By what is above premitted, the reader may see the series and succession of the testimony of Christ's witnesses in Scotland from time to time, in all the periods of that church; how it hath been transmitted from one generation to another down to our hands; how far it hath been extended, and what increasements it hath received in every period; how it hath been opposed by a continued prosecution of an hereditary war against Christ, by an atheistical, papistical, prelatical, and tyrannical faction; and how it hath been concerted, contended for, maintained, and sealed actively and passively, by an anti-pagan, anti-popish, anti-prelatical, anti-erastian, anti-sectarian, and anti-tyrannical remnant of the followers, professors, confessors, and martyrs of Christ in all ages. Now it remains in the third and last place, to consider the merit of the cause as it is now stated, to see whether it will bear the weight of those great sufferings wherewith it hath been sealed. I hope all the lovers of Christ, who have an esteem even of his reproaches above all the treasures of Egypt, will grant, that if these sufferings be stated on the least or lowest of the truths of Christ, then they are not mistated, nor built upon a bottom that will not bear them, or is not of that worth to sustain them. For certainly every truth, the least of truths, is of greater value than any thing that we can suffer the loss of for it; yea, of infinitely greater value, than the whole world. So that if I prove these heads of suffering to be truths wherein conscience is concerned, the cause will be sufficiently vindicated from the loadings and lashings of such as prefer peace to truth, and ease to duty, who to justify their own backwardness and detestable lukewarmness, call some of them only state questions about things civil, and not gospel truths and heads to state suffering upon: and if they be truths and duties, the cause will some way be rendered more illustrious, that it is stated upon the smallest hoofs and hair-breadths of the concerns of Christ's declarative glory; as being a greater witness of its owners love and loyalty to Christ, and of their pure and tender zeal for his honour, than if for more substantial and fundamental truths, which a natural conscience may reclaim to decline, when for the meanest circumstantials of Christ's truths they dare and are ambitious to bestow their dearest blood. But if the complex of them be impartially considered, no unprejudiced arbiter will suffer himself to have such extenuating impressions of the present word of patience, and testimony of the suffering remnant in Scotland this day: but it will appear to be a very weighty and worthy concern, as any that either men or Christians can be called to witness for; being the privilege of all mankind, the duty of all Christians, and the dignity of all churches, to assert; it is for the glory and crown prerogatives and imperial regalia of the King of kings, with reference to his visible kingdom, of which the government is laid upon his shoulders, against the heaven daring usurpations and encroachments made thereupon, both as he is Mediator, and King, and Head of the church, and as he is God and universal King of the world. As he is Mediator, it is his peculiar prerogative to have a supremacy and sole sovereignty over his own kingdom, to institute his own government, to constitute his own laws, to ordain his own officers, to appoint his own ordinances, which he will have observed without alteration, addition, or diminution, until his second coming: this his prerogative hath been, and is invaded by erastian prelacy, sacrilegious supremacy, and now by antichristian popery, which have overturned his government, inverted his laws, subverted his officers, and perverted his ordinances. As he is God and universal King, it is his incommunicable property and glory, not only to have absolute and illimited power, but to invest his deputed ministers of justice with his authority and ordinance of magistracy, to be administred in subordination to him, to be regulated by his laws, and to be improved for his glory, and the good of mankind; this glory of his, hath been invaded by tyrants and usurpers arrogating to themselves an absolute power, intruding themselves without his investment into authority, in a rebellion against him, in opposition to his laws, and abusing it to his dishonour, and the destruction of mankind. Against both which encroachments the present testimony is stated, in a witness for religion and liberty, to both which these are destructive. This will appear to be the result and tendency of the testimony in all its parts, opposed by the enemies of religion and liberty, and the end of all their opposition, to bring it to this crinomenon, who shall be king? Jesus or Cæsar? Let any seriously search into all their proclamations and edicts against religion and liberty, this will be found to be the soul and sense of them, practically and really speaking to this purpose, especially since this man came to the throne.
'J. R.
