant the place of the Principal.

As for the men whom you name, we grant none of them was in the Orders you speak of, neither of Deacon, Priest, nor Bishop, you mean preaching Deacons; Orthodox men in Scotland, as now in England, do reject all these Orders as Popish; further I did never hear that any of the three persons you name, did ever moderate any of our Assemblies; their is no reason that for this or anything else, we should take your bare assertion or the word of any of your Coleagues for a sufficient proof: but giving all you allege to be true, the first man you name, you confess was a Reader, now ye know at the beginning of our Reformation, our Readers were Ordained to be truly Ministers, to be Priests in your dialect; for they did exhort and preach as they were able and celebrate the Sacraments. The second man you name Mr Melvil, was a Doctor of Divinity and so long as Episcopal persecution permitted, did sit with great renoune in the prime chair we had of that faculty: George Buchanan had sometimes as I have heard, been a Preacher at St Andrew's, after his long travels, he was employed by our Church and State to be a Teacher to King James and his Family: of his saithfu nesse in this charge, he lest I believe to the world good andisati factory tokens: the eminency of this person was so great, that no society of men need be ashamed to have been moderated by his wised me.

Your next exception against the Presbytery is for their Expectants, these be the Sons of the Prophers who in their preparations for the Ministry, at their first exercises for assay and trial are heard in the Presbytery; with this practice no reasonable man can find fault; it is naturally impossible for any without a miracle, to attain the habit of preaching but by divers Initiall and preparatory actions; where can these be so fitly performed as in the Classes? The Expectants are present in the Classes for their training not as Members, for they do not voice in any matters of Discipline. The true mystery of this controversy is that the Expectants are permitted to preach before the holy hands of a Bishop have conferred upon them the Order of a Deacon, and so power to preach and baptize: The Church of Scotland did always reject this corruption as clearly contrary to Scripture.

Your gird at the Presbytery of Edinburgh is weak and unconsiderable; for that meeting has no power at all above the meanest Presbytery in the Kingdom, notwithstanding of all the service which the gifts of the Members thereof may perform to any who are pleased to crave their advice. Its not to be supposed but men of eminent gifts where ever they live must have an influence upon many others; we do remember it to our grief, that you and your Companions while you lived in that Presbytery which you mock, did send forth your Episcopal, Arminian and Popish poison to all the corners of the Land, East, West, South and North.

That King James at Hampton Court, and elsewhere did speak his pleasure of the Presbytery, makes it nothing the worse: his resolution to keep up Eiscopacy in England for his own ends, moved him to discountenance what ever opposed it; yet so, that in his Basilicon doron & at divers other occasions he gave luculent Testimonies to many Presbyterian Divines of his own acquaintance, preferring them for grace and honesty before all those whom he could make willing to accept of Bishoprics.

The best Princes are not void of Errors, the greatest mistake of this wise Prince was in his too great affection towards Episcopacy, the Presbyterian Nobles and Divines in Scotland set him in his Infancy upon his Throne, when his life and Crown without their cordial assistance was given by all men for gone; in all his great fears from Spain, or anywhere else at home or abroad, so long as he remained in Scotland, his recourse was only to them, and notwithstanding of the very hard measure which oft they had received and still feared from him, yet did they never fail to support him in his need, neither ever had they any difference with him but that which flowed from the unhappy fountain in hand. Had it been the will of God, that this, otherwise very wise Prince, at his first coming into England had cast over the hedge of that Church, the evil weed of Bishops and their Ceremonies, he had certainly procured much greater peace to his own mind, and in all probability prevented the huge mischiefs which from this neglect above all other causes do this day overwhelm his house and all his Kingdoms.

What here you subjoin to prove the pride of the Presbytery and the state it kept with King James, is an ill conceived bob; when the Prince was pleased to honor them with a Message, was it not better manners and greater civility for them to return an answer by some of their own number, then by his Majesty's own Messengers; had they sent their minds otherwise, how much more would the Prelatic Courtiers have cried out upon their saucinesse and pedantic Rusticity.

The next Tale you tell us is, of the Presbyteries severity and unjustice in bringing shame upon many young women on groundless suspicions, of putting them in prison till they confess their secret sins, in forcing them to clear themselves by oaths in the Congregation, of needless jealousies: This tale is delated with many odious circumstances; but consider first that you shoot your Arrows at the wrong Butt: You may remember the Classical Presbytery uses not to meddle with any such matters; its true, the Congregational Eldership by clear Divine Right, and consent of all differing parties, take notice of the manners of the whole flock, if pregnant presumptions of fornication be delated to the Eldership by any Officer, they will send to admonish the parties deferred, but first in private with all discretion and tenderness; if secret admonitions be contemned, and persons willfully will continue in a scandalous behavior, then will they call them before the Eldership, and after earnest request, if nothing else can do it, will at last ordain them to eschew conversing together in private and suspect places: but for calling of any before the Eldership upon light presumptions, for prisons, for feeding with bread and water, for troubling of families, its but a Prelatical calumny. This indeed is true, some known whores and strumpets when they have brought forth children in fornication, and refuse absolutely to name the Father, or when they give up such men as all know to be innocent; the Magistrate will put them in prison for some time: and if a flagrant scandal of fornication arise upon persons who desire themselves to be cleared, they will be admitted to purge themselves by their oath in the Eldership or in the Congregation as the flagrancy of the Scandal, or the parties themselves do require, but what is all this to these odious fables here related? it seems you were angry at another matter, which I will here speak out for you.

Scotland however subject to many sins, yet I dare say is much more free of fornications and adulteries among people of any fashion, then any Nation I know or have heard of, this makes the conversation of persons there to be free and without all su • picion except on very good ground; but if such crimes be clear, there is no sparing of any person of what ever quality, all are called to an account; that is the matter which seems to burn you: Your bosom companion Mr. Menteth having deboshed a prime Lady in his flock, when no secret advertisement could break off that wickedness, though a child or two were brought forth, the honorable friends of the Knight who was wronged, could keep no longer patience, but did openly crave justice, whereby Menteth was cast out of the Church and Kingdom, and the Adulteress di ••• ced from her Husband; at this and the like procedure you are grieved, your meekness would have all such abominations covered, and remedied only by Auricular confession. That this Epi • copa l indulgence flows from no merciful disposition, it app ars well by their ordinary rigor, pressing the most gracious Minister and others, for the small • est opposition to any of their Traditions, with their Oaths ex Officio, and casting them upon their mere pleasure into the closest prisons and greatest afflictions; well may the malevolence of Enemies declaim against the severity of Presbyteries and paint them out as most cruel and intolerable inquisitions; but believe it they that know and have seen them either in France, Holland, or Scotland, can assure that the fault if any be, falls upon the other hand of too great indulgence; no man is called before them but for a notorious fault, persons of any tolerable civility or circumspection, use not to be called all their life time to any account of their behavior; if the Presbytery were able to give so satisfactory an answer for its to great meekness unto the Sectaries challenge, as it can to the Prelates for its too great strictness, I should be very glad.

What is subjoynd of the Presbyteries meddling with Trade and commerce, of dischargeing men to persue for their debts, and Landlords to sue for their Rents, are stories so true, as the father of lies is wont to dite to his obedient children: Possibly in the eighty eight year of God when the Spaniards were coming to destroy the Land, some godly persons had dissuaded their Neighbors, to carry victuals to Spain at that time; and some men may have had scruple of conscience for sending of wax, and furnishing of immediate materials for Idolatry; I believe also that gracious Ministers have given private counsel to rigorous exacters of their Rents, and unmerciful persuers of their debts; But that ever any Presbytery in Scotland did take cognizance of any such matters to the uttermost of my best knowledge, is an Episcopal, that is a manifest and malicious untruth.

The same I say of your next story; the Monday markets in some chief Towns were an evident occasion of profaning the Lord's holy Sabbath; this to all the godly was a matter of grief; both particular persons, and whole Presbyteries have oft regrated it, and offered their Petitions to the Council and Parliament for the remedying thereof; but that they ever of themselves did attempt to make any change of Market days, it is so false as anything can be; you our Prelates as you were taught by your Fathers in England were always passionately desirous to have Sunday counted no Sabbath, both by your doctrine and example, you labored to seduce the people to profane that day with all kind of public pastimes, all strictness about the Sabbath you cried down, as Puritanick Judaism, so long as your Kingdom stood, this evil was remediless; but so soon as we got your chairs and thrones as you call them overturned, the first General Assembly thereafter made it one of their chief cares to cause draw a humble petition to the next ensuing Parliament for translating of the Markets of the chief Burroughs from Monday to Wednesday: The Parliament being purged of Episcopal, Popish and Malignant Members, who oft before had obstructed this gracious work, unanimously did agree to the Petition; so that now, blessed be God, with the good liking of all, and to the prejudice of none, these market days are changed.

What follows of the Presbyteries violent transporting of Ministers from better places to worse at the pleasure of Noblemen, I have known this done by Bishops and their High Commission, (for no men ever in Scotland did so much flatter the Nobles and assist them, if they were resolved to oppress a Minister, as the Prelates) but while the Presbyterial government had any vigor, that every man was in this fashion transported, I take it to be exceeding false; for by the Laws and practice of the Presbyrery, disgraceful Transportations are of so great difficulty, that since the Bishops were cast out from among us, I did never hear of any; for no man with us can be put from a better place to a worse but for a fault, which as it puts him from one place, so readily it will keep him from all others.

The knavish example he brings of this practice in the Presbytery of Couper, I take it to be a mere Episcopal invention, no man with whom I have conferred ever heard of any such matter; Spotswood the fountain of his fables is here mute, I am confirmed in this opinion by that which he makes the main scope of the tale, the Presbyteries consent to the dilapidation of a Personage; such an action is so far contrary to the rules of all our Presbyteries, and to any practice that ever I heard, that it makes me take all the rest but for a tale of Robin Hood. The Bishops indeed when they professed their greatest zeal to recover all the Church rents out of the hand of the Laity, were found to be but too ready to dilapidate unto Noblemen and others too much of the remnant of the Churches patrimony; yourself may remember what bargain you made as I think with the Earl of Seaforth, which you know was the first occasion of diminishing your reputation with your great Patron Land of Canterbury: I am sure your Colleague Spotswood did sell the whole Abacy of Killwinning to the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Cuningham, to the great prejudice and grief of the University of Glasgow, and the Ministers of the bounds who had great interest therein.

At the Parliament of Lithgow 1606. our good Bishops for their own base ends did consent in the name of the Church, though they had never so much as consulted here in that business, to the greatest dilapidation that ever was heard of in Scotland, the impropriation to Noblemen and Gentlemen at one time, of no fewer then sixteen Abbacies, everyone whereof had incorporate the rents of a number of Parish Churches. Too many pranks of this kind have been plaid by the Prelates and Clergy men of their way, but that ever any Presbytery was guilty of such sacrilegious tricks, it will never as I imagine be proved.

What you speak of a Gentleman's confession in Testament of his grief, for deceiving good Ministers, is to no purpose; did not Hypocrites deceive the Apostles? but that Ministers did keep him from Church censures for his known uncleanness, you know there is no reason to believe you upon your bare word; the Gentleman's hypocrisy was but small, if his villainies were so open that justly he could be challenged for them.

For your last imputation I know that feuds in Scotland were frequent and lamentable; also that King James labors in suppressing them were happy and successful; but that any Presbytery did ever entertain them, its a lie so gross that for all your Cretian Art, you are not able to bring so much as the color of on instance to prove it. I find in Spotswood, Letters of King James to Presbyteries and Synods for their assistance in that gracious work; and it is certain that all the Kings in Christendom had never been able to have abolished these feuds without the help of the Ministry. Can you tell me of any Bishop that either did endeavor or had such power in the heart of any people, as to promove that work one hairs breadth? I know that the chief Bishops for all their open fawning, were yet ever esteemed so great haters of the Nobility and prime Gentry, that they did little regard how many of them perished; yourself I think knows that in the feud betwixt the Grahams and the Sandilands, none was a better swordman, then your Metropolitan Spotswood.

Your last Paragraph is but a recapitulation of these things which I hope I have demonstrate to be clear untruths.

Your next head is of Provincial Synods; upon these you are brief, and yet might have spared much of that you bring; for the most hath no more relation to Provincial Synods, then to any other Church meeting. In the beginning you make the Provincial Synod to be an apish imitation of an ancient Provincial Council, consisting of the Metropolitan and his suffragane Bishops, intimating hereby what elsewhere you have published, and in your declinator of the Assembly at Glasgow subscribed, That the very constitution of all our Synods is vicious, as consisting of Members whom reason and Antiquity does exclude; all Jurisdiction belongs to Bishops, a preaching Presbyter has no more to do with it then a ruling Presbyter, without an Episcopal commission; by virtue hereof a man of any coat, may sit and voice in a Synod; without this none but Bishops themselves may have place there.

That which you make the politick stratagem of the Gamaliel's as you call them of our Land, is nothing but that which in all societies Ecclesiastic and civil, nature makes necessary: in every multitude some men by their gifts and diligence will fall to be leading; but that the most leading men among us, had ever any authority to command the weakest of their Brethren, you dare not allege it, though every Prelate by virtue of his office pretend to a power of commanding all his Clergy. That the most eminent men among us could ever carry an Assembly after them, farther then their reason did persuade the minds of their Brethren, it is very untrue.

How little able Noblemen have been to sway the Votes of a Synod to their own desires, you and your Brethren know as well as any others: for the difficulty and impossibility of this practice was the main ground whereupon your Antichristian order behooved to be brought back again from Rome to Scotland: When King James by many experiments, had found that neither himself nor all the Noblemen of the Land were able either by Art, or allurements, or terrors to sway the Assemblies of the Church to their own appetites, the resolution was taken to destroy these meetings, to overturn their orders, to spoil them of their power, to put all in the hand of Bishops upon this confidence, wherein they were not deceived, that although they had found it impossible to make the multitude of the Ministers so long as their Assemblies enjoyed their old and just privileges, obsequious to the will of the Court; Yet if once that order of Synods were overturned, and their power settled in the Bishops hands, it would be an easy matter to make the whole Clergy very tractable and obnoxious. What therefore here you object of the Synods serving the lusts of great men, was neither true nor possible, so long as the Presbyterial government stood entire; but so soon as that was overthrown and changed into Episcopacy, that game was gained. We never knew any Bishop oppose himself in anything to the Court, nor to the desires of any Nobleman how unreasonable so ever, if the Court was for him.

What here you subjoin of the great honor deferred to some of the Ministry, however your exaggerations be invidious and Satirical, yet we are not ashamed to profess that nowhere in the World, the Nobility and Gentry carry greater respect to Ministers then in Scotland. The Bishops did much envy this; for how ever the King and Courtiers did countenance them, yet the whole Country where ever they went, did justly despise them: but the Ministers, those especially who with any zeal did oppose their evil courses, were always by the greatest of the Land before their faces highly honored. It is true, Ministers of the Episcopal cut were no more prized then their Masters; but this I may affirm that the poorest and weakest Minister of what ever side, was ever more honored by the Nobility and Gentry of Scotland then by the best of the Bishops, even those who made it their glory to be the Patrons of poor Ministers against the Nobilities oppression. Though our Scottish Bishops were not come to the height of the English Prelates grandeur; and the poorest of the Scots Ministers that ever I knew, were of a much better fashion then many hundreds of the English Curates and Priests; yet I have often seen the meanest of the Scottish preachers get more respect from the prime Earls of that Land, then the chief and best deserving Ministers could have from their ordinary Bishops, either within their private walls or in the face of their Provincial meetings. So what you object of the contempt of the Ministers in Scotland, if it be understood from their Brethren or from the Nobility or Gentry, it is very false; but if from you and your Colleagues it was too too visible.

Your next Story concerns Mr. Robert Bruce Minister of Edinburgh, a gracious and Heroic Divine as Scotland ever bred. Though the quarrel of Episcopacy did at last alter King James countenance towards him, yet all the Bishops of the three Kingdoms had never so much respect from that Prince as this man. What you speak of his great attendance, is either a very ignorant, or a very malicious mistake; neither he nor any Minister of Scotland, though nobly borne and of good Estates, used ever to be attended by anymore servants then one at most, but in their journeying to Presbyteries, Synods or Visitations, the Noblemen and Gentlemen members of these meetings, were always glad of the Ministers company, and when their way fell to be one, they were wont to travel together; doth it from hence follow, that the Noblemen and all the Gentlemen of their Traine, were the Ministers attendants?

The long relation you make of King James conference with Mr. Bruce anent the Earl of Huntly, you take it out of the story of Spotswood, who at first was a domestic servant but thereafter a great unfriend to Mr. Bruce; The tale of your Author you do much enlarge, and add unto it many circumstances whereof you have no warrant; the matter as I gather it, out of your own Author was thus. The Earl of Huntly all his life time was the head of the Popish faction in Scotland, he was oft excommunicate, and oft he gave satisfaction to the Church, abjuring his Popery, and joining to our Church, but always he plaid the Hypocrite or Apostate; when the Catholic league was first framed in France, betwixt the Pope, King Philip of Spain and the Guizians for the rooting out of all Protestants, this man made himself quickly of that party: When in the eighty eight the Spanish Armada came to conquer this whole Isle, no man was so ready as he with his whole strength to have joined with them, when after the miscarriage of that Navy, the enterprise was renewed, divers times he sent his Messengers to the Prince of Parme at Brussels, and to Philip at Madrid, assuring his readiness to concur for the destruction of Queen Elizabeth and all the Protestants in the Isle; though all these horrible Treasons were proved under his own hand, and acknowledged, and all were pardoned, yet nothing could amend his evil nature, he was still sound plotting the delivery of the Isle, into the Spaniards hands; and when all hope of foreign invasion was past, yet he could not give over, but was proved to have new plots upon the Kings person, for making of him prisoner, and killing before his face Chancellor Maitland, his prime and best Counselor: This also was pardoned, notwithstanding he remained the same man, and quickly thereafter in the sight of the Court, and all the Town of Edinburgh, he burnt the Earl of Murrays house above his head, ( Murray was a prime Noble man of the Land, the Kings near Kinsman, the heir of the good Regent, the best Governor that any King of Scotland did ever enjoy) this man did Huntly kill without any cause at all, but his own mere envy and malice; for these crimes he was again excommunicate; the Earl of Argile at the Kings entreaty and direction pursued him with an Army of ten thousand men; many hundreds of these good subjects were killed by that Rebell, when after Argiles deseat, the King himself with his prime Nobles went out against him, he with displayed banner went to the fields against the King; all this Spotswood reports at length. Let any conscientious man here be judge, King James for his own respects requires a conscientious Minister to consent and concur with him, to obtain from the next ensuing Assembly, the absolution of such a man from the censure of Excommunication, for this was the main question; the honest Minister could not be persuaded to consent unto the relaxation of such a bloody obstinate Apostate, confessed by all to be still imponitent, from the censures either of Church or State: As for the inconveniences, his Majesty did allege the dangers from the Papists of England, if Huntly and the Popish party in Scotland were too much irritate; was it any great crime for Mr. Bruce to differ in this from his Majesty, and to tell him plainly that which was the opinion of all the good Ministers of Scotland, though the ground of the Kings quarrel with them, That it would prove his best policy to make fast with the Protestant party of England and over-sea, renouncing all correspondency either with Papists or Prelates, that if he walked upon this ground, God and his right would carry him through all, both seen and imagined difficulties? The world long ago is satisfied with the wisdom of this advice; for it was quickly found that too much connivence and compliance with Papists, did bring that Prince upon the very brink of ruin; for the Popish party of England finding themselves disappointed of their great hopes did run to the desperate attempts of the Powder-plot and other Treasons: Also the keeping up of the Bishops was a great cause of all the mischiefs which since that time to this day have fallen either upon our Church or State; It is true, the words you ascribe to Mr. Bruce are very unmannerly; but who will believe that ever any such phrases proceeded from the mouth of so grave and wise a man? your only Author is Spotswood, His testimony in this case ought not to be trusted; but if you will look to the matter of Mr. Bruce his counsel, I subject it to the touchstone of the severest censurers.

Upon the fourth head of General Assemblies, you spew out the whole remnant of your gall; the wrath of a child does kindle against the whip that scourges him; I will not remember you of the dogs snarling at the stone that hath hit him: The General Assembly for just causes did chastise you with their sharpest rod of Excommunication, they did deliver you into the hands of the Father of lies and Blasphemies; if there were no more then what here you write, it is a demonstration that the sentence of that Reverend Assembly against you is ratified in heaven, and that God in his justice according to the word of his faithful servant, hath delivered your obstinate soul to be acted by that evil spirit? who else could move you to blaspheme the crown of Christ, and the holy One of Israel by name, and to make the holy Scriptures the ordinary channel through which your profane girds at the General Assembly must run: What you bring, the most of it is so impertinent, and so remote from all relation to any Assembly, and set down in such confusion, that the very effects, though the cause were not known, may evidence the distraction of your Spirit. I shall handle the fieryest of your darts as they come from your furious hands.

You make us to ascribe to our General Assembly, a jurisdiction universal and infallible, you will have it to meddle with all affairs both Spiritual and Temporal, you would make the world believe that all disobedience thereto is censured with excommunication, and that it commands the King to punish i • estate, body and life all who disobey; otherwise that it causes the King himself to be dethroned and killed, this often you repeat; moreover you call this Assembly an untamed furious Beast, you advise the King much rather to submit himself to the Pope then to be in the reverence thereof; what spirit makes you break out into such discourses, yourself will see, if ever God give you repentance; however it is evident, that lies and malice do here strive which shall predominate.

The General Assembly in Scotland hath no more power then what the Parliaments since the first Reformation have heartily allowed unto them, they meddle with no temporal case at all; and all the spiritual cases which to this day they have touched, may be reduced to a few heads: That every disobedience brings with it Excommunication, is a wide slander, we do not excommunicate but for a grievous transgression joined with extraordinary obstinacy; This censure is so rare with us, that a man may live long and before his death never be witness to it. What civil punishment the State in their wisdom finds meet to impose on a person who contemns the Ordinances of God, let themselves be answerable: But that the Assembly meddles with any man's life or goods, is like the rest of your Assertions, and yet no more false then the other lie you have here. That ever any Assembly of the reformed Churches upon the highest provocations did take it so much as in debate to excommunicate, much less to dethrone any King, its most false; but the Spirit that leads you must be permitted to breath out his natural air, and to lie according to his very ancient custom.

You object it once and again that the Commissioners of Burroughs and Universities are received as Members in our general Assemblies; behold the greatness of this crime, out of every Classical Presbytery we allow one ruling Elder, to go as Commissioner to that National meeting, and if there be a royal Burgh within the bounds, we allow two, and three if there be an University: What would you say to the Parliament of England who appoints four ruling Elders out of every Classis, to accompany two Ministers to the Assembly, though there be neither Burrough not University in the bounds? of this we are careful, that whoever comes either from Cities or Universities, be not only ruling Elders, but also have an express approbation from the Eldership.

What you speak of the Kings presence in our Assemblies: it is true, it was ever our wish, and oft our happiness to have the King or his Commissioner amongst us at these meetings, we never did dispute their capacity; no more was craved then the place of a civil President, and this no man did ever deny either to him or them, nor a power to propound what ever they thought expedient; but some of your flattering Prelates do ascribe to the Prince a power which neither we nor our Laws may own. You give him a power to call so many as he will, without all Commission from any Church, to voice in all Assemblies, and by the multitude of their voices to carry all: You give him also a power to hinder the Assembly to debate any matter which he mislikes, were it never so necessary for the very being of the Church: You give him a Negative Vote to stop any conclusion, were it never so consonant to the Word of God; yea, an affirmative Vote to carry all things in the Assembly, absolutely according to his own mind, The Assembly being but his Arbitrary Court in things spiritual, by whose advice the Prince who is the supreme judge in all causes does determine as he finds it expedient; sometimes according, sometimes contrary to their judgment. Such a power, no ordinary either Erastian or Prelate will willingly grant to any Prince upon earth; but this was one of the late Canterburian extravagancies, wherein your singular zeal did much help you to your Bishopric.

What you add of our pressing the King to execute all our Acts under the pain of Excommunication, we have oft told you it is a great untruth; for all Scotland knows that the furthest we went ever with any Prince in our Assembly Acts, was, humbly to supplicate for their civil Sanction; i • we obtain it, we bless God and them; if we cannot by any prayers persuade, we sit down in grief and wait patiently upon their good pleasure.

Our taking in of all things temporal upon some spiritual relation, and forcing the King to change his Laws though never so prejudicial to the State, your report in this will be believed, when you have gotten grace to forsake in some measure the Spirit that now leads you. The matter here you aim at, but keeps it in the clouds is the proceeding of the Assembly at Glasgow against your offices and persons. According to the Laws of Popi •• times, The Bishops were Lord's of Parliament, of Council, of Exchequer, of Session: The Assembly did find all this contrary to the Word of God and therefore did discharge under the pain of the censures of the Church, any Minister of the Word, to take upon him these civil employments; I hope the hindering of persons merely Ecclesiastic to drown themselves in a sea of temporal affairs, is not to take cognizance of all things temporal, in ordine ad spiritualia. The Assembly did supplicate the King and Parliament for the abolition of the Popish and corrupt Laws which did countenance the ambition of the Clergy; the Parliament finding the Assemblies supplication just, joined with them to deal with the King to pass it, his Majesty for a time misled by the flattery of Prelates refused; but at last seeing the earnestness and clear equity of the Assembly and Parliament their desires, he was persuaded to consent to these Acts, wherein all Churchmen are forbidden to take upon them civil places. This is it that you call the forcing of the King and Parliament to change the Laws for the great trouble of the State; this is all the Assemblies tyranizing over the King and Parliament, a mere supplication to alter Popish and corrupt Laws, which both the King and the State, after a little debate did find necessary to be done.

To the absurdities which you call monstrously gross, p. 21.22. we have spoken already, you are impatient that any ruling Elder, that any Commissioner from Burroughs or Universities should voice in Church. Assemblies; your express reason is because concilium est Episcoporum; see the man's absurdity, no Minister more then a ruling Elder must voice at any Assembly; the decisive voice there belongs only to Bishops; yet any Lay men vested with the Bishops commission, may very lawfully exercise all Ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the whole Clergy of the Diocese; neither is there any Gentleman of the Shire, not any Burgess of the City, nor any Student in the University to whom a Prelate can purchase a Letter from the King, but he may sit and voice decisively in all spiritual causes as a constituent Member of the General Assembly as well as the Bishop himself; this is the doctrine and was the practice of our Prelates in Scotland.

You are angry p. 22. that the acts of our Assemblies should get so ready obedience, but the matters themselves are so clear, that none uses to refuse them, and it is the Law of the kingdom that the Assemblies determination in matters proper to its cognizance should be obeyed; if anything new be acted, which requires a civil sanction, the Commissioners of the Assembly supplicate the next ensuing Parliament for their ratification, which for common is easily obtained, the clear equity of the matter purchases a ready grant. If there happen to because why the Parliament should not be satisfied, the Aslembly by their reasons is persuaded to be of the Parliaments mind; no such unanimous Courts in the Universe, as the Parliament and General Assembly of Scotland, they never had any difference, but what bad Courtiers and Prelates procured for their own interests: put these pests of the Church and State to a corner, the King, Parliament and Assembly shall never differ, but always concur for the strengthening and comforting one another.

From your 22. page to 31. you heap together what ever extreme malice can invent, to bring disgrace upon the first and chief resormers of Religion from Popery; you openly avow your dislike of the first Reformation in Scotland, you are not ashamed to proclaim all the Reformation both of Scotland, France, Holland, and Germany, and wheresoever the work was not done by the hand of the Sovereign Prince, to have been Sedition and Rebellion.

The first thing you undertake to prove, is, That we give our Assemblies power to depose and kill Kings; for this you allege Martin mar Prelate, whoyet says no such thing, and though hedid what is that to us? then you cite a number of passages out of John Knox his writings; but is it just that John Knox Assertions, long before any Assemblies were in Scotland, should be laid to their charge? But what may those absurd asserions of John Knox be? he says as you allege, that the Nobility of Scotland who are borne Counselors of the Kingdom, and by the Laws have great privileges may repress the fury and madness of a misled Prince; I grant this to you must be a great Heresy who makes it one of the Articles of your faith, that though Princes were as mad as ever Nero, and should openly avow their desires to overturn all the sworn Laws of their State, and to kill without any cause all their Subjects, yet for the Nobility or whole States of Parliament to make the smallest opposition or to go one hairs breadth beyond a naked supplication were no less then a damnable Rebellion and Treason; but believe it, the subjects of Scotland will not take off your hand such maxims, without some Argument for their truth.

John Knox is alleged to say that the Commonalty may bridle the cruel beasts and resorme Religion, but what does it concern the general Assembly whatever power the Lord's or Commons have by the Law, or usurp against the Law? The matter whereof John Knox is speaking is this, The body of Scotland in the year 1557. were true and zealous Protestants, the Mass and Images were to them Idols: long before the governor and protector of the Kingdom Duke Hamilton was for the Religion, At his first Parliament he did authorize some good beginnings of Reformation, the Cardinal and Clergy at this grew mad, and found means to translate the government from the Duke to the Queens Mother, sister to the Duke of Guize, and Cardinal of Lorain; in the time both of the Duke and Queen Mothers Regency, the cruelty of the Bishops was unsufferable. They took divers of the most zealous Preachers and Professors, men and women, and publicly without any Commission from the Magistrate, only for their zeal to the truth of God, did burn them quick as Heretics: After many years patience, the people at last seeing no end of the Prelates fury, did cause write Letters to some of their most wicked persecutors, telling them that if they gave not over to murder their Brethren, themselves should taste of that Cup, of which they forced others to drink. All the Reformation which the people at that time practiced, was to keep themselves pure from most vile Idolatry, and in private to hear the Word of God purely preached: They made no public Reformation till first they had openly supplicated the Queen and gotten her allowance, and a promise of an Act of Parliament in the year 1558. which promise when the Protestant Nobility, Gentry and Commons did press in face of Parliament, it was not denied by the Queen, but cunningly put off, upon assurance that all their desires at the first conveniency should be granted: in the mean time she received their Protestation for a Liberty to live in their reformed Churches separate from Popish Idolaters, and promised in due time to give to the Protesters full satisfaction. Though you have brought together all the malicious a persions which your predecestors the Popish Prelates and Priests were wont at these very times to heap upon the heads of our blessed Reformers; yet shall you never be able to leave any stain upon that happy work, though here and elsewhere you spew out your dispight against it.

The Reformation of Scotland was begun by public Authority in the first Parliament of Queen Mary, the year 1542. holden by the Governor the Earl of Arran a Protestant for the time; the setting up of it in public was avowed, and protested for in face of Parliament 1558. with the Queen Regents evident allowance, and without the opposition of any; but in the next Pa • liament 1560. the whole Estates without the contradiction of any, but three Popish Lord's, did set up by Law the whole body of that Religion, which since by God's mercy we have ever peaceably possessed, except so far as wicked Prelates have troubled us.

It is true, that Queen Regent notwithstanding of her good countenance and fair promises, was forced by the privy Instructions of her wicked Brethren, Guize and the Cardinal of Loraine, to oppose Reformation; wherein fore against her own mind, as at her death she professed, she went so far as to bring in many thousands of the French to conquer and subdue the Land. They began to the terror of the whole Isle, to fortify Leith, and other Maritime places; they exercised an evident tyranny both in Church and State, and overthrew the Laws and liberties of the Nation, which forced the cheise of the Nobility for the casting off of this yoke of stavery from the Church and State, and preventing the danger which threatened the whole Isle to enter in a covenant of defense both among themselves and with the Queen of England, but without the least prejudice to the just authority of their Sovereign then Queen of France, as it after appeared: for when by the blessing of God and the help of the English, they had ejected the French usurpers, they did heartily receive and obey the Queen so soon as she came from France. For the justification of all this I could bring formal testimonies out of Spotswood himself.

What you say of the deposition of Queen Regent from her Authority, it is false that any Church Assembly did ever meddle with it less or more; it was the Act of the three Estates; how just let any judge. She was the first woman as I remember that ever in Britain had the government of the State; it belonged not to her by any right, the Laws provided that charge for Duke Hamilton; but she and the Prelates couzend him out of his right and long possession; she became not only a violent persecutor of all the faithful against the Law and her own promises but also went about evidently by violence and force of Arms to subdue the land to the tyranny of strangers: much of this she did, albeit at the direction of her Brethren of Loraine, yet without all commission from our Sovereign her daughter. When no supplication nor remonstrance could stop her, the Estates of the Land being all denounced Rebels, and Traitors by her, did pass an Act not for depriving her of her Regency, but for the suspending of her Authority till the next Parliament; or till she altered the course of her tyrannous government with an express protestation that the authority and power of the King and Queen of France their Sovereigns should remain to them sacred and inviolable.

This act of the Statewhether right or wrong, what does it concern the general Assembly of the Church? be it so that a Minister or two being called for advice, did give their assent to this action which is the furthest our Enemies allege, yet what hath this to do with our Church government? it seems the conscience of the Queen did approve of this sentence against her; for she did much repent of all those actions which did procure it, as she did evidence in that conference which a little before her death she required and did obtain with the prime Protestant Nobles, and the Minister Mr. Willocks, whose hand in her suspension was alleged to be chief.

That abominable calumny which continually you fall upon, as if our doctrine did tend to the killing of Kings, demonstrates the superfluity of your naughty malice, whereby your fellows and you above any one, were wont to poison the ears and heart of the King, while you were about him, till at last you did precipitate him in these dangers that very readily might have taken away from him both his life and his crown. I desire to know of you who charges us with this abominable crime of destroying Kings who were the men that saved the life and authority of King James so long as he was in Scotland? and who be these who have preserved King Charles from utter ruin, wherein your wicked companions and yourself with the first, by your pernicious ways did cast him, and would hold him still therein, if you might be heard? Did either of these Kings in the days of their danger have their recourse to any but to Presbyterians, or was any other party either able or willing to preserve them?

What you speak of Mr. Knox preaching for the pulling down of Churches, is like the rest of your lies, he did indeed oft times preach down the worshiping of Images, and the idle bellies of the profane Monks: one day after his Sermon the people in Perth being stirred by the injurious violence of an idolatrous Priest, did pull down the Images which daily were worshipped, and from that action did run to the casting down of two or three dens of Friers, which your Orthodox pen stiles religious houses; but that Mr. Knox or any Preacher was the Author of these actions, it is so false that the day thereafter when the Bishop of Murrays son by his mischievous insolency had provoked the people against the Monastery of Scoon, John Knox in person with all the Nobility he could persuade went out to save those irreligious walls to his power from all violence. Some few Monasteries and two or three Cathedral Churches, were cast down by the idle provocations of some Popish Priests, who were so mad upon their Idolatry that they would keep these places to be Castles and forts to preserve and propagate their abominations; But quickly that fury of the Priests was gotten suppressed and the Churches peaceably purged, so that I have not heard that in all our Land, above three or four Churches were cast down.

I should be very tedious if I went through all the odious narrations of this enraged Prelate; I must touch but upon some of his principal passages: in his 27 page, he makes the Reformers to disclaim Sovereign Authority, to denounce war, to enter it to a covenant for mutual defense, to command the Nobility to join with them under the pain of excommunication, &c. A waspe out of the sweetest herbs sucks venom, the matter as all our Historians relate, was this.