'James the VII. II. by the V. of G. king of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, defender of the antichristian faith: To all and sundry our good subjects, whom these presents do, or may concern: greeting. We having taken into our royal consideration, the many and great inconveniencies which have happened in that our ancient kingdom of Scotland, especially of late years, through the persuasions of the christian religion, and the great heats and animosities, betwixt the professors thereof, and our good and faithful subjects, whose faith and religion is subject and subservient to our royal will (the supreme law, and reason, and public conscience) to the disappointment of our projects, restraint of our pleasures, and contempt of the royal power, converting true loyalty and absolute subjection, into words and names (which we care not for) of religion and liberty, conscience and the word of God, thereby withdrawing some to the christian faction, from an absolute and implicit subjection to us and our will, as if there were a superior law to which they might appeal; and considering that these rebellious christians do never cease to assert and maintain strange paradoxes, such principles as are inconsistent with the glory and interest of our government, as that the authority of kings should be hemmed in with limits, and that their acts and actions are to be examined by another rule than their own authority to make them lawful, that some things in the kingdom are not subject to the king's authority, that there is a kingdom within a kingdom not subordinate to the king, and that there is another King superior to the supreme whom they will rather obey than us, and that we must either take laws from him, or otherwise we are no magistrates; and considering also their practices are conform to their principles, they will not obey our laws, but the laws of another inconsistent with ours, and will calculate their religion according to his laws, and not according to ours, and continually make their addresses to, and receive ambassadors from a prince whom we know not, whom our predecessors, of truly worthy memory, did crucify, one Jesus who was dead, whom they affirm to be alive, whose government they alledge is supreme over all kings, whom they acknowledge but as his vassals: being now by favourable fortune, not only brought to the imperial crown of these kingdoms through the greatest difficulties, but preserved upon the throne of our royal ancestors, which from our great founder Nimrod of glorious memory, and our illustrious predecessors Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Herod the great, Nero, Caligula, &c. of blessed and pious memory, hath been ever opposite to, and projecting the destruction of that kingdom of Christ, do, after their laudable example, resolve to suppress that kingdom by all the means and might we can use, because his government is hateful to us, his yoke heavy, his sayings are hard, his laws are contrary to our lusts; therefore we will not let this man reign over us, we will break his bonds, and cast away his cords from us; and advance and exercise our sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and absolute power, which all our subjects are to obey without reserve. 'And as by virtue of our supremacy, whereby we are above all, but such as we are pleased to subject ourselves to, settled by law, and lineally derived to us as an inherent right to the crown, we have power to order all matters of church as well as state, as we in our royal wisdom shall think fit, all laws and acts of Christ to the contrary notwithstanding; and accordingly in our royal wisdom have overturned the platform of that government which Christ hath instituted, razed all courts fenced in his name, and severely interdicted all meetings of his subjects, and entertainment of his ambassadors: many of whom, in contempt of him that sent them, we have punished according to law, for negotiating his affairs in our kingdoms without our pleasure, and requiring allegiance and obedience to him, after we had exauctorated him; we have also established our right trusty, and well beloved clerks in ecclestiastic affairs, and their underlings, by our authority to have the administration of the business of religion and impowered our right trusty and well beloved cousins and counsellors, to compel all to submit to them, by finings, confinings, imprisonment, banishment, oaths, and bonds, and all legal means: so now having prosecuted this war against Christ to this length, that we have no fears of a rally of his forces again so often beaten, we are now engaged with other antichristian princes to give our power to our holy father antichrist, so far as may serve his purpose to oppose Christ in his way; but we reserve so much to ourselves, as may encroach upon him in our capacity. And therefore we have thought fit to restore to antichrist our ecclesiastical supremacy, from whom we borrowed it, and for which we have no use at present: but we resolve to maintain and prosecute our sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and absolute power foresaid, against Christ, and without subordination to him, from whom, as we sought none, so we received no power by his warrant and grant, and against whom we mind to manage it to the uttermost of our power. Yet reflecting upon the conduct of the four last reigns, how, after all the frequent and pressing endeavours that were used in each of them, to reduce our kingdoms to antichrist, the subjects of Christ were so stubborn, that the success hath not answered the design: we must now change our methods a little, and tolerate that profession of Christ which we cannot yet get overturned, his subjects being so numerous, but always upon these terms, that they take a special care that nothing be preached or taught among them, which may be a testimony for Christ's prerogatives, in opposition to our usurpation, or may any way tend to alienate the hearts of our people from us, or our government, or preach his truths which we have condemned as seditious and treasonable, under the highest pains these crimes will import. Hereby we shall establish our government on such a foundation, on the ruin of Christ's, as may make our subjects happy, and unite them to us by inclination as well as duty, in a belief that we will not restrain conscience in matters of mere religion: for which we have a dispensation from our holy father, and also from our own absoluteness, to be slaves to this promise no longer than consists with our own interest; and which we have power to interpret as we please: and would have all to understand, that no testimony for Christ's supremacy against our encroachments thereupon, shall be comprehended under these matters of mere religion, for which the conscience shall not be constrained: but we will have the consciences of such subjects of his, that dare assert it, brought to a test and probation how they stand affected in this competition betwixt us and this King Jesus, and see whether they will own or decline our authority, because not of him, nor for him, nor to him, but against him and all his interests. Our will is therefore, that all who will countenance any other meetings of his subjects than we have allowed, or connive at them, shall be prosecuted according to the utmost severity of our laws made against them, which we leave in full force and vigour, notwithstanding of all the premises. And for this effect, we further command all our judges, magistrates, and officers of our forces, to prosecute all these subjects and followers of Christ, who shall be guilty of treating with, or paying homage to that exauctorated king of theirs, in their assemblies with his ambassadors in the fields with the utmost rigour, as they would avoid our highest displeasure: for we are confident none will, after these liberties and freedom we have given to all without reserve, to serve God publicly, in such a way, as we, by our sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and absolute power aforesaid, have prescribed and allowed, presume to meet in these assemblies, except such whose loyalty to Christ doth alienate them from us and our government. As also, under the same certifications, by the same sovereign authority, and prerogative royal, and absolute power foresaid, we charge, impower, warrant, and authorize, against all hazards (hell excepted) all our foresaid judges and officers, in their respective places, to prosecute and execute our laws, against all that may be suspected or convicted of their adherence to Christ, or be found guilty of owning their allegiance to him as their liege Lord, by solemn covenant, which we have caused burn by the hand of the hangman, and declared criminal to own it, or shall be found guilty of declining allegiance to us and our absolute authority, stated in opposition to him and his, or of maintaining that pernicious principle, inconsistent with our government, that their lives are their own, which they will preserve without surrender to our mercy: all which we command to be executed to death, or banished as slaves, as shall be found most conducible to our interest. And to the end, the few that remain of that way may be totally exterminated, we straitly command all our soldiers, horse and foot, to be ready upon order, to march and make search, pursue and follow, seize and apprehend, kill and slay, and cause to perish, all such, whether they shall be found at meetings, or in their wanderings, wherever they may be apprehended: and ordain all our good subjects to be assistant to these our forces, in prosecuting this war against Christ and his followers, and contribute their best help and encouragement, in giving them their required maintenance, and duly paying cess and locality imposed for that end; and that they shall not dare to countenance, converse with, refer, harbour, supply, or keep any manner of correspondence with any of these traitors that adhere to Christ, under the pain of being found art and part with them, and obnoxious to the same punishments to which they are liable; but on the contrary, to assist our forces to apprehend, and raise the hue and cry after them wherever they shall be seen, that they may be forthwith pursued, seized, cut off, and destroyed, which we order to be instantly done upon the place, where they or any of them are apprehended, and that without any delay or mercy to age or sex,' &c.
On the other hand, if any will take a look of the declarations and testimonies of the other party without prejudice or stumbling at some expressions, which may be offensive to critics, he will find the scope and strain of them to have this importance.
'We, a poor company of persecuted, reproached, and despised Christians; who indeed have not many wise men among us after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, but are a few foolish, weak, base, and despised nothings in the world; yet having this ambition to be his called chosen; and faithful soldiers, who is King of glory, King of heaven, King of saints, King of nations, King of kings, whose kingdom is everlasting and universal; considering the many insolent indignities, affronts, and reproaches cast upon his name and glory, and the many usurpations, encroachments, and invasions made upon his crown and dignity, by a pestilent generation of his atheistical, papistical, prelatical, and tyrannical enemies, who have rebelled against him, and have renounced, corrupted, and subverted his royal government, both in the church and in the world, both in his kingdom of grace and of power: do bear witness and testimony against these rebels, from the highest to the lowest: and assert the interest and title of our princely Master, and own allegiance and absolute obedience to him and his government, to which he hath undoubted right; an essential right by his eternal Godhead, being the everlasting Father, whose goings forth have been of old from everlasting; a covenant-right by compact with the Father, to bear the glory and rule upon his throne, by virtue of the council of peace between them both; a donative right by the Father's right of delegation, by which he hath all power given to him in heaven and in earth, and all authority, even because he is the Son of man; an institute right by the Father's inauguration, which hath set him as King in Zion; an acquisite right by his own purchase, by which he hath merited and obtained not only subjects to govern, but the glory of the sole sovereignty over them in that relation, a name above every name; a bellical right by conquest, making the people fall under him, and be willing in the day of his power, and overcoming those that make war with him; an hereditary right by proximity of blood and primogeniture, being the first born, higher than the kings of the earth, and the first born from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence; an electing right by his people's choice and surrender, a crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals. In a humble recognizance of all which rights, we own and avouch, that he hath that incommunicable prerogative of sole sovereignty over his visible kingdom, as well as invisible, without a co-partner or competitor, either co-ordinate or subordinate; in prescribing laws, by no human authority to be reversed; in appointing ordinances immutable, without addition or diminution, for matter or manner; instituting a government, which no man or angel can, without blasphemy, arrogate a power either to invert or evert, change or overturn; and constituting officers, which must depend only on his authority, and his alone; and must be cloathed only with his commission, and his alone; guided by his instructions, and his alone; acting according to his laws and prescribed platform, and his alone; without any dependence on, subordination to, licence, warrant or indulgence from any mortal. And therefore we disown and detest every thing that hath not the stamp of his authority, either in doctrine, worship, discipline or government: and will discountenance prelacy, supremacy, popery, and all corruption contrary to his institution, who is sole and supreme lawgiver to the conscience, and will submit to, or comply with nothing that may directly or indirectly signify our respect unto them. Hence we will take none of their oaths, subscribe none of their bonds, yield to none of their impositions, pay none of their exactions; neither will we hear or receive ordinances from any minister, but the faithful authorized ambassadors of Christ our king, whatever either rage or reproach we suffer for it. We assert and affirm also, that our exalted Prince is King of the whole world, by whom kings reign, and princes decree justice, as his ministers of justice, in subordination to him; whom he hath hath appointed to rule over us, with just boundaries, that they may not exceed, and true characters, by which we should know them and pay them deference. And therefore, whosoever shall arrogate to themselves, and extend their power beyond and above his prescripts, being neither called to, nor qualified for, nor improving the office for the ends he hath appointed; we will acknowledge them no otherwise than usurping tyrants, and not magistrates nor ministers of justice, to whom he hath given the sword by his perceptive will; only as lions, bears, wolves, to whom he hath given a rod by his providential will; in that case we may be passively subject, when we cannot do better; but will never own conscientious allegiance to them, nor own them as our lawful magistrates; and therefore we will not bow down to their idols they have set up, nor prostitute either conscience or liberty to their lust, but will endeavour, under our Master's banner and conduct, to preserve whatever he hath intrusted to us religion, life, liberty, estate, and whatsoever the Lord our God hath given us to possess, as they unjustly possess what their god gives them; and will maintain a war of constant opposition to them (against whom our Lord hath declared a war for ever) without parley, treaty of peace, capitulation, composition, truce, or any transaction; we will neither meddle nor make with them, less or more, nor seek their favour, nor embrace it when it is offered, on any terms that may imply any obligation to surcease from our duty to our King, and irreconcileable opposition to them,' &c.
Now I shall come more distinctly to the purpose, in offering a short vindication of the heads and grounds of our great sufferings, dividing them into their principal parts, which I reduce to two, to wit, negatives and positives. The negative grounds I reckon three principally. 1. For refusing to acknowledge a corrupt ministry. 2. For refusing to own a tyrannical magistracy. 3. For refusing to swear and subscribe their unlawful imposed oaths, chiefly that of abjuration, which was the occasion of suffering unto death. The positive grounds