When Queen Regent was marching with the French Army to Perth, to kill as she had openly vowed, men women and children; to raze unto the ground that ancient City and to sow it with salt, only for the pulling down of some images and some Monks dens: the Nobillity did meet to stop that Horrible rage, they did deprecate violence with humble supplications, and when these were in vain, they stood upon their defense against the French Bands: this is that which you call the disclaiming of Sovereignty. They write a threatening Letter to the Bishops and Priests, the great Incendiaries of the time, to kindle the Queens wrath against her best Subjects: this you call denouncing of War. Some members of their own Congregation did come with the Queen against them, namely the Earls of Argyle and Murrey, Them they entreated not to shed their Brethren's blood, otherwise they shown them their deserving to be excommunicate out of that society, which without cause they did persecute; The seasonablenes of this reproof did quickly appear, both the Noblemen beholding the Loyalty of their Brethren and their unjust oppression by others, did leave the Queen and join with the Protestant party. A demonstration of their Loyalty wa • given to the world at that very instant, when they came to such strength that the French and the Prelates and all their opposites, could scarce have been a Breackfast to them, they were content to let them all go in peace and upon the Queens word did dissolve their Army only suspecting, which did fall out, that no promises would be made conscience of to Heretics, before they disbanded they gave assurances of mutual defense, if by their Treacherous enemies contrary to promises they should again for their Religion be invaded: was such a Covenant anymore then nature requires of every society of men for their own necessary preservation. As for your invectives against the first reformation and that which you profess is the cause of your anger, the removal of the beauty and order of the Church, that is the putting away of the mass with all its ornaments, the removal of the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, the Monks and Friers, for all this you must be dispensed with: for herein you but follow your Canterburian principles. Yet I cannot but marvel that your passion towards these trinckets of Popery should be so great, as to make you affirm that all our present troubles are, but God's judgments upon us for their removal, and to prophesy that those evils cannot end, except we return to that vomit: our condition is hard if we must redeem peace with the reimbracing of the Mass Book and all its ornaments, if for the right ordering of our Church, we must take back our Bishops, Patriarchs, Cardinals, and Popes (for non of all these you do scruple) if all our Abacies and Nunneries must again be peopled, and which is worst of all, if we must resolve never more to permit the whole estates of a land or a Parliament to oppose a Prince when seduced by a popish Prelate or a Turkish darvisch, he takes a conceit to set up the whole body of popery or of Muhammadism in all his Dominions: this is the divinity which your piety and orthodoxie here insinuates.

Your long discourse of the General Assemblies Sovereignty above the King is closed with two other stories, the killing of Cardinal Beton, and the tumult in the Church of Edinburrough at the reading of the Liturgy. What belongs these things to the General Assembly, were these actions either decreed or allowed by any Church meeting; but the truth is, you are gathering together a confused mass of all the odious fables which you can either find or invent to the prejudice of Protestant Religion since it came first in Scotland to this day.

As for the Cardinals slaughter, all good men who heard it did heartily rejoice at the judgment of God in taking away that cruel persecutor, a most vicious wretch: as Spotswood himself relates the story, his crimes were many for which his life by all Law and reason was forfeit: the suborning of a false Testament to King James the fifth, for his own advancement, the burning quick by his own Ecclesiastic authority the most holy Martyrs, the marring with all his might the Reformation of Religion: that such a man was removed in the indignation of God, according to Mr. Wisheard the martyrs prophesy, the whole Land did greatly rejoice. As for the manner of his slaughter, that it was by the hands of private men and not of the public executiooner, this no man did defend: of Mr. Knox disallowing thereof, Spotswood testifies expressly: but that which troubles you, is not the killing of a man, but as you speak, of a Priest, of an Arch-Bishop of high dignity, that is a Cardinal of Rome, these circumstances are but poor agravations of that fact.

The other horrible fact at Edinburgh, how detestable it was, Let all the Isle judge. When a company of base men were come to that height of insolency, as to tread on the necks of the whole Kingdom, as to make it an Act of high treason for the greatest of the Nobility to keep, albeit very secretly in their Cabins, a Copy of a Petition presented to his Majesty in person, against some new illegal usurpations of the Prelates: to get Noblemen condemned to lose their heads only for this action and to avow in print the great Justice of such a sentence, and the extraordinary favor in pardoning so high and treasonable an attempt: When they became so extremely malapert without so much as once acquainting the Church to bring in three or four whole books full of Novations in Religion, and withal to proclaim the absolute unlawfulness for the whole Land to make the smallest opposition if tomorrow they should bring in, upon the back of their former Novations, the Mass in Latin, or the A coran in Arabic; when they came with a high hand to put in practice this their lawless Tyrannie, that good zealous people (whom you maliciously and falsely style whores and coal stealers) should have their patience so far tempted as to break out in violence against you was it any wonder? when atrocious injuries are multiplied upon a Nation, and by a few openly vicious and corrupt persons, the current of Justice is stopped, all the world will not be able to hold the passions of a people not totally subdued, from breaking out into unjustifiable insolencies, which a little Justice might easily have prevented What ever wrong might accompany the zeal of that very good people, the reverend Answerers to the corrupt Doctors of Aberdeen do openly disavow it, and all of us were ever very well content, that the whole action of that famous infamous day might have come to a perfect trial, That all persons according to their demerits, might have suffered legal punishments. That you and your associates, the professed Authors of these popish books, and violent introducers of them in our Church against all our Laws and Customs might have been brought to answer, before your Judge competent, a lawful general Assembly: also that the interrupters of your shameful usurpation might have come to an accompt for all their words & deeds that day: but you and your Colleagues knowing well your legal deserts would never be pleased to come to any trial. You pressed very hard for some days, that a number of very honest men and women might have been put to bodily tortures, and that all your abominable Novations might have been quietly without any scruple everywhere thereafter received: upon these conditions your clemency was content to intercede with his Majesty, That the horrible and monstrous uproar might be pardoned; but when this your overture was not hearkened unto, your Antichristian fury broke out so high, that nothing could satiate your rage, but the destruction (with an English Army) of all your opposites in the whole Nation, and the fastening upon the neck of the Country with undissoluble bands, the yoke of a perpetual slavery. Though in opposition to this your horrid design, many thousands in both Nations be already destroyed, though the King himself be brought in extreme danger, both of his Crown and person: yet so matchless is your rage, and that of your friends, that unless your pride, avarice, and errors may be satisfied except Bishops, books, and a Turkish royalty may be gotten established: you are willing the King, his Family, the remnant of his people should all be destroyed with you, and turned into water, to quench the fire of your ashes. It's a great mercy of God to these Lands, that such unparalelled furies are not buried below the ground, or beaten off to so remote corners, that they may no more be seen in the societies of men, either of Church or State.

From your 32. page, as a man distracted ye ramble up and down, backward and forward you rayell in so many things old and new, that to follow you with any orderly, clear and distinct answer, I think it impossible. Your first gybe is, at the power of the General Assembly, which the King and Parliament has allowed unto it, and whereof they are in a quiet possession: to wit, that in matters merely Spiritual, they are the last ordinary Judges: but if they should miscarry, that the King and Parliament should not have power to make them reform their errors, it never came in any of our minds. Your next calumny is, that we count it but a courtesy, and no necessary duty to Petition for the civil sanction to our Acts, and that if our Petitions be not granted, we are ready by Excommunication and rebellion, to force the King and the State to our will; These are but Symptoms of a spirit in which Excommunication has wrought its first effect, I wish it might work farther for your repentance and salvation.

For proof of the Assemblies usurping over the King, you allege first the late Sermon of the Scottish Pope at Westminister, and then you run back upon our first reformation. It is true, that Scottish Pope was the man whom the General Assembly made their instrument, to deliver you over to the Devil and therefore your rage against him for that necessary and good service is great: out of his Sermon you dare cite nothing, and it is well known, that no or thodox Divine in any of the reformed Churches, is more willing to give to Sovereign Princes all their due, then that most worthy man is, and ever has been. In your scoff of a Scottish Pope the smoke of ignorance goes up, with the fire of malice: these many years, for your old stinging, you have been removed to dark Cavernes, though sometimes for a Breathing you have cropen out to Oxford & Dublin: but had your crimes permitted you to have walked a little, either at Lond. or Edinburgh, or anywhere in this Isle, where the Sun of Truth & Justice did shine, or anywhere over Sea, where the affairs of this Isle with any ingenuity use to be represented: you would not have called that most gracious man a Pope. For how ever you have declared yourself for Scottish Cardinals, and a Pope over the whole Church Catholic through all the world: and all who know you, will bear you witness, that in Scotland so proud and arrogant a Prelate, did not breath in our days: yet the venerable divine whom you slander is so far from the note you would put upon him that a more modest and humble spirit of so great parts, and deserved authority with all the greatest of the Isle, lives not this day in the reformed Churches.

But it is our first Reformation that chiefly grieves you, you continually break out upon that, and repeat very oft the same most bitter slanders. The reformation in Scotland, as has been said, began long before the year 1558. when the Queens Mother was not yet come to the government, in the year 1542. the Protestant Regent, Duke Hamilton, with the consent of Parliament did then authorize it, and set it on foot; albeit the complete and public Reformation of the whole Land, was not till the year 1560. when the Parliament convened by the authority of our Sovereign, and after ratified by her, did authorize it fully. Her delay for a little to ratify that Parliament makes nothing against its validity, especially since now for fourscore and five years it has stood firm, as one of our most happy Parliaments, not questioned by any, but some few eminently malignant Papists, and Prelates.

That which here you scorn in Knox, is a truth uncontroverted by any reasonable man: that Religion has its own proper intrinsical strength from God, its only Author; that Princes and states may and ought as servants to God their Lord, make way for it in their Dominions by their good Laws; but this does not add anymore internal truth and strength to Religion then it has of it self, before the Magistrate confirmed it, and which it cannot lose although the Magistrate do cry it down, and persecute it for error.

Concerning the debates in the years 1558. and 1559. betwixt Queen Regent and the States, for the just Liberties of the Kingdom, for both agreed that this was the chief quarrel, we repeat not what we have said before.

What you being from the thirty third p. to 39. I have met with it a most all in my answer to the other Treatise. In the year 1571. a Committee of the general Assembly at Leeth, deceived by some prime Courtiers, too much engaged unto the Prelates of England, did advise to set up Bishops in the Church of Scotland, with the name, and some shadow of the things which then were in England: but the thing it self, a sole power of Ordination, and Jurisdiction over the whole Diocese in one man's hand, they never dreamed of. Yea, the very name and shadow whereto that Committee was drawn, was never allowed of by any act of a lawful general Assembly: for the very next Assembly did disclaim it, and ever after the matter was in debate till both name and thing was totally exploded.

Your discourse of the Negative confession, and Churchgovernment, in the year 1580. and 1581. and of the platform of Presbiteries, as set up by Mr. Melvil without the Kings Authority with much stuff of this kind, demonstrates your mind, to calumniate with a great deal either of ignorance of the times, or malicious resolution to lie.

In the year 1580. some prime Courtiers, and others truly popish in their heart yet for their own ends was content to dissemble, and to abjure popery with their own equivocations and mental reservations. The King desiring to stop all starting holes, caused Mr. Craige the Pastor of his Family to draw up a confession, every particular, rejecting expressly the most of the Romish errors: this King James himself did Sign, and permitted none to live at his Court, who did not swear it, he ordained it also to go through the whole Land. Towards this confession scornfully called negative, the Prelatical party did ever carry an evil eye, for it was a stronger bar against popery, and their intended innovations, then their designs could well admit.

The whole six years before that Confession, the General and provincial Assemblies were much exercised, in perfiting the second book of discipline, wherein the whole body of the Presbiterian Government is fully set down: nothing in our Church did ever pass with so great deliberation nor with greater unanimity. In the year 1578. it was all agreed unto in the General Assembly: Mr. Melvill was a gracious instrument in that work, but all the Divines of the Kingdom did join with him therein. With the states they had some controversy, but not for the matter of Government, in this the Harmony betwixt the Church and State was full, but for the Church Patrimony, wherein the King did join heartily with the Assembly against the Court, and wherein yourself cannot but bear witness to the honesty of the Divines at that time. For it was their mind that Church rents ought not to be impropriat to Courtiers nor given to Prelates, nor serve the ambition and avarice of any Church-men, but ought to be employed for the Honorable and comfortable maintenance of all that served at the Altar, and for the relief of the poor and strangers, and what was above, to go to the public uses of the state. But in this gracious design, the cunning first of the Court, and after of the Prelates, did Cross both the King and the Assembly, so that for peace they behooved to yield, albeit upon occasion both his Majesty and the Church did often protest for their rights.

But for any parts of the Presbyterial Government which in that Book of discipline was set down, there was no controversy in the year 1580 betwixt the Church and the Court: The privy counsel had subscribed all that book with some reservation about Church rents; the General Assemblies oft did agree to it without any exception, his Majesty himself in the fore named year did send to the Assembly with an express commissioner the platform of all the Presbiteries, which thereafter were erected over all Scotland, & which against all the Prelates assaults have ever stood firm to this day; so your alleagencies are exceeding false, that the Presbiteries were erected without the Kings authority and that in the year 1580 the Government of our Church was Episcopal, these are putide thredbare lies.

The General Assembly did never allow of Abbots and Priors as Churchmen and though they pressed the great unjustice that Popish Bishops and lay Abbots should 〈◊〉 in Parliament in name of the Church to vote as the third estate Estate without any Commission from the Church, yet it was never their intention to have any of their own number appointed by themselves to vote in Parliament, in name of the Church of Scotland, For when King James a little before his going to England was very earnest with the general Assembly to accept of that as a favor, they forseeing the snare did resolutely reject it, ever til his Maje. by very great dealing, did draw a plurality of an unadvised Assembly to embrace that power of voting in Parliament, but with a mumber of Caveats, which wise men foresaw would never be kept.

That Master Melvil, or any Presbytery of that Land had ever any hand in impropriating or disapidating any part of the Church Rent, is far from truth: But that your good Colleagues, the Prelates, in the Parliament, 1606. made a bargain for alienating from the Church forever, no fewer then 16. Abbays at one time, I declared before.

About that time what the practices of the disciplinarians a • London might be, I do not know: but this is certain, that Mr. Cartwright and all the old nonconformists in England, were our dear Brethren and made a ways the Government of the Church of Scotland the measure of their desires, that betwixt us and the Antiepiscopall party here, was never any difference, till the unhappy Separatists, and their Children the Independents did make it.

Your envenomed invective against the present Reformation of both Kingdoms as a monstrous deformation we let it lie in your own bosom to keep you warm, till you be p • eased to bring all of it abroad in that Anatomy which here you promise but we expect no performance till you first have had leisure (as likewise you stand engaged by your word) to put the four Limbes unto that Gorgons head of your Turkish Monarchy which some years ago you set up at Oxford.

In your 36. p. you run upon our Assemblies for appointing Ministers to Preach pertinent doctrine, and advising them who did Preach to the King and State to speak a word in season for the weell of Zion, at that time as I show before their was a mighty design to advance the Catholic League, for the overthrow of Queen Elizabeth and all Protestants, the prime Courtiers were diligent Agents herein, the men who were trusted to be watchmen to the Kings person and Family, if at such a time they should have been silent, they could not have answered it either to God or man: You and your gracious companions, who never had a mouth to divert a Prince from any evil course, were yet loud trumpets of fury in the most of your Sermons and Prayers to inflame him against his two Puritan Parliaments of Britain, but to calm him towards his innocent and Catholic trusty Subjects of Ireland.

That any Assembly in Scotland ever challenged the sole power of indicting fasts is in the ordinary predicament of your assertions under the spece of palpable untruths. Of the feast at Edinburgh p. 37. I have given in the other Treatise a full accompt, only I add here that in this your relation you makeit more false then any other of your friends who write thereof: the King was neither invited nor present; the original of the motion was not from the King, but the French Merchants, for their own ends; the Magistrates of Edinburgh did not countenance the feast, for of their four Bailies three kept the fast: the appointers of that abstinence were not the Ministers, but the Magistrates and the Congregational Eldership, not the supreme, but the lowest judicatory of the Church: the Processe against the Magistrates and the Kings great Solicitation that it might be Superceeded ar merely fabulous.

I have also given a large account of your next calumny in the other Treatis: no man in Scotland did ever maintain that a Minister Preaching Treason might not be convened and punished by the Magistrate according to the Laws. All Mr. Melvils plea was that a Minister of the Church of Scotland, and a member of the University of St. Andrew's being privileged by the ancient and late Laws of the Kingdom, was not necessitate at the first instance to answer before the privy counsel for a passage of his Sermon, which most falsely was said to be treasonable. The whole case I have opened at large else where.

The acts of Parliament you speak of warranting an unreasonable Supremacy were procured in the year 1584. by that insolent Tyrant Captain James, and the Declaration upon them was penned by Bishop Adamson, also both the Acts and the Declaration were recalled by the King and Parliament, That any invectives against his Majesty's person for these acts were spread abroad we do deny it: we think it very possible that much might both have been spoken and written against the matter of these acts, but that any man was so unmannerly as to fall upon the King himself before we believe it, we must have a greater evidence then a Prelates Testimony.

What you say of the fugitive Ministers, as Spotswood relates it, was thus. The acts of that Parliament 1584. were so bitter and grievous to all the gracious Ministers of Scotland, that many of them fled out of the Kingdom, and diverse of the prime laid down their life, as it seems of mere grief, Mr. Smeeton Principal Mr. of the Uniuersity of Glasgow, and Mr. Arbuthnot, of the University of Aberdeen both died that year; all the Ministers of Edinburgh fled to England, and the chief of them Mr. Lawson went to London: Adamson Arch-Bishop of St. Andrew's at that time kept great correspondence with the Bishops of England, who without any complaint of the Scottish Ambassador were able easily to get an affront put upon a Presbiterian fugitive: but if ye will believe Spotswood, Mr. Lawson was a man so eminent both for piety and prudence, that it can hardly be supposed anything could escape him in preaching which might deserve the Queens displeasure: how ever, that excellent man did die at that time in London, as it seems martyred by the injuries of the Scottish and English Prelates, which doubtless did help to bring down that vengeance upon the Prelatical State in England, which our eyes now do behold.

For the further evincing of the intolerable miscarriages of the General Assembly, you bring three other stories p. 39.40. all are faults alleged against single Mininisters which were they never so great and true, ought not to be laid upon the Assembly; but see how all are misreported the first concerns James Gibson a zealous Country Minister, who Preaching in a very troublesome time, spoke more rashly of the King then became him, the words that you ascribe to him, we may not take them at your hand for in the same matter by Spotswoods own Testimony, you are gui • ty of a great untruth you avow that the King caused complaint to be made to the Assembly of this man, But by no entreaty could obtain any punishment to be inflicted upon him: Spotswood says the contrary, that the Assembly did pro • ounce the man's words to be slanderous and therefore suspended him from his Ministry, and while they were in further agitation of his cause, that he fled into England, doubtless for fear of his life: what became of him thereafter I know not, only I have read in a good Author, that what here you insinuate of his favoring Hacket and Copinger is a very false calumny.

The next you speak of is Mr. David Black, Minister of St. Andrew's, a man of great piety and prudence, his name is yet very savoury in that Town: though there be in it some three or four thousand people, yet so great was the zeal, wisdom, and diligence of Mr. Black, that during all the time of his Ministry there, no person was seen either to beg or profane the Sabbath day, in all that Congregation. This man being delated to the secret counsel by a very naughty person, that in a Sermon he had spoken disgracefully of the King was willing to have appeared, and cleared himself of that calumny; but finding that it was not his person which was aimed at, but a quarrel with the whole Church in him, sought for by the misleaders of the Court, he thought meet to appeal not simply from the King but from the King and secret counsel to the King and General Assembly: as to the proper and competent Judge appointed by the Law for matters of Doctrine. While this question is in agitation, a great storm did fall upon the Church from the seventeenth day of December, which made Mr. Blacks cause be laid aside yet a little thereafter for to please the King the Commissioners of the general Assembly did pass upon that gracious man a sentence severe enough, removing him from St. Andrew's to some obscure corner where he passed the rest of his days.

Your third story is of the Ministers who went to Aberdeen the year 1605. upon them you make a tragick Narration a gu •• ty of the most treasonable rebellion. Your rashness is great, at these times to bring up to the sight these things which for the honor of many, did lie long buried: but since it is your wisdom to make the world know, whereof with your friends advantage they might have been ignorant, the matter was this. It was the custom of Scotland, ever from the Reformation, to keep general Assemblies twice, or at least once every year; After some debates in the year 1592. it became a Law, and an Act of Parliament, agreed to unanimously by the King and States, and accordingly it was practiced without any interruption, that the General Assembly should meet at least once a year, and appoint when all other actions were ended, the day and place for the next years meeting. In the year 1602. the Assembly in the Kings presence, and with his advice did appoint the day and place of their next meeting, in the year 1603. His Majesty at that time going to England, took upon him to prorogat the Assembly, till the same day and place of the year following 1604. of this prorogation there could be no necessity, but his Majesty's mere pleasure. When the Dyet of the year 1604. did come the affairs of the Church did greatly call for an Assembly yet it was his Majesty's will to make a second prorogation 〈◊〉 the fifth of July, 1605. This was much to the hurt grief, and fear of all the godly, yet they endured it, but when the Dyet of the year 1605. was come. His Majesty did not only prorogate the third time, but also made the day of the next meeting •• tertaine and inderinite. This gave an allarme to the whole Kingdom, all the world did see the Kings design to bring the English E • iscopacie and all their Ceremonies upon the Church of Scotland: also the mistery of popery was then working vehemently, a mighty faction of popish Lord's were still countenanced among us, immediate correspondence with the Pope by the chief States-men was much surmised, and afterward was found to be too true. Scotland had no considerable B • warke either against English or Romish corruptions, but their general Assemblies: if these were removed, the poor Church lay open to the inundation of what ever Antichristianism the Court was pleased to send in. The general Assembly besides its divine right, was grounded upon so good Laws as Scotlanâ cou • d afford; but • o that at the end of the present Assembly, the Dyet of the next should always be appointed, however his Majesty's design to put down the general Assembly was evidently seen by a • intelligent men, yet so long as he prorogate it to a certain day, men were quiet: but so soon as he commanded the third diet, to be deserted and that to an uncertain and infinite time they to whom the welfare of the Church was dear, did awaken and found it necessary to keep the Dyet appointed in the second prorogation at Aberdeen July 2. or 5. 1605. The Commissioners of the Presbiteries in their way to Aberdeen advised with Chancellor Seaton the prime Magistrate of the Kingdom in the Kings absence, and were encouraged by him to go on, yet so soon as any of them came to the place, A Gentleman the Lord of Lauristone, came to them with a warrant from the King and privy Counsel and discharged them to keep any Assembly there: yet the will of the King and Counsel was not intimated to them in convenient time, for when the King and Counsels Letter was presented, they show they were not in a capacity to receive it, till once they were an Assembly, so with Lauristons good liking they did pray and chose their Moderator and Clerke: thereafter they did receive and read the Letters discharging the Assembly, to which they gave present obedience, and did no more at all but appointed the next meeting according to the express act of Parliament. Lauriston after the Assembly was dissolved, was so officious as by a Lyon herald with a public Proclamation to command them to be gone; this Proclamation most falsely he did antidate as if it had been used before the Ministers sat down, hereupon the Ministers were convened before the secret Counsel for keeping of a Conventicle contrary to the Kings command, they answered as Spotswood says, that they had done nothing but according to the Laws both divine and human, That the General Assembly had right to meet in the great necessities of the Church, and the Laws of Scotland gave them express warrant to meet: Lauriston told them that the King might delay all meetings both of Church and State, Parliaments and Assemblies so long as he pleased, they replied that they could do nothing against the Kings mind so long as they followed the express order of his standing Laws. When the King and state has past an act for Trienniall Parliaments, and the Commissioners of shires do meet at the day appointed to fence a Par • iament according to Law and long uncontroverted custom, if by evil Counsel the King should not only delay but by a Proclamation put of the meeting to an uncertain and infinite time, ought these Commissioners for following the instructions of their shires according to Law and custom, be liable to any censure: the case now in hand is just the same.

The Ministers did plead further, that the privy Council was not a competent Judicatorie to the question, what was a lawful, or unlawful Assembly: that by the Laws of the Kingdom such questions were to be decided by a lawful General Assembly, and not elsewhere.

At that time Doctor Bancroft was Patron to the naughty Preacher of Scotland, who were panting for Bishoprics, and as after the conference at Hampton Court, he had moved the King to crush the most of the gracious Brethren of England, who could not submit to Episcopacy, and its Ceremonies; So then did he hasten a Message to the Council of Scotland, for the condemning all who adhered to the Assembly of Aberdeen, of high Treason. To maintain a power in the Church to keep an Assembly, or in the State, to keep a Parliament whether to begin, or to continue it, when the King did discharge (though the Law did expressly warrant it) was to oppose the Royal prerogative and could be no less then the highest treason, especially if any did decline the Judgment of the Privy Counsel, or any other Judicatorie, to which the King was pleased to refer the decision of this case: though the nature of the thing and the Law, did require the question to be determined in another Court.

For this plea a number of gracious Ministers were condemned by an Assize to be executed as Traitours, but thereafter as it were of great favor, and special grace their lives were spared, yet were they all presently banished, never to return to any of the Kings Dominions while they lived. All the godly and wise in the Land did cry out upon this Act of the Candidats of Episcopacy, as of the highest unjustice and Tyranny.

All the sufferers were men exceedingly beloved, but some of them were very eminent, Master Forbes was a man of so great learning and prudence, that in Germany both higher and lower, yea with King James himself, and King Charles he was held while he lived in singular reputation. Master Welsh was a man altogether Apostolic, of rare both learning and piety. The fame of this man's zeal was so great, that not only the Protestants of France, but the very Popish Priests and Soldiers, yea, the profanest of the Court and King Lewis himself, at the very time of his hottest persecutions, did much prize and reverence him: yet so great was the rage of the Bishops against him, that when in his old age and great sickness he came over to England, and according to the direction of his Physicians did supplicate to be permitted to breath a little in his natural air, though he was altogether unable for preaching, or making anymore stir in the world, it was peremptorily denied him unless he should give assurance of putting his neck under the Episcopal yoke: not being able to do this, he was forced to die out of h •• Country, a banished man.

Who would not have th ••• ht that the ruin of so many gracious men might ha •• •• lly satiate the malice of a few ambitious persons, bu ••• they were not content: they proceeded farther in their cruelty, they moved the King to call up to London a number of more Divines, who for piety, zeal and learning, were of greatest reputation. The pretext was fair and his Majesty's Letter to them courteous, he required them to come up to give him their best advice how the Church of Scotland might best be settled in peace, but behold Bancrofts, and the Scottish Episcopaturians fraud they are brought before the King and Council, and there are posed with a number of dangerous and insnaring questions to which they declined to answer, yet being much pressed, they gave in their mind in writing so humbly and prudently as was possible: no quarrel could be picked against any of their words, yet were they all arrested to stay at London, till contrary to Law and the order of the Church, and the heart of all the godly, their adversaries were set down in Scotland, upon their Episcopal Thrones.

Mr. Andrew Melvil, a great Light to the Scottish Nation, for his free speeches after great provocation, against the English Bishops and Ceremonies, to which he (a stranger called up by the Kings friendly Letter) did owe no subjection, was kept prisoner three whole years, and then was sent over to Sedan, where he lived to his death a banished man. His Nephew Mr. James Melvil, for his excellent parts in great favor with the King, but unable to comply with Episcopal designs, was kept out of Scotland till his dying day; the rest were at last sent home, but all of them as Prisoners, confined to certain places. These were the first fruits of the English Prelacie in Scotland, but yearly thereafter that tree did bring forth such grapes of Gomorrhah among us, that the Land could be at no peace, till it was cut down, yea plucked up by the roots.

It might have satisfied the unnatural malice of a very wicked child, to have bespattered the face of his innocent mother, with the half of the former very injurious and false calumnies, yet you the worst of all your Mothers children, must have leave to pour more of your excrements upon her head. From your page 41. to the 46. you would make the world believe, that the Church of Scotland does excommunicate good men, and tender consciences for a dissent in the smallest points of Religion, and does persecute for such differences with all the rigor of temporal afflictions. Secondly you affirm that the Assemblies of that Church, take upon them to make Traitours whom they will, and to cast out of the Court, whether the King will or not the greatest and best men, with whom they are displeased. Thirdly, that these Assemblies do alter the Laws of the Kingdom at their pleasure; Surely if strangers who know not the Constitution and customs of that Church, were disposed to believe all you say, they could not but by your relations he brought to a very evil opinion of your mother whom you an unnatural son so vildly slander: but it is good that men here are so rational, as not to take upon trust the naked assertions of a malicious enemy.

For the first, a complaint of rash Excommunication, and persecution thereupon, is very impertinent from your mouth: it is not so long that yet it can be forgotten, since you and your Colleagues did allow your Officials and others to excommunicate good people for trifles, yea, for no offense at all, but their zeal to God, and the good of their Country: your Cannons in all the three Kingdoms are extant, your cruelties are fresh, in imprisoning, banishing, Pilloring, stigmatizing the worthiest men for contradicting you in any one of your numerous ceremonies and traditions.

As for the Church of Scotland, that it did ever meddle to trouble any in their goods, Liberties, or persons, it's very false: what civil penalties the Parliament of a Kingdom thinks meet to inflict upon those who are refractory, and unamendable by the censures of a Church, the state from whom alone these punishments do come, are answerable, and not the Church.

That Excommunication in Scotland, is inflicted upon those who cannot assent to every point of Religion determined in their confession, there is nothing more untrue, for we know it well, that never any person in Scotland, was Excommunicate only for his difference of opinion in a Theologick tenet, Excommunication there, is a very dreadful sentence, and therefore very rare: these last forty years, so far as I have either seen or heard, there has none at all been Excommunicate in Scotland, but some few trafficking Papists, and some very few notoriously flagitious persons, and five or six of you the Prelates for your obstinate impenitency, after your overturning the foundations both of our Church & State, and one most rigid and pragmatic Brownist, who for all that could be done or said, would needs make it his work to persuade all he was able by discourse, Letters, and spreading of books, that in Scotland there was neither a Church, nor any Ministry nor any Ordinance.

In Scotland we count the spiritual Judgment of Excommunication most heavy, but any temporal inconvenience that follows upon it, is not very considerable: for first there is not any civil hazard at all to any excommunicate man, who will suffer himself to be brought to any measure of repentance. Secondly, were they never so impenitent, there is no harm can come to them (as I remember) a whole year after the long process and final sentence of Excōmunication. Thirdly after a years cōtumacy, though the Letter of the Act of Parliament be heavy, yet I appeal to any who has lived in Scotland, among the very few whom they have known Excommunicate, how many did they ever hear to have been hurt in their goods, imprisoned, or banished. I am sure that Huntly, Arrole, and Angus, and the other popish Lord's, though for their plotting to undermine the State, their persons after Excommunication have been secured, yet no penny of their estates went to the Kings Exchequer, or to the hands of any of their unfriends: but as the ordinary custom is, upon the pretext of a small composition, what ever the Letter of the Law takes from them, it is all put in the hand of such of their friends whom they do most trust; Scotland's guilt may well be too much indulgence, but of any excessive rigor towards spiritual oftenders, they will be condemned by none that knows them.

Your other imputation, that our general Assembly takes upon it to be judge what is Treason, and who are fit to be Counselors, nothing is more false. But here you do us the favor to prove your Alleageance by a long story, to which I have given a full answer in the other Treatise: At that time of King James minority, Spotswood himself being witness our State was miserably misguided, the Tyrannie of Captain James, supported too much by the favor of the Earl of Lennex, was very grievous, both to Church and State: I touch but upon one instance. The greatest subject of the Kingdom, and at that time nearest to the King in blood was James Hamilton Earl of Arran, a very gracious and most brave man before his sickness: without any fault at all, so much as alleged for he was uncapable at that time of any crime, being vinted with a distemper that made him keep his house, and hindered him from meddling with any affairs of State, yet was he spoiled by the fraud and violence of Captain James Stewart, of all his Lands and honor. This violent oppressor was made Earl of Arran, and Chancellor of the Kingdom. At that time the design was clear and confessed, to bring Queen Mary out of her prison in England, to set her again upon her Throne, to advance the Catholic League which then was newly made, betwixt the Guises, King James his grand Uncles and the King of Spain • , for the destroying Queen Elizabeth and the whole Protestant party; For the preventing of these mischiefs, the prime Nobility found it absolutely necessary, to have the advancers of these counsels removed from the minor King. What ever fault was in this action, the Assembly is unjustly charged therewith. Their advice was never sought thereto, only half a year after it was done, his Majesty sent a special Command to the Assembly for their approbation thereof: for as by divers of his Letters to all the neighbor Princes, he did signify his good liking of that action, so in all the great Courts of the Kingdom he required it to be approved. The privy Council, the convention of Estates, the general Assembly by his Majesty's express Commission did all assent to his will. It is true Captain James, so soon as he crept in again into Court, did change the young Kings mind, but the event of that alteration was a more horrible confusion both of Church and State. The Earl of Gowry was beheaded; as a litt • e before the Earl of Morton, sundry Gentlemen of good quality, most innocent, were hanged; many of the prime Noblemen, Gentlemen, and Ministers, were forced to flee for their lives out of the Kingdom; till all of them joining together did ride in Arms to Stirling, and by violence. though without hurt to any man's person, did the second time remove those Courtiers, and forever after kept them from the King, to the full quieting both of Church and State. This Rode of Stirling was much more cried out upon by the wicked Prelates and Courtiers, then the former of Ruthven, yet was it approved for good service to the King and State, not only as the former by the privy Counse • l, and convention of States, but also by the ensuing Parliament and so it remains unquarrelled unto this day.

Your third complaint is, that the general Assemblies do alter what the Law has established: all your examples hereof are, The Votes of the late general Assembly at Glasgow, condemning the civil places of Church-men, pronouncing the very office it self of Bishops to be unlawful in the Church, and crying down the high Commission Court. Here you fall upon the Parliament of England as fools and Traitours for letting themselves be persuaded by the Scots to swallow down their wicked Covenant. To all this, our Apology is brief, what ever power our general Assembly possesses, is all well allowed by the King and Parliament. The acts of that Assembly you complain of, are all ratified by the State: the order of our proceeding is appointed by Law, all matters Spiritual and Ecclesiastic, are first determined by the general Assembly, if the nature of the things require a civil Sanction, the Votes of the Assembly are transmitted to the Parliament, if a General Assembly have voted an Error, or anything that's wrong, and that corruption hath been ratified by an Act of Parliament: a Posterior general Assembly recognosces the matter, and finding an error in Religion, notwithstanding of the prior votes both of the Assembly and Parliament, does condemn it, and appoints Commissioners to represent the reasons of their vote to the next Parliament with an humble supplication to annul these Acts and Laws which did confirm the condemned corruption. This has been the method of proceeding in Scotland, since the first erection of a general Assembly: in this way were all the Errors of Popery first condemned in the Assembly before the Parliament did recall their old Laws whi •• •• nfirmed them. The form of this proceeding established by the Parliament it self, does not import any subordination either of the laws, or the Parliament to the Assembly.

At this place p. 46. you bring us another story whereupon you make tragick out-cries of the Assemblies insolent usurpations, it seems, you thought that this your book should never have come from Oxford into the hands of any Scottish man, who knew the Custom of the Judicatories of Scotland: I do marvel much at your impudence, that you should speak of the Assemblies encroaching upon the Lord's of Session, or meddling with any Civil cause, which the Law commits to any temporal Judicatory; there is no better harmony in the world, then always has been in Scotland between the civil and Ecclesiastical Judicatories; no interfeiring was ever among them, but what the Bishops made. You indeed in your high Commission did take causes both civil and Ecclesiastical to your Cognisance from all the Courts of the Kingdom, and did at your pleasure, without, and contrary to all known Laws, finally determine them, without any appeal, but to the King, by whom you were sure ever to be best be • eeved.

For the story in hand, I am content Spotswood be Judge, as he relates it, the matter was thus, Mr. John Graham, one of the Lord's of Session, or Judges of the Common Pleas, a very false and dishonest man, intended an action against some poor men, to put them from their Lands; for to effectuate his purpose, he seduced a public Notary dwelling at Stirling, and persuaded him to subscribe a false Writte, upon the which the poor men by a decree of the Lord's of Session were removed from their possessions. The oppressed souls cryd out of their injury, and intended action against the Notary for his false Writ; they got him arrested and imprisoned: The Minister of the bounds, Mr. Patrick Simpson, whom King James and all Scotland knew to be a most learned, zealous, and pious Pastor as was in the whole Isle, dealt with the Prisoner to confess the truth; after some conference, he confessed all, and declared how Mr. John Graham had sent his Brother to him, with a false Writte, which he did subscribe; an assize was called, the poor Notary upon his own cousession was condemned and hanged. Mr. John Graham, as covetous and false, so a most proud man would not rest satisfied, but presently summoned Master Patrick Simpson to appear before the Lord's of Session, as a seducer of the honest Notary to lie against his own life; Mr. Patrick was ready to clear his own innocence, whereof all were well persuaded, but shamefully wronged by an impudent man in his good name, he caused cite him before the Assembly, as a slanderer of a Minister in the work of his calling: the Lord's of Session not content that any of their number should be called before the Assembly for any action depending in their Court, did send some of their number to the Assembly for to debate the whole matter. The Assembly told them that they would not meddle with anything that was civil, nor which belonged to their Court; that they intended to take no notice of their decrees, at Mr. John Grahams instance to cast the poor 〈◊〉 out of their Land, whether it was right or wrong: nor the notaries Instrument wherefore he was hanged, whether it was true or false. They told them also, that whatsoever they had to say to Mr. Patrick Simpson, he was to answer them as they should think fit, in due time and place; the Assemblies question was alone about the slander of one of their Members whom Mr. John Graham did openly challenge as a Seducer, of a Notary to bear false witness; They had cited Mr. John Graham before them to make this good, that so they might censure Mr. Patrick Simpson, as a man unworthy of the Ministry, or if Mr. John Graham 's challenge was found a mere calumny, that he might be brought to repentance for it in acknowledging of his wrong. Let any equitable man judge how insolent the Assemblies proceeding in this action was; for a time there was some controversy about this matter betwixt the Assembly and the Session, but at last all was amicably composed, and God decided the question with the violent death, and public disgrace of Mr. John Graham.

What ye subjoin of King James trouble to the shedding of tears, I take it for your mere invention: for Spotswood the fountain of all your stories, who never fails to relate to the full, what ever is meet to draw any envy upon the good Ministers, who opposed the Episcopal designs, makes no mention at all of King James tears. I grant he reports that advice of the Chancellor, and some such reply to it as you speak of, but how t • uly I cannot tell, only this is most certain that what ever difference King James had with the Ministers, it was alone about the great Idol of his Prerogative, to do as a Monarch in Church and State what he thought convenient, with his prerogative in matters of State they did never meddle, but his design to bring Bishops and Ceremonies in the Church as they conceived, against law and reason, the most honest of the Ministry did ever oppose it to their power, albeit in a humble and warrantable way: others for their own gain and advancement, did yield to his desires, and assisted him with all their power, to advance his Prerogative so high, as to do, without any resistance, all his pleasure both in Church and State. But the Lord now has cleared that controversy, and has made the righteousness of these oppressed men shine as the light, and the baseness of these flatterers appear, in its own base and vile colors.

Concerning his Majesty's discourses at the Conference of Hampton Court, we confess they cannot be very favorable to any who opposed Episcopacy, which these of your Coat long before that time had made him believe was the main pillar of his Throne, and had persuaded him to look upon all, that was disaffected thereunto, as enemies to his Crown. But how far you are here mistaken in fastening upon Presbyterial government any furtherance of Democracy, not reason alone, but now also ample experience makes it evident, there is not such a bar this day, as both friends and foes do well know against the Sectaries designs to bring in a popular government in the Church, as Presbytery: And if your rules be right enemies to Democracy in the Church, will never be instruments to bring it in to the State.

If Presbytery could be partial towards any one civil Government more then another, its similitude and consanguinity with the constitution of a Parliament might make it suspected to be inclinable to the rights of that Court, more then a Prince or the multitude could desire: but the truth is it meddles not to the prejudice of any civil Government which it finds established by Law, but what ever that be, it supports it to its power, and how serviceable it has ever been to Monarchy in Scotland, examples both of old and late do demonstrate. Who were the prime instruments of settling King James in his infancy upon his Throne, who kept him into his Throne against all the assaults of his potent enemies? to whom in all his great straits had he ever his recourse during his abode in Scotland? to no other but to the Presbiterian Nobles, Gentry & Ministers if these had been disposed to have changed the government of the state there was oft no considerable impediments upon earth to have opposed them; but such a desire never entered into their thoughts. And of later times when the Presbytery in Scotland hath attained its highest aims, and is in capacity as you say to make what factions it will, when its provocations to a • ger were as great as readily can be again and the madness of you Malignant Prelates had laid the Crown in Scotland very low at such a season did the least disloyalty appear in any of the Presbiterian side, were not they and they only the men which set • ed that throne which you had caused to shake and astened the Crown upon that head from whence you hands by your extreme unjustice pride and folly had we • nere pulled it away? And at this very hour when you and all your friends are able to make no help at all to relieve not only the King and his house but the Royalty it self from that extreme hazard of ruin wherein you alone both have cast them, and with all your hearts would still continue them upon some fantastic hope which yet you have of attaining all your former desires, or else to revenge your disappointments though all the world should perish: At this time when you have cast the Crown, the Throne and Scepter in the dust who is able who now is willing to save the King or to keep Monarchy on foot? I hope albeit your dementation be great yet even you must see and confess that it is the Presbiterians and these alone by whose hearts and hands this work must be done which indeed your goodness and wisdom has made extremely difficult and well nere unfeasible.

You fall very needlessly on Mr. Catherwood the Author of that Book altare darna scenum, a man of greater worth then all the Prelates that ever Scotland bred, put them all in one. Durst ever any or all of you look that man or his Book, in the face? you had long twenty years leisure to answer, but was ever the courage among you all to assay it? I do not love to speak, or when it is spoken by others, to defend anything that may rub upon authority, yet when sycophanticall Prelates make it their work to bring most honest and gracious men in disgrace with Princes for some incomodious phrases which in the heat and current of large discourses have escaped their pens, who shall but vindicate their innocence from such flaterers accusations.

Is it a crime for Master Catherwood to write, that in all Kings naturally their is a hatred to Christ; what do you here intend to censure? are not all men naturally enemies to God? unto this natural Corruption that is Cōmon to all flesh does not great places in the world especially Crowns and Throns, add many provocations, from which poverty and meannes gives exemption; what would you here reprove? speak out plainly your Pelagian tenet, deny original sin, make it one of the Royal Prerogatives in virtue of the Crown, to be naturally gracious and an advancer of Christ's Kingdom.

The other word you make your adversary to say (albeit you profess you speak per cur ) is, that King James was a most insense enemy to the purity of Religion: If such terms were ever expressed, of what think you must they be understood, what is the subject of that speech and of the whole Book wherein you say it stands? Is it not of the Government of the Church and the English Ceremonies alone? to say that King James was a great friend to these, and agreat opposite to the contrary, which yet the Parliaments of both Kingdoms now, and the rest of the reformed Churches ever did profess was truth, and a part of the purity of Religion: the affirmation of so much I hope will not be found a very monstrous crime, though you believe Episcopacy to be so fundamental a truth that all its opposites must needs be most properly Heretics.

In the remnant of your Book from the page 48. to the 53. you make your declamatiōs against the Commissioners of the General Assembly, you will have them to be the fountain of all the Treasons, Seditions, Rebellions of the Land; but you should do well to prove this rather then to say it, for you know that your assertions have no faith and deserve none in Scotland: reason you can have none in the nature of the thing, for all established Courts either in Church or State have naturally a power in themselves to make Committees for the furthering of that work which the Laws of the Kingdom put in their hands. It is true, Committees under that name, were not early known in Scotland, the name and a part of the thing we learned from our Neighbors of England, but so soon as the General Assemblies did think meet to appoint some of their number to be a standing Committee to their next meeting, the expedient was unanimously embraced and liked of by none so well after a little trial, as by King James and the State. I did never hear any hurt charged upon these Committees but one, that by the Kings extraordinary diligence with some of them, they were seduced to lay some ground stones, whereupon Episcopal Chaires were afterward set down; but what here you lay to their charge is evidently false. Queen Regent was suspended from her authority by the state before there was any General Assembly in Scotland, Queen Mary was put from the Government and King James established therein by the Parliament; the Nobility at Ruthven did persuade King James to send the Duke of Lenox back to France, and remove Captain James from Court before any Commissioners of a General Assembly were so much as thought upon: Being of necessity must precede all operation, It is folly to charge crimes upon a Committee before it had any existence, but all these your discourses are used as a preface and introduction to that grand Common place of the bitterest invectives of all your friends, the 17. day of December which you make the topstone and close of all your calumnies.

That much tossed matter, as I find it in Spotswood and others much more worthy Authors, was this. After the miscarriage of the Spanish design upon this Isle in 88. the Popish faction of Scotland did still keep correspondence with Philip and his Ministers both in Spain and West Flanders: Agents, Letters, Monies were ever going betwixt them; great hopes yearly of a new Navy, which failing, the Jesuits moved Huntly and his complices to enterprise by themselves; these things were all discovered. Queen Elizabeth, who in all the popish designs was primely aimed at, did send frequent advertisements of their plots, which by intelligencers in Rome and Spain, she came to understand. The General Assembly did excommunicate Huntly, the head of that turbulent faction, The King denounced him Rebell, he was often relaxed from the sentence both civil and Ecclesiastic, yet he ever relapsed and entered in new conspiracys for the overthrow of the Religion and Kingdom. The man was very bloody powerful and active.

After Chancellor Maitlands death the prime Courtiers were known Papists, and drew the Kings mind to receive Huntly again into favor, contrary to the Supplications of all his well-affected Subjects, and the manifold Letters of the Queen of England; these same Courtiers under pretence of managing the Kings rent, did grasp into their hands all the Offices of State, and favors of the Prince, to the extreme discontent of the most of their fellow Courtiers: Besides all this, they made it their chief design to kindle the Kings wrath against the most zealous of the Ministry; they brought matters to such a pass in the beginning of December 1596. that the King in displeasure did Command by Proclamation the Commissioners of the General Assembly to dissolve, and go out of Edinburgh, they presently obeyed the charge; So what ever followed thereafter is unjustly charged upon that Committee, which long before the seventeenth day was dissolved and gone out of Town.

On the sixteenth day, Huntly, who had killed the Earl of Murray, had defeat Argyles Army, had come to the fields against the King in person, conspired with the Spaniard to bring in the Armado, solicited often the Prince of Farma for a new Navy, plotted the taking of the King, and killing of the Chancellor in his presence, This man though both banished and excommunicate, coming boldly to Court, put all Edinburgh in a just fear. So much the more, as in the morning o • the sevententh day, some of the Kings chief Servants and Bedchamber men (who it seems indeed had a real intention to raise some trouble against the Octavians, by whom they were spoiled of their places and means) did inform the Ministers and others, of Huntlies privy conference with the King the evening before, till midnight: this afterward was found to be but feigned by them; yet it was most true, that by these men's misinformations, that very night the King by Proclamation as he had done before with the Commissioners of the Gene • all Assembly commanded in the morning of the 17 Twenty four of the chief and most zealous Citizens of Edinburgh to depart the Town. All these things falling out together put the people in extreme fear of a present Massacre by the hands of Huntly, of the popish Courtiers and their faction. To prevent this mischief Mr. Balcanquall whom it fell to preach that day, after Sermon desired the chief of them who were present to stay for advisement what was needful to be done for their own safety: in the meeting, nothing at all was resolved upon, but a humble supplication to his Majesty that they might be in security from the dangerous plots of the Papists, That the Lady Huntly, an excommunicate Papist, might be removed from Court and sent home, That three of the Counselors known papists and correspondents with Rome, (as their Letters thereafter found with the Pope did prove) might not vote at the Counsel Table in the causes of Ministers, That the Citizens banished out of Edinburgh without the allegiance of any cause might be returned to their houses. This most innocent Petition was sent to his Majesty by two noble men, Lindsay and Forbes, two Barons, Bargeny and Blachan, and two Ministers, Master Robert Bruce, and Master William Watson. Master Robert Bruce did speak to his Majesty so humbly and with so much reason that he gave no offense, but when his Majesty did inquire at the Noblemen how they durst convene without his express warrant; Lindsay, by kind a zealous Spirit, but ever most Loyall, being in passion at this, question, that when their Lives and Religion (as they conceived) were in extreme and present hazard, they should be quarrelled for meeting in a peaceable manner, only to draw a modest supplication, did say, that they durst do more then meet, to supplicate; with these words his Majesty was offended but not in that degree as to cast down his countenance on the Noble man therefore; only he went away without giving any answer to their petition.

What here you add of your own, of craving justice against the Counselors, of laying hold upon some of their garments, all is grossly false even Spotswood being Judge; who had much better reason to know the Acts of that day then you, who then was scarce borne, but he was one of the most diligent of all the company, to arm himself and all others he could, especially his pat • on Tarfichen.

The Messengers returning to them that sent them, reported the matter as it was, that his Majesty had not deigned them with any answer at all this did much increase the fear of the whole company, while they are in consultation what to do, some without the doors suborned by the malcontent Courtiers did cry, that Huntly and the Popish Lord's were coming upon them to make a massacre: Master Robert Bruce did what he was able to compose the people, but amazement had stopped their ears, all got to their Arms, in which they did not continue a full half hour: for before the Sermon ended it behooved to be nere ten, and before they could convene draw up their supplication, go to the King and return, doubtless it was more then eleven, and long before twelve all the tumult was quieted, the King on foot went down the streets in peace, to his dinner in the Abby, and came up again to Counsel, before two of the clock, no violence at all was so much as offered to any man. The people being frighted, and apprehending upon very probable grounds a present surprise of their town and persons, run to their Arms for defense, but finding no Enemy to appear, presently they laid aside their weapons without any compulsion either from the Hammer men or any other: for such a poor resistance, as all their opposites were able then to have made, could have saved no man out of their hand, to whom they had intended any real harm. No tumult in the world was ever more harmless in the effects, nor more innocent in the causes, if you consider all those who did openly act therein.

What you speak of a Letter to Hamilton, you are extremely malicious therein: when you have told us two great untruths, first that the result of the Ministers deliberation was to go to arms: Secondly that they did conclude to pull the Counseliours from His Majesty's side, in both which, Spo • swood who was present at all these Counsels is against you; you will contradict him in this third also: for he tells us that there was no word of any Letter to any man that day of the tumult: but tomorrow, when at Court their was nothing heard, but hanging of Ministers and Citizens, heading of Noblemen and Barons, razeing of the Town of Edinburgh, and plowing of it to be sown with Salt: then some Letters were appointed to be sent to Hamilton, Bacleugh and others to come and countenance their Brethren, that Religion might not be ruined, this was all the direction as your Author sets it down. He says indeed that Master Robert Bruce wrote some more to my Lord Hamilton, but who dare trust a Prelates word when his design is to disgrace his enemy, or if all were true, what does the Letter of any particular Minister concern the Church of Scotland or the General Assembly.

This was the 17. day of December, the Courtiers and Prelatical faction did exaggerate it to the most horrid rebellion that ever was upon the earth, but how unjustly. Queen Elizabeth by her wise Letters recorded by Spe • swood, does well declare. It was indeed a most sad day to all the Godly; but most joyful to all their enemies; for as they did insolently but too truly boast, it paved them a very fair way, to bring Prerogative to its Throne, yea to set it up upon the highest pinnacle of power they could desire, and withal to make Bishops get upon their kicking horse which before would never receive them; It put into the hand of the Prince a facility without any hazard of future resistance, to do in the Church and State what ever seemed good in his eyes. Such advantages are exceeding sweet in the mouth, and are swallowed down with a great deal of greediness by those who long have been lying in wait to catch them; but ere all be done, they become in the belly wormwood and gall, as the royal family to our grief, but the Prelates and Malignant Courtiers to our good enough liking, do feel this day.

We are come at last to the end of your Calumnious stories which yourself upon very good reason confesseth to be wearisome. But yet before you can be drawn off, you must hint at on another as false and malicious as any of the former. Your Author in this and the rest of your narrations, is only Spotswood, whom in this wicked fable though you and he both would swear it, no intelligent Scotsman would believe.

Who will believe that Master James Melvil, a most gracious and wife man very much in favor with the King, more then any of those who then were hunting after Bishoprics; that this faithful man having in his hands the religious aims and charitable contribution of the Country, to the distressed town of Geneva, the City in the whole world, which Scotland at that time loved best should send it to the Earl Bothwell to raise an Army against the King at a time when his Majesty was in so good terms with the Church as ever either after or before: when the Town of Edinburgh, was most ready for one word of the Kings mouth to run out presently with him and fight with Bothwell, who then was much hated by all the god • y for his adulteries and other personal crimes, and was known to be confederate with the popish Lord's against the Church, and who lately in the eighty eight, had been a forward persuader to invade England by Land, as the Spaniards did by Sea that such a man should be assisted against the King and Town of Edinburgh, by any moneys much less by the alms gathered for Geneva, and that all this should be done by Master James Melvil, is such a calumny, as Satan could not fancy a falser, but a far more foolish liar then either you or Spotswood, might easily have contrived a more probable fable, this is like the Tale of Beza 's conversion to popery, of Calvin's consultation to change the Sabbath day; of Luther's conference with the Devil.

When you have over-wearied both yourself and us, you will yet add as a mantissa and appendix, two other points, first you set down the twelve Articles of our Creed, Since you are so good at the confessing of your Neighbors, I would gladly know what your own faith may be: what you ascribe here to us, ye do it without any ground, either of reason or Authority: your simple assertions must be the very Articles of your Creed. Some years ago we did see a book called Ladonsium Autocatacrisis, wherein by formal and express testimonies, not the articles of your faith, for you are an avowed paucifidian, but such opinions as you and your companions did preach and print, are set down at large. Wherein it was demonstrate, that you and your bosom friends in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, did hold grosser Arminianism, Popery and Tiranny then the worst of the Canterburians in England: also in the beginning of this Treatise, we did see under your own hand, such a confession of your faith, as few of the most malignant of your party will have the impudence to subscribe it with you.

But be your faith what it may, for it is like that times and occasions may make you hide or open, yea, vary and change, as you find it most convenient for your purpose: I am content freely to tell you my mind, in all these Articles (as you style them) of our Creed. I never heard of the first, but in your Pamphlet; no Presbiterian ever dreamed of any necessity, to change the government of the State, that it might be conform to the Church; but many Episcopal and all Erastians do hold the government of the Church to be a matter of so indifferent arbitrary and changeable a nature, that it may well comply, and ought to be conformed to the model of every State wherein it requires to be entertained. The true tenet of all approved among us, so far as I know is, that the government of the Church and State are two really distinct policies, both ordained of God, which without his displeasure may not be confounded, nor ought not to encroach one upon another. That the wrath of God will be on that Church, and on these Church-men, who for any advantage they apprehend, can come either to the Church, or to themselves, will go to trouble or change any civil State, be it Monarchy, Aristocracy, Democracy, or what ever else, which by the just laws of any people is settled in a Land; on the other side that God will be angry with every State, and all those Statesmen who for the advancement of their own, or the States interest, will go to impede, trouble, or change that government of the Church, which Christ in his Testament has left to his servants unto his second coming.

For the second we do maintain a parity among Ministers, courting it an Antichristian ambition for any one, to make himself Lord Bishop over the rest, but this is far from any Democracy, for we put all the Ministers of a Kingdom under the jurisdiction of a National Assembly, the rules whereof use to be so just and exact, that where they are reverenced, there is no danger of any popular confusion, much less then where Episcopal either Tiranny, or Obligarchy does prevail.

For the third to our Consistories we give no Independent power, these with us are all subordinate to Classical Presbiteries, and to our National Assemblies we give no power to meddle with any temporal things at all, nor any Legislative power about things spiritual. When they have past their Votes upon a matter spiritual according to the rules of the word of God. If any Law or civil Sanction be needful, they supplicate the Magistrate whom they never presume to command to be an executioner of their Decrees, (these be but your calumnies) only they entreat him to make such Laws as he finds the equity of the matter in his own conscience to require. You indeed profess an inthronization of Bishops, and give to them not only a directive power over the King, but an authoritative to excommunicate him, and if he to save his Crown will be content that his Parliaments do with your Thrones and Myters what they think expedient; you print to the world, that this shall bring a remediless and perpetual ruin both on the King and his people, themselves and their posterities.

For the fourth, the Laws of Scotland allow to the General Assembly a power to Judge of all divine truths and heresies, so that if they find popish, Episcopal or what ever Errors established by Acts of Parliament, yet they are authorized to proceed to give their sentence from the word of God, not of the Law, but of the Error, to which Churchmen in their ignorance have procured a Sanction; as for the Law, the Parliament when they sit, take it into their own consideration; never any Assembly of the reformed Church, dealt either with Prince or Parliament, for the reclaiming of a Law otherwise then by humble supplication. What you speak of a corrective power, the Church of Scotland did ever disclaim it, all compulsion by outward inconvenients they remitted ever to the State. As for the censures of the Church, no faction ever has been more prodigal of them both in doctrine and practice, then you and your gracious Brethren the Prelates.

For the fifth, we exeem no Minister who preaches Treason, from the cognizance and punishment of the Magistrate, only by the Laws of our Kingdom, the judgment of Ministers doctrine in the first instance, belongs to the Ecclesiastich Judicatory.

For the sixth, we pretend no power to make the Magistrate add the civil Sanction to any of our Assemblies Decrees, further then his own conscience, the Justice of the thing, the former Laws of the Land, the humble and earnest desire of the Subjects does plead for: but you before your Tippets and Rotchets be laid aside, will permit three Kingdoms to be consumed with fire and sword, without any remedy: unless your thrones may be re-established, King and people must be destroyed forever; And this you tell us must be and shall be, but in many things we have found you false prophets, and fear not your causeless curses.

For the seventh, we maintain no power of the Church to reform and preserve Religion, but such as does well consist with that duty which God has laid upon the Magistrate, both for the reformation of Religion, and preservation of it when it is reformed.

For the eight, we maintain that the sins of the Magistrate does not excuse the people for their neglect of any duty that God has laid upon them, and when Superiors are resolved to live and die in Idolatry, we think that every inferior Magistrate, and every person is obliged to keep himself free of corruption, and so far as he is able, to reform his own soul, but not to be a public reformer of a Country without a lawful calling.

For the ninth, all the Covenants of our Land are warranted by Acts of Parliament, and how ever by the misinformation of Prelates, the King for a time judged them illegal, yet at last he found them just and necessary, according to the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom; we indeed do maintain, when a handful of wicked Prelates do seduce a Prince to destroy himself and whole Kingdoms, that in that case it is lawful for the Nobles and States of a Land to stand upon their guard, and we cannot subscribe to these prime fundamental Articles of your faith, That the Supremacy of Britain is so far exalted above all Law divine and human, that the Parliaments of both Kingdoms for their most necessary defensive Arms, are to be condemned by God and all men, for Traitors and Rebels, yet your good friends, the Idolatrous murderers of Ireland, must be registered to posterity for good Catholic subjects. No marvel you believe all this, when you profess your advice to all Princes, rather to admit of the worst whoredoms of Rome, the very Jesuitisme of Raviliack and Faux, then of the Presbyterial government. Behold whither despite may carry the spirit of an excommunicate Prelate.

For the tenth, our Assemblies meddle not with questions of State, if the original of royalty be so from heaven, that men on earth had never any hand in making of a King: if in any immaginable case, a King be censurable such questions were never proposed so much as for debate in any Assembly of Scotland; unhappy Bishops, who must needs profane the Crowns of Kings, by making their Sovereignty and mysterious Prerogatives, their ordinary quodlibets to be tossed as Tennis balls in their common discourse, Sermons and Pamphets. It was a very unhappy day for the Kings of Britain, when the feet of Prelates got first leave to touch the threshold of the Court, and their evil eyes to behold the Jewels of the Crown, or their soul hands to touch the hem of the royal Robes: such infaust harppies polute all things though most sacred, to which they approach.

For the eleventh, though it never came to be scanned in any Assembly, yet I know no honest man of Scotland that makes question of the thing. The King and Parliament has enacted the lawfulness of our late defensive Arms; but the Acts of that Parliament are not much to your mind, for they cast you out of your native Country, as a prime incendiary unfit to breath more in that Air.

The twelfth is, but to make up the number, being the same with the former.

The conclusion of your Articles, is but a malicious railing invective, very suitable to your mouth: it's contrary to reason and experience, as oft we have said before, but you cannot spare Tauttologies.

The second part of your Appendix is your Postscript, wherein you make a large muster of your Episcopal Territories and tell us that the major part of the reformed Churches in Christendom, do retain Episcopacy also that the removal thereof from England, is the fountain of all our present Sects: you may know that all our Heresies and Sects, did breed under the wings of Episcopacy, the reason why now they appear so thick in public, is not the removal of Episcopacy, but the retarding of Presbyterial government, and the plague of our too too long annarchie.

That your Episcopacy is to be found in any reformed Church, is a great untruth, we grant it is to be seen in your Eastern and Western Churches, the first of your Catalogue: but you would speak a little more plainly, that people may understand your mind, what Western Church is this that you propone unto us for a pattern of Episcopacy? is it any other then the good old Mother Church of Rome, which many of you cry up for so true a Church, that all Protestants are Shismaticks, for their needless separation-there-from, and that among Princes those are most happy, who shall heal that breach, and once again make us all to be one: under our holy Father the Pope, the first Bishop of Christendom, whom all the Bishops in Britain, and in the whole world, ought by a good Ecclesiastic right, to reverence as the first Patriarch, the constant moderator of all Ecumenic Counsels.

Your Eastern Churches are those of Greece and Asia, whose corruptions, albeit not like to these of Rome, yet are so many and gross, as none, but such as you will propone them for patterns of imitation.

In the rest of you • Catalogue you are pleased to play the Herald and Cosmographer, of purpose to terrify simple people, by the many names of your large territories. You know the world scorns the Rodomontades of Spain, their King must not be styled as his neighbors of France, and great Britain: but he will be called the King of Castile, the King of Aragon, the King of Portugal, the King of Leon, and a large & caetera of many Kingdoms, yet all in Spain. Might you not have said that Episcopacy was continued in all the Lutheran Churches of Germany, which will not make the third part of that Country, deducing the Calvinists and Papists.

In your great vanity you reckon up the Earldom of Henneberg, Lenning, and these that follow to the number of Thirteene, as if they were all great, and considerable Provinces: and yet put them all together, they will scarce make up one fifth part of some English shires.

But for the matter, are the Lutheran Churches esteemed by any well advised Protestants the best reformed, whereof our Covenant speaks; It seems, the worse Churches be reformed you like them the better, for they are so much nearer to your best beloved in Rome, but true Covenanters are not of your mind.

Further, what you speak of the Lutheran Churches is altogether false: That in Germany, or anywhere else among Protestants, anything which you call Episcopacy is to be sound, I marvel if you should believe it: for I pray where ever, except in England, did any Protestants spoil all Pastors of all power, both of Ordination and Jurisdiction to put it in the hand of one Prelat: to be exercised either by himself, or by any depute Ecclesiastic, or civil, as he thought fittest.

The Dutch Superintendens are as like to English Bishops, as an Emperor in the days of Fabius Maximus, when the Senate ruled all, to an Emperor in the days of Tiberius or Nero, when an absolute Prince, I will not say a Tirant, did govern all at his pleasure. The name is one, but the things are essentially different, and so far distant as the East is from the West.

While you cast yourself upon the Smectymnians, and will still rail upon our Covenant, we desiderate your piety, but while you appeal to Calvin and Beza for your Episcopacy, we miss your Common sense. All the Episcopacy, which ever you had or ever aimed at, was most immoderate, and the most moderate Episcopacy that can be conceived, is a mere human invention, which has no ground at all in the word of God; which in all times and places has proved unhappy to the Church, and which at this time is talked of by some for no other end, but to be a new beginning and step to such a Prelacie as may be serviceable to the Prince as before, for the advanceing of his Prerogative in Church and State, above all Law and reason. How ridiculous is it to hear most immoderate spirits talk of moderation: to speak of a moderate Episcopacy, a moderate Popedom, a moderate Tyranny, is to tell us of a chaste Bordell an honest cousinage a meek murder, and such like repugnancies: men now are no more childish to be cozened by your distinctions out of their Covenant.

BEE entreated to pardon sundry literal faults, and many mispunctations, and some other grosser typographicall faults which corrupt the sense.

An ANSWER to the DECLARATION.

AS Every passion when too much stirred, has a power to send up vapors and mists for darkening the light of the mind, so especially anger and malice do dazzle and blind the eye of reason: Too much wrath devests men so far of understanding, as to make them take up such Arms against an Enemy, which cannot hurt him, but fail not to pierce themselves and their best friends with dangerous wounds.

The opposites of Presbyterial government (be they Independents, or Erastians, or whoever) when after all other devices, they think fit for the help of their cause, to reprint here, and put in the hand of people, the old and forgotten calumnies formerly invented, and spread, by the SCOTS excommunicate Prelates, by such weapons they will not be able to effect what they intend; yet by such practices, they cannot fail (in the heart of intelligent beholders) to wound their own reputation, proclaiming either gross ignorance, or very malicious fraud in this their offer to abuse the simplicity of people, with writs, which are fraughted with most notorious lies.

Concerning the Title; A Declaration made by King JAMES in Scotland: They who have acquaintance with the SCOTS affairs of that time, do know this writ to have no more relation unto King JAMES, then the late large Declaration had to King CHARLES; both carry the name of Kings, but the specious pretence of a royal title was not able to save the true Authors of either, from the just censure which they deserved, by such false and malicious slandering of their Mother-Church and native Country. Doctor Balcanquall, for his wicked service in penning that large Declaration, in King CHARLE's name, was condemned as a Lyar, and Incendiary, and so stands registered, both in that general Assembly and Parliament of Scotland , which King CHARLES by the advice of his Houses here, did lately ratify .

The Bishop Adamsor, for the like disservice in King James pretended Declaration, does not also remain in the Records of the Assemblies and Parliaments of Scotland, • ignmatized with the same Note of perpetual infamy, nothing impeded, but his public Declaration of repentance.

That King James, notwithstanding of all his favor to Episcopacy, was neither the Author nor approver of this Declaration, I demonstrate thus: First, Master Patrick Adamson, upon his death-bed, put it under his hand with a solemn Oath, that he himself was the Author of that Wryt, which he had drawn by the direction of the Chancellor and Secretary (two very wicked Courtiers) contrary to the mind of the King. Secondly, when the Commissioners of the general Assembly, the very next year at the Parliament of Lithgow, did complain to the King, of the many false and wicked aspersions of that Declaration. His Majesty did take such notice of their grievances, that with his own hand he did write a new Declaration, much differing from the former, which he told them was not his, but the Archbishops .

Thirdly, the Acts of Parliament upon which this Declaration is grounded, and which it doth interpret, were all annulled some few years thereafter; and the Presbiterian government, which this writ tendeth to disgrace, was completely set up by the King, and States of Parliament, to the great joy of the whole Land .

More needs not be said for the confounding and filling with shame the faces of them, who in the reprinting of this Pamphlet could have no other intention, but to grieve and disgrace them, whom by word they call Brethren; but in heart and works, they evidently malign as enemies, without any cause. Adamson (the true Father) confesseth it to be a Bastard, and supposititious birth wholly composed of lies and slanders. King James disclaims it, and puts a new Declaration in its place; the States of Parliament in King James his presence, and with his open allowance, abolished the Acts whereupon it was founded; rooting out Episcopacy, which it dothplant, and building up Presbyteries and Synods, which it professeth to demolish.

Yet for more abundant satisfaction, let us consider its particular parts: It contains first a Preface: Secondly, an explanation of four Acts of the Parliament at Edinbrough, 1584. Thirdly, an enumeration of some fourteen intentions ascribed to the King.

In the Preface, there is a narrative of the causes of the subsequent Declaration; all resolves upon the alleged Lyes of some evil affected persons, laboring to impair his Majesty's honor and fame: Upon this we remark that the late unhappy trick of Courtiers and Prel • tes, is no less ancient then this Declaration; it was the ordinary custom of these ungrate and imprudent men, to charge the back of the King with their own faults; the bones of Kings are supposed by Sycophants to be so strong, that no burden is able to bow, much less to break them. As King Charles has ever been •• o ready and willing to take upon himself the guilt of his servants, upon what ever hazard; the same was his Fathers condition, yet with this difference, King James was willing to bear his Servants burdens, till he found they pinched, but so soon as they began to press him anything sore, he was so wise and just to himself and others, that he laid them always over upon the neck of those whom in reason it concerned to bear them.

About that time, the fame of Kings James his Learning, Piety, and personal virtues did flourish at home and abroad; the well-affected, who chiefly are aimed at, were so far from impairing his personal reputation, that in their very censure of this Declaration, they give unto him an excellent testimony . But at that same time, his Court was so exceedingly corrupted, that the good men in the whole Isle, both English and Scots did lament it; Captain James Stuart by his cunning crept up to be Chancellor, became so insolent a Tyrant, that neither the greatest nor the most innocent had security either of their life or Estate . The best Ministers were forced to leave the Kingdom. The Duke of Lennox, whose power with the King was greatest, had lately come over from the Guisians in France, though the man himself was of a very good and meek nature, yet he had his instructions and dependence from the Authors and instruments of the French Massacres; he made it his work to further the interest of France, to the prejudice of England: he corresponded with the French and Scots Traffickers for Queen Mary's deliverance out of prison; yea, for her return to the throne of Scotland in an association with her Son . These things which all the Writers of that time do record, did so fill the hearts of all good people with fears, for changes both of Religion and Laws, that neither English nor Scots did spare to express them in their ordinary discourses . Unto this frightment of the people, the Acts of Parliament, procured by the forenamed Masters of the Court, did much add; for the allaying whereof, this Declaration was penned, but to no purpose, as Spotswood himself tells us .

For no satisfaction was ever taken, till both the Duke, Chancellor, Secretary and Archbishop Adamson were banished the Court, and the acts of Parliament of their invention abolished as noxious and evil.

What is here said of King James his command to publish this Declaration, I do not find it verified in any Register, either of the Church or Kingdom of Scotland that hath fallen in my hand; but if any such command did come from him at that time of his minority and great temptation▪ through the continual evil offices of them that then managed his Counsels, it were a case no more strange then these which often since we have seen in both Kingdoms: many Proclamations and Declarations by false and wicked informations, have been drawn from King James and King Charles, and many other Princes, which upon better advisement have been called in and buried; the Proclamation concerning sports and plays upon the Sabbath, the Service-Book and Book of Canons, the Declarations of the Rebellion of the Parliaments of both Kingdoms, we all know. For my part, I love not to rake out • f the grave, the carcases of these buried Writs, for the infamy of the Prince, or the prejudice of the Subject.

We shall s • y no more to the preface, come to the interpretation of these offensive Acts of that Parliament at Edinburgh, 1584. As for the first Act, the explanation here made upon it did no way remove its offense, for both the Act and its explanation attribute to the Ministers only the administation of the Word and Sacraments, without any mention at all of any discipline; this seems to have been one chief cause why the worshipful Licenser was pressed with so much importunity, to give his Imprimatur to this Writ, as if this passage had been a demonstration of King James his Erastianism; but let the world take notice of the grossness of this mistake by this short information.

The Commissioners of the general Assembly, were required by his Majesty at the Parliament of Lithgou, 1585. to give him in the grounds of their grievances against the Acts of the Parliament at Edenbrugh, 1584. here explained : In their Animadversion upon the Act now in hand, they did show his Majesty that the power of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Church-Censures, did belong to them by divine right, no less then the power of preaching the Word, and Celebrating the Sacraments .

Also that the Laws of the Kingdom, ever since the Reformation, did ratify that their right ; and that hitherto they had been in peaceable possessiō thereof : The King in his Reply to this animadversion, does not deny any of these Alleageances. yea, he declares under his hand, that he did not intend to take from Church Officers any part of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, but only so to regulate the execution of Discipline, that some part thereof might be put in the hand of Prelates, this was the only point in controversy : Whence it appears, how far his Majesty was from all Erastianism, though his affection to prelacy at that time was too great, which yet he changed quickly thereafter as we shall see anon.

The explanation of the second Act, consists of a Narrative and Ordinance built thereupon: the Narrative has the alleged misbehaviours of some Ministers; Master Andrew Melvile alone is named, as joining in conspiracies with Rebels against the King, as Preaching seditious Doctrine, and disclaining the King and Counsel of State, for his Judges. The Ordinance is concerning the Kings Supremacy; divers things are here jumbled together confusedly and odiously, to these two purposes, by the Abbot of Dunfermeling (Secretary for the time) the Penner of this passage, as Adamson the writer of the rest confesseth .

Concerning the first, Master Andrew Melvils case, the Narrative is most untrue, as I shall make good by undeniable evidence. Master Melvil was an excellent Divine, the principal professor of Divinity in the University first of Glasgow, and then of S. Andrew's, full of piety, eloquence and learning of all sorts; so eminent in zeal for the truth, that his remembrance is yet very precious, not in Scotland alone, but in other reformed Churches; his heroic courage made him an eye-sore to the Masters of the Court, whose wickedness he and his Scholars, according to their place and duty, did masculously oppose. From this it was, and nothing else, that an Accusation was invented against him, as for seditious and treasonable words against the Kings Mother Queen Mary, then prisoner in England.

When he came to his Answer upon his solemn Oath, he denied his Charge; and for his clearing, he produced three famous testificats; the first under the hand of all the Masters and Regents of the University; the second under the hand of all the Magistrates and Common counsel of Saint Andrew's; the third under the hands of the whole Classical Presbytery of the bounds, who all were his frequent hearers, and the most of them had been present at the challenged Sermon, all of them did testify the Charge to be a vile calumny, and that he had spoken no such words as were alleged; also that both in his Pulpit and Chair and ordinary discouse, it was his custom to press so much loyalty and obedience, as any duty did require .

The witness brought in against him did depose nothing to his prejudice, though the Chancellor, Captain James, his spiteful enemy did sit in the Counsel as his Judge.

Yea, if Spotswood may be trusted, he was not found guilty of any the least part of his challenge, but the sentence against him proceeded alone upon some alleged rash words to the King in the heat of his defense .

As for his conscience of any conspiracy, he denied it upon Oath, neither was any witness brought in to say anything upon that allegiance; if anymore were needful for the clearing of his innocence, Adamsous Oath and Subscription is extant, wherein he condemns this part of the Narative of falsehood, and justifies Master Melvill, as a most just and honest man; yea King James himself when the Commisssioners of the Church did complain to him of these slanderous imputations, did promise them under his hand, that they should be rescinded: It is true, that Master Melvill when he was sentenced, did flee to England for his life, the time being so evil, that according to Spotswoods Relation, the King by the practices of the Courtiers in his minority, was forced to permit and oversee too often the execution of divers good & innocent men, yet how little displeasing Master Melvils flight was to the King, a short time did declare, for within a few months he returned, and was restored both to his Charge and the Kings favor, wherein he did constantly continue, till the death of Queen Elizabeth did call his Majesty to the Throne of England, a day very joyful to both Kingdoms, but most sorrowful to the Church of Scotland; for so soon as the English Prelates got King James amongst them, they did not rest till Master Melvill and the prime of the Scots Divines were called up to London, and only for their necessary and just defense of the truth of God and liberties of the Church of Scotland, against Episcopal usurpations, were either banished or confined, or so sore oppressed, that grief did break their heart, and brought the most of them to their graves with sorrow; the whole Discipline of the Church of Scotland was overthrown, to the very great trouble and disquieting of the Church and Kingdom: This violence did lie silent under the Prelates Chaires for many years, but at last, blessed be God, it has spoken to purpose, it has moved the Heavens and shaken the earth, to the tumbling of all these Antichristian Tyrants in the three Kingdoms, with their seats of pride, into the gulf of ruin, whence we hope there shall be no more emersion.

The last thing objected to Master Mervill, is his declinator of the King; when the state of the Question is known, this will appear no great crime; for the Question was not, Whether Ministers be exempt from the Magistrates jurisdiction, nor, Whether the Pulpit puts men in a liberty to teach treason without any civil cognizance and punishment, since the Reformation of Religion, no man in Scotland did ever assert such things; but the Question was, as Spotswood himself states it, Whether the Counsel was a competent Judge to Malter Melvils doctrine in prima instantia, these were the express terms; Master Melvill did protest for the liberties of the Church ratified by law avowing that as civil actions could not be called from before the ordinary Judicato ies to the Counsel Table, though the King by his Letters should command it; so causes merely Ecclesiastical should not be brought from the Presbyteries and Synods, at least in the first instance: He did also protest, that the liberties of the University should not be violate, for it was a privilege of old, conferred and very lately confirmed both by King and Parliament, that no member of the University should be called before any Judicatory, to the time their cause was heard and discussed within the University it self; whether these Protestations were treasonable and dissonant from the Laws and constant practice of Scotland, will appear more anon; so much of the narrative.

The Ordinance pretended to be made upon occasion of Master Melvils misbehaviour, was the Act of the Kings Supremacy over all persons, That none should decline his Highness Authority: Where it is to be observed, that the contrivers of this Declaration, while they endeavor to show the occasion and rise of that second Act from Master Meloil and other Ministers, their stirring up of people to Rebellion against their native King, and their refuling to acknowledge the Sovereign judgment for a godly quietness and order in the Common-wealth, to appertain to his Highness care and solicitude: And it being professed in the same Declaration concerning that Act, that his Majesty's intention was only to repress that immunity, privilege and exemption invented by the Pope to exempt himself and his Clergy from all judgment of Princes: Yea, the Declaration expressy waveth th Question of the Kings Supremacy in judging of cause Ecclesiastical, as not belonging to that present condition of affairs, the Question being neither concerning heresies, interpretation of Scripture, the lawful and ordinary Ecclesiastical Judgment for preserving and maintaining Church Discipline; nor concerning the power of Synods, but concerning some of the Ministry joining themselves (as is there pretended) to Rebels, and disquieting the State: These things considered, it will appear, that as this Declaration infinitely wrongeth these learned and godly Ministers (who were far from any disloyal doctrines or popish tenets, concerning the immunity of Ministers from all judgment of Princes, in matters belonging to quietness and order in the Common-wealth, so it doth not clearly hold forth that which peradventure was intended and is endeavored (in point of the Magistrate his supremacy in Ecclesiasticis ) by some who were very solicitous to have this Declaration reprinted; whose principles suffer them not to rest satisfied with that measure of power, which in a reformed and well constructed Church doth (by the Word of God, and by the Doctrine of the ancient and reformed Churches) belong to the civil Magistrate in reference to Religion and causes Ecclesiastical (wherein also their power is further enlarged in extraordinary cases, when the ordinary ways and means of reformation cannot be had: Some hopes (it seems) there were to find in this Declaration another kind of Supremacy, which is now the idol of many mifinformed minds, which is also hightned far above the moderate interpretations which were given by Doctor Bilson and Doctor Usher.

I mean such a supremacy, as makes the Magistrate the head and fountain of all Jurisdiction Civil and Ecclesiastic, which makes all powers within His Dominions to be but rivulets and streams derived from his Ocean, making all the members of all Courts Spiritual and Civil to be but Commissioners at pleasure of the Prince, putting all Laws under his arbitrement, and the Legislative power in his breast alone, changing Parliaments into his arbitrary Counsels for matters of State, as general Assemblies for matters of the Church: putting it in his free will to lay aside forever both Parliaments and Assemblies, and to set up in their places, what Courts they think expedient, for all causes of all persons, that they may (if so it be their pleasure, commit the final decision of all Ecclesiastic causes to some few Church and Statesmen of their own nomination, under the title of a High Commission, or to two or three either of the Church or State, under the name of Delegats, or to any one Gentleman alone, under the name of a Vicar general; also they may devolve the last determination of all civil causes upon a few favorites, whether of the long or short Robe, under the style of a Star Chamber, or Counsel Table, or Cabinet counsel, or private Juncto.

If this be the supremacy which the reprinters of the Declaration aim at, we grant that many Prelates and Courtiers have always been of their mind; but I assure them, the Scots Divines did ever abhor such slavish maxims; such a supremacy has always been the fundamental Law in the grand Segniors Port at Constantinople, it has been for many years the possessed Prerogative of the French and Spanish Monarchs; also from their example, it has been the aim and endeavor not only of other Kings, but almost of all Princes and Sovereign States, how petty soever; so much is a sovereign despotick and uncontroleable Domination, naturally beloved by all who are in any nearness or hope to attain it: But it is a morsel that has stuck with so many in the swallowing, and poisoned so many in the digestion, though swallowed down, that few who are wise, will adventure anymore to taste of it; notwithstanding if the appetite of the publishers of this Writ will not be satisfied with anything less then such a Supremacy, let them be pleased to consider:

First, that this kind of supremacy will fall upon a subject where their harts will be loath it should lodge, it will be found rather a part of the royal Prerogative, then any Privilege of Parliament; and although according to their good friends last warning to the City, the Crown were broken in pieces, and the whole royal Prerogative devolved upon the head of the Parliament, yet the aforementioned supremacy is so high an injustice, that no gracious member of either House would ever be persuaded to touch it though it were put in their fingers; for beside the everting of all the Laws whereupon Monarchy since the first foundation has stood, it would so shake the groundstones of all the Laws of the Kingdom, as would hazard the overthrow no less of the Parliament, then of the King, and with them all the Judicatories and rights of the Land, our unhappy Brovilons, fit for nothing so much as to confound all things, would be in a fair way to bring the whole Church and State to such a Chaos and hodge podge, as no creature without God's extraordinary assistance, should ever again be able to bring their confusions to any tolerable order.

Secondly, they should do well to consider, that whatever supremacy is aimed at in the Writ, yet the Erastian design will not be much helped thereby, for it is expressly provided therein, that the ordinary Ecclesiastic Judicatories shall cognosce all Ecclesiastic causes, no word at all to import that any civil Commissioners may determine upon any affairs merely Ecclesiastical; it is true, that the ordinary Judicatories here named, are put under the foul feet of the Prelates; and this seems to have been the main aim both of the Act and of its interpretation, yet hereby the Erastian principles are nothing furthered; for as by the Covenant and Laws of both Kingdoms the roots of Episcopacy are now pluked up, so its well known that neither Presbiterians nor Independents were ever more zealous for the establishing of Ecclesiastic jurisdiction by a divine right in the hand of Church Officers, then the Episcopal party, at least those of them who understood and minded their own principles.

Thirdly, if all this will not satisfy, we desire those who hold out this passage as advantageous for the Ecclesiastic power of the Magistrate in prejudice of the Presbytery, to know that when the Ministers did complain to King James of this seeming prejudice, he gave them his own Declaration which he promised should be as authentic as that Act of Parliament which caused their grief, and much more authentic then Adamsons Interpretation of that Act; assuring them that neither himself nor any of his successors should ever claim the Cognizance nor the power to determine in any cause merely Ecclesiastical, avowing that Ecclesiastic Jurisdiction did belong only to the Church officers, which neither himself nor any of his heirs should ever crave nor ever ought to crave as belonging to them.

Finally, we desire them to know, if Princes promises and Declarations under their hands seem not to them sufficient security, that whatever in the present passage does appear, to spoil the Church Assemblies of a full and plenary Jurisdiction, was all recalled and past from by King James the very next year for he did consent unto that transaction of Archbishop Adamsons, whereby the Arch-prelate devests himself of all jurisdiction, and submits himself to the authority of the Assembly, renouncing all liberty of appeal to any other person or Judicatory in the earth .

But to stop all mouths which from Scotland would bring any color of warrant for an Erastian Supremacy, in the last Parliament of Scotland, which was ratified by King Charles, with the hearty consent of his good Subjects of England; the final determination of all Ecclesiastic Causes whatsoever is referred to the National Assembly as to the only proper and competent Judge; whoever will call this Act of Parliament into question must be content to have the King and his Parliaments of both Kingdoms for their first and chief opposites.

The explanation of the next Act is also large and confused, it contains a discharge of all Church Assemblies and meetings not authorized by Law; particularly, it discharges the National Assemblie, and Classical Presbytery upon the allegiance of some enormous practices of these two meetings: Consider first the discharge, and then its reasons.

Concerning the discharge of Church meetings not authorized by Law, the Commissioners did show the King that Church meetings were necessary to be kept, being commanded of God; and being such means without which the Churches and societies of the Saints could not subsist in their necessary purity and order: in the time of the greatest persecutions Christians did meet in their Assemblies both for worship and discipline, though the imperial Laws did discharge such conventions: In France and Poland where the Princes are enemies to Religion, yet the Protestants are permitted to keep their Assemblies for Discipline, greater and smaller, of all sorts as they have occasion, no less then their meetings for the Word and Sacraments: His Majesty in his reply does not deny the Commissioners allegiance, only he required a intermission of the named meetings for a short time, till the whole plat-form of Church government according to the Word of God, might be finished; hereby yielding that he believed the Church ought to have its own government, according to the prescription of the holy Scripture, to which he purposed to submit and agree, as indeed he did the year following, agreeing to that course which the Assembly at Saint Andrew's took with Bishop Adamson without all contradiction, and ever thereafter permitting the Ministers without any interruption, to enjoy all their Ecclesiastic meetings in peace; yea some few years after (as oft I have said) he did establish by Act of Parliament the whole plat-form of government according to their mind, which abode untouched till the evil advice of the English Prelates moved him to make some breaches in that wall, which (thanks be to God) are now fully repaired; King Charles in person having lately ratified in Parliament the meeting of all our Assemblies, from the lowest to the highest, so fully as our hearts could wish.

Beside the divine right of our Church meetings for Discipline, the Commishoners did demonstrate to the King the good human right thereof in Scotland, producing to him an Act of his own first Parliament, for the national Assembly and final determination of all Ecclesiastical appeals therein; his Majesty likewise could not but well remember that the whole model of Presbyteries and their proceedings had been oft in debate before him and the Counsel Table; also, that some few years before he had sent to the general Assembly at Clasgow, his express order for the erection of Presbyteries in all the Shires of the Kingdom; whence the Church came to be in a very peaceable possession of all her Assemblies national, provincial, classical and congregational, without any controlment; only in that hour of darkness (as generally then it was called) there was a short eclipse, but that did quickly pass over; neither did any interruption of these Church meetings come thereupon.

However, we cannot but observe the disposition of those who with so great care and zeal, set out in this paper to the world for imitation, the example of a Prince (although in the hour of temptation, out of the which he was immediately delivered) for pulling down and discharging of Presbyteries and Assemblies, when established by Law, and quietly possessed by a clear Right both divine and human: We trust the honorable Houses of Parliament are far from their mind, else we should have but small comfort, though we should see the Ghurch government here settled both by Law and possession; for it seems that the publishers of this Writ would have us to despair of any security to keep whatever now may be gotten; Oaths, Covenants, Laws, Possessions must be no stronger then bonds of flax and ropes of straw, which the fire of these men's wrath, when ever it comes upon them, will easily burn and burst asunder; but it is well that Princes and Parliaments are not capable to be miscarried by the private passions of so inconstant and perfidious persons.

The reasons of the Act do follow, for the putting down of the Classical Presbytery, a great misbehaviour is alleged; The Presbytery of Edinburgh took upon them to dissuade the Feasting of the French Ambassador, and did enter in Processe with the Magistrates, who at the Kings desire contrary to their advice did keep that Feast; a long and odious story of that matter is here deduced and borrowed from hence, both by Spotswood in his History, and Maxwell in his Issachar’s burden; but the truth is this, as I find it extracted out of the Records of the Church of Scotland, by a very reverend and faithful hand: That time was one of the most sad and dangerous seasons, that this Isse hath seen; it was but a little after the Massacres of France, and a little before the Spanish Armada, about the very instant when the Catholic League was hatched, for the rooting out of Protestant Religion, and all Protestant Princes, especially Queen Elizabeth. At this time it was when two or three French Ambassadors one after another came over from France to Scotland, with Instructions from the chief contrivers of that unholy League. The Court was then very corrupt, exceeding tyrannous and oppressive both of the Nobility and Ministers; Jesuits and Priests did flock from beyond Sea, in greater numbers then ever; the professed negotiation of the French Agents was to restore Queen Mary; the trafiquers in that business were received with extraordinary curtefies: All this did fill the hearts of the people both with grief and fear, for the undermining of their Religion, for the destruction of their King, and ruin of the Kingdom. These passions increased when they did see the English Ambassadors at that same time used in a much divers fashion; railed upon by rascals in the streets, vexed with infamous Libels fixed upon the doors of their Lodgings, endangered in their persons by Pistols shot in at their windows; and all this without any punishment upon the authors of such atrocious contumilies: In this posture of affairs, to tempt yet further the patience of honest people, some French Merchants did move the King to desire the Magistrates of Edinburgh to invite the French Agent to a public Feast; the unseasonableness of the time made the desire grievous to the Magistrates, and therefore they declined it with a fair excuse; yet the King was moved to press them again; the motion being brought to the Common Counsel of the Town the Plurality yielded, though the most of the Magistrates and best part of the Counselors were dissenting: This matter being offensive to the Church Session, or Congregational Eldership, the day of the French Festival by the joint advice of the Magistrates, Ministers, and the rest who were present, was appointed to be a day of Preaching and prayer; this was thought to be the fairest way, with the least offense to hinder (if it might be) that offensive and unseasonable Banquet; as for any process of excommunication intended against them, who chose rather to feast with the French, then to pray with the City and most of the Magistrates, I take it but for a mere fable; for albeit the Author thereof, Adamson, had not acknowledged his Narration of the Banquet to be false (as he does expressly ) yet why should we have taken it in any other sense, then the other passages of the same Pamphlet; wherein he avows the Presbyteries to have put out innumerable Orders directly opposite to the King, and have sent Laws and Commands to his Majesty, under the pain of Excommunication ; which all the world sees (setting aside the Authors confession) to be mere lies, and notorious calumnies .

But suppose that all the alleged circumstances of that sad festival: had been all true, yet could this trespass be no otherwise expiate then by the very abolition, not only of that Judicatory, whence the overture did proceed; but also of all the Judicatories of that kind in the whole Kingdom, being altogether ignorant and innocent of the transgression: and though the Episcopal rigor should have been thus transcendent: yet what shadow of reason could be brought for the overthrow of the Classes, for the trespass of the Congregadonall Eldership. It was not the Classical Presbytery of Edinburgh, but the Town Session that was alleged to be the delinquent: We wonder not when Prelates are Counselors to see strange and unheard of rules of Justice; but of this we marvel, that the Leaders of the Independent or Erastian party should be so well pleased with such patterns, as not to have patience to have them at this time concealed, but will needs have them brought forth of the grave of oblivion where long they lay buried, to be looked upon by the State at this time, as ruled cases for their imitation.

As for the abolition of the general Assembly, three of their offenses are named, their approbation of the road of Ruthven, their abolishing of Episcopacy, their indicting of solemn Fasts; the desert of these crimes we will see when the particulars are opened.

The Road of Ruthven was a Remonstrance made to his Majesty by a number of the prime and best affected of the Nobility, against the insupportable tyrannies of some few Courtiers, to the extreme hazard of the Kings person, the Church and whole Kingdom. His Majesty, yet minor, was content to follow the Remonstrants advice; the men complained of, were removed from Court, the action of the Noble-men was declared by the King and his Counsel to have been good and acceptable service; the convention of estates made that same Declaration: the Kings, the Counsels, the States approbation of this fact was solemnly proclaimed in the next Market places of the chief Burroughs at his Majesty's desire, the Ambassadors of England and France did write so much to their Masters : and it was also promised that the next general Assembly and Parliament (for the Noblemen’s greater security) should give their ample approbations. When the general Assembly came the Noblemen petitioned them for their approbation; at the first the Assembly declined to meddle with that matter, but when the Petitioners insisted, alleging it was the Kings pleasure they should take that matter into consideration, they sent two of their number to the King to understand his mind, his Majesty did not only fignifie to those Messengers his desire, that the Assembly should declare their approbation of that Action at Ruthven, but also he did send two Commissioners of his own to require the Assembly in his name to declare so much .

Could the Assemblies obedience to the Kings express command be a treason of so high a nature, as did merit not only the persecution of their persons, but the abolition of the Court it self forever, yet the Prelates and Courtiers rage did intend no less; for when Captain James had got again into the Court, whence he had been banished, he wrought so upon the minor King, that the Noblemen and Gentlemen who had procured his removal at Ruthven, were some of them executed as Traitors, others forfeit and banished, many of the best Ministers were forced to flee for their life, not one Pastor durst stay in Edinburgh, but all fled out of the Kingdom .

Such storms has Satan oft stirred up in Scotland by his instruments, yet gracious men there by faith and patience, by wisdom and active courage, did wrestle through and always in the end prevailed, they got the Church, the Kingdom, the person of the Prince, ever at last rescued from the bonds and snares of oppressing Sycophants. The memory of our Predecessors sufferings and successes does much encourage us in these evil days, and permits us not in the greatest tempests to faint, but makes us to walk with hope in the midst of despair for the like glorious issue; however this was the sad condition of Scotland for some time, till the oppressed Nobility did come to Stirling, in a greater number, and with a sharper Remonstrance then they had used at Ruthven.

At their first appearing before the Town, the instruments of mischief did flee, the King and his good people, Noblemen Gentlemen Ministers and others, were presently reconciled, though the authors of these frequent misunderstandings did escape by flight the sword of public Justice, yet did the private judgments of God quickly find them out, and sweep them off the face of the earth: with their ruin, peace and prosperity did flow in both upon Church and Kingdom.

The other great crime imputed to the general Assembly, is, That they had voted down Episcopacy, and had professed the unlawfulness of prelatical Jurisdiction both in the Church and State, which prior Assemblies had approved of. To this I answer, that the crime cannot be very great, for any Church meeting, especially a general Assembly, to declare their judgment in a point of Religion of great and general concernment; and whether this their judgment was erroneous when they condemned the office of Episcopacy, affirming it to be unlawful for a Minister of the Gospel to be a Lord of Parliament and Counsel, to be a Chancellor, Secretary, Treasurer of a Kingdom, or any Officer of State, or to take upon him alone the power of Ordination and spiritual Jurisdiction (which the Word of God never gives to one ordinary Officer, but always to a number joined in a Presbytery) the whole Isle (thanks be to God) now does clearly see.

That ever the Church of Scotland or any lawful Assembly thereof did approve of Episcopal jurisdiction, it is alleged without any ground: We grant the Earl of Morton in that necessary correspondence which he did always keep with Queen Elizabeth, was entangled in a greater familiarity and affection to the English Prelates, then was convenient, and at their desire did assay, in a conference of some Statesmen and Ministers of his special acquaintance, in the year 1572, at Leeth to have set up in Scotland a kind of Episcopacy, but that plant was so strange to our climate, that it could take no root in our ground, for so much offense was taken in the very next general Assembly after that conference, at the name of Episcopacy, and ever after at any shadow of the thing, that the following Assemblies did not rest till both •• e name and thing, till both the shadow and all the parts of the substance were disavowed. They had indeed for a time some wrestling with the Court about this matter; yet at last (as I have said) in the year 1592. they got the King and Parliament persuaded to pass such Acts, as did cast out of our Church and State, Episcopacy both root and branch, substance and shadow. As these Acts of Parliament were first made by King James, and the States of Scotland, and now also ratified by King Charles, so both the Houses of the Parliament of England cannot but approve thereof, having joined themselves by Oath and Covenant with Scotland, to extirpate the unhappy root of Episcopacy, which has been the great cause of the most mischiefs which in this last Age hath befallen Britain.

The third crime for which the general Assembly behooved to be put down, was their indicting of soleme Fasts; in which, seditions & tumults against the King were promoved; consider that the quarrel is not simply for the Fasts, but their evil use, to raise seditions and tumults; certainly that custom of our Church, whereby from the beginning of the Reformation to this day, every Church meeting from the general Assembly to the smallest Congregational Eldership, had power as they found cause, to indict a public Fast within their own bounds, is very innocent and necessary for the well being of the Church.

As for the alleged abuse of these Fasts to sedition and tumults, it is a mere calumny; the matter I believe was this: About the time of the penning of this Writ, the •• alous Ministers in all their exercises, especially in the day •• of public Fasting, did make mention in their Sermons and Prayers, of the wickedness of the Land, for which the wrath of God was much feared by the godly; the Leaders of the Court conscious of their own guiltiness, took themselves to be particularly pointed at, and for this did hate extremely every zealous Preacher, as if all their Sermons and Prayers had been invectives for stirring up of the people against them, while in truth these gracious men did nothing but their duty, containing themselves within the lines of all needful moderation; but to wicked men in their pride and impatience, the least touch of the Word of God is an intolerable wound.

The explanation of the last Act, contains the maintenance of Episcopacy in the highest degree, it puts in the hand of the Bishop, the whole spiritual Jurisdiction of his Diocese to be exercised by him alone, although with the advice of some few whom he shall please to choose for his Counselors; it imports, that all his Jurisdiction flows from the King, and in the exercise thereof, it makes the Bishop answerable only to the King, and them whom his Majesty shall appoint in an Assembly of his own framing; it makes the Bishops also Lord's of Counsel and Parliament.

Upon this passage I mark first, the conscience and honor of these men, who with so great importunity required the reprinting of this Declaration, and to make its operation the more effectual in the hearts of simple people, would be at the cost to change the language thereof, to set it down first in Scotch and then in English, a piece of pains so far as I know never taken with any other Writ; this diligence demonstrates the men's humor; I can hardly say, whether more scornful of the Scots and their language, or passionately desirous to disgrace that Church, though it were with the exalting of Episcopacy; and if (as I suppose) they have taken the Covenant, this increaseth my wonder, how any who have solemnly sworn to defend the reformation of the Church of Scotland, and to endeavor the extirpation of Prelacy, can in a sudden become so zealous and put themselves to so great pains, in disgrace of the Scottish reformation to advance Presacy. If either Independency or Erastianism have power to let loose the Reines of conscience so far; we confess the Scots have been too simple, in believing that Oaths and Covenants in plain matters, which admit no ambiguity nor plurality of senses, had been far straiter bonds among all who had the estimation of honest men, and in whom there could be found the least sparkle of any ingenuity or truth.

Consider secondly, that King James (as I have said) did give it under his hand to the Commissioners of the Church the year following, that this Declaration was none of his, but the work of Adamson of Saint Andrew's, and that this man at last was convinced of his error, confessing upon Oath and subscription, Episcopacy to be a gross corruption, a stirrup for the Pope to ascend to his Antichristian saddle, an error which he had learned, and wherein from time to time, he was entertained by the English Prelates .

Thirdly, whatever here is said of Bishops, is not now controverted in the Parliaments of both Kingdoms, and in the solemn League of both Nations, it is expressly condemned, as all do confess; if any anti-covenanting Malignant require a further debate, when they will, they may have a hearing and an answer.

Fourthly, when the Commissioners of the church did declare to King James, that the government of the Church was not a Matter civil, which did belong to the Magistrate to exercise, and that it was unlawful for his Majesty to appoint any of his Commissioners to govern the House of God, that this were with the Pope to take in his hand both the Swords; his Majesty did put it under his own hand, that these things were far from his thoughts, that he was no Judge either of doctrine or heresy, or of the interpretation of Scripture, that neither he nor his Parliament did meddle w ^th Excommunication, that they had pronounced the excommunication of Mountgomery to be null, not as Judges of the cause, but as witnesses of the informality of the process, he confessed that Jesus Christ was the only head and Law-giver of his Church, and that if he should claim to himself or his heirs anything merely Ecclefiastick, which the Word of God has put in the hands of Church officers, that if he or any man should suspend or alter anything which the Word of God did remit only to them, he avowed that these attempts in himself or any other, would be nothing else but (as he speaks) the sin of Idolatry, and a transgression against all the three Persons of the Trinity; against the Father, in not trusting the words of his Son; against the Son, in not obeying him, but taking his place over his head; against the holy Ghost, because against the Spirits Testimony in his own conscience. I hope they who are so earnest to have King James heard in this cause, though in a false and suppositious Writ, will be content to hear him in his true Declaration under his own hand.

The third part of the Writ contains an enumeration of his Majesty's intentions; concerning them we need add little to what is said, only consider, first, that Adamson the Author of the Writ, assures us, that there is nothing or little here of the Kings intentions, being that he did here set down only his own intentions, and these of the Courtiers and Prelates, at that time of their highest pride and greatest oppression of the religious party.

Secondly, the errors and faults that appear in these intentions are of two kinds, Prelatical and Erastian: For the first, not only the Author did recant them, but also as we have now often said, King James with the States Assembled in Parliament, did expressly condemn them, and at this time they stand condemned in the whole Isle by King Charles in his Parliament of Scotland, and by both the Houses of the Parliament of England, whoever now will take the patrociny of the Prelatical war, doth set his face against the King and Parliaments of both Nations; and if he be a member of Parlia. in either Nation (whoaccording to his place must needs have sworn the National Covenant) for his endeavor to establish what by his Covenāt he was bound to his power, to have extirpated; Let him be cast with ignominy out of these honorable Senates as a false and perjured hypocrite, planting by deed what by Oath and Covenant he promised to eradicat; or else an Apostate, repenting and retracting while now he is set in Parliament, what at his entry upon oath he promised, that he might be permitted to sit down; such perjured, whether hypocrisy or apostasy, cannot but be abominable both to God and all ingenuous men.

As for the Erastianism of these intentions, whereby the Bishops are made pleni-potentiaries in the Church, by virtue of a Commission from the Magistrate, we have shown at length how far King James disclaimed this error as a grievous sin against the Father, Son and holy Ghost; for the thing it self makes the Magistrate head of the Church, and fountain of all Ecclesiastic Jurisdiction: This Cesaropapisme is an Antichristianism, so much worse then that of the Pope, as more uncontrollable and remediless; the servants of God in their wrestlings against the Antichistianisme of the Pope and Prelates, had often times great assistance, and were ever in a possibility to be assisted by their Princes and Magistrates; but if the Magistrate himself will turn Pope, and take upon him to dispence the spiritual Jurisdiction, one part thereof to civil Commissioners, another part to the Congregational Eldership, a third to the Classis, a fourth to whom he will, and in the end, as all did flow from him, make all again to return by a final appeal to himself, when the servants of Christ are necessitate to oppose and preach against this usurpation of their Masters royal Prerogative, and for their labor are persecute as opposers of the Magistrate, to whom shall they flee for defense?

Thirdly, consider how in these intentions Prelacy and Erastianism are linked together; it is true, the genuine principles of Episcopacy do overturn Erastianism, and Prelates where ever they conceive themselves bottomed and rooted in a Land, will be loath to fetch their pedigree from any Princes will and Commission, but will stand upon a divine institution, or at least such an Ecclesiastic right, as depends not upon the Magistrates pleasure; this was the case of the English Hierarchy of late: Yet where Episcopacy is not so firmly grounded as it conceives it self immovable and secure, it is a very devout handmaid to Erastianism; and this was the condition of Prelacy in England, when these intentions were written, for at that time the Bishops were glad to keep not only their Civil, but all their Ecclesiastic Courts in the name and by the Commission only of the Prince, deriving all their Jurisdiction, and whatever they had peculiar, above and differing from any Minister of their Diocese, from the Prince only, ascribing to him not only an Architectonick, but a truly Ecclesiastic power, as a chief part of the royal Supremacy and Prerogative of the Crown.

Adamson the very year before he wrote his intentions, learned these Lessons in England from the Prelates and Courtiers of the Queen; with whom, he confessed at last to his grief, he had been too intimate; albeit when he came to Scotland, he thought it not expedient to vent to that people, or possibly he was not persuaded in his own mind of the whole body either of the Erastian or of the Episcopal maxims; for in this Writ the Presbyterian, Erastian and Episcopal maxims are so inconsiderately intermixed, that the man seems not to have been very careful, how their contrary qualities should be so contemperated as the whole lump might not be dissolved by repugnancies. It can be pretty well demonstrate how Episcopacy, as it was for a long time in England, may well stand upon an Erastian bottom: also how handsomely the Erastian principles may in a short time bring back the Bishops, Deans and Chapters from their banishment; but how a true and solid Apostolic Presbytery is compatible either with Episcopacy, or a Magistratical Popedom (though there were not a Covenant) I do not conceive.

Our last remark upon the intentions is, that however they be spotted with many and gross both Prelatical and Erastian errors, yet they demonstrate so much orthodoxie and zeal remaining in these worst times among the Courtiers and Prelates of Scotland, as will bear witness if it be not imitate, against our times where much more piety, and that upon stronger obligations, is professed; for first, the King is made to avow his resolution to set up in the whole Kingdom Ecclesiastical Assemblies for the suppressing of whatever by the Word of God should be found either heresy or schism; but how many years shall we see both begin and end, before the pitiful complaints of the godly, both here & abroad shall procure the least restraint to heresies or schisms which now in this Kingdom are become more gross and impudent then ever in any Kingdom before, or at this day in all the Kingdoms of the earth together. This monstrous toleration cannot eschew to draw the displeasure of the God of truth upon the Authors, fomenters and favorers thereof; such a long indifferency and lukewarmness, such a misregard of the truth of God, such a connivence and compliance with errors of all kind in a people, ever before famous for zeal, is most marvelous.

Secondly, the King in that very hour of his darkness is made to profess his intention to countenance all the ordinary Judicatories of the Church, and in no wise to hinder any good order which from the Word of God in these meetings, should be established; Why then in our days of so great light, should the whole Church lie still in a total Anarchy? did ever any Christian Nation for seven years without any compulsion, abide without all Ecclesiastic government? If men had taken a Commission from the Father of lies, and author of wickedness, to be his avowed agents in propagating errors, vice and all mischiefs, could they for their life invent a better means for furthering these designs, then to continue this Anarchy, then to be pragmatic and pregnantly instrumental in putting one impediment after another in the way; I hope there are many in the Parliament, Assembly and Kingdom, whose heart bleeds in their breast to see their hands so long tied, that they cannot get the hedge of the Church set up, to keep out the devouring Beasts from the flock.

Thirdly, by these intentions we may see King James his resolution, which so long as he was in Scotland, he did indeed perform. Not only was he content that Ecclesiastic judicatories should proceed in all spiritual causes, as the Word of God did warrant them, but also he promises to countenance the superior Assemblies of the Church, with his own royal presence, and allows to the meanest Church-meetings the assistance of the inferior Magistrates and Church officers, that their religious and just orders might not be contemned without deserved punishment .

These men are afraid of their own happiness, who retard & impedit the erection of such a government, nothing will more conduce for the honor and welfare of the Land, no mean will be more effectual to keep all people in peace and obedience to the Laws; to promove the comfort of all who are truly pious, then the hearty concurrence of the Church and State, in setting up at last, and maintaining the government of the reformed Churches according to the Word of God: Believe it, this discipline is neither hateful nor terrible to any, but to these alone, who know it not, or else are conscious to themselves of a willful and obstinate resolution to abide in some error or vice without the controlment of any censure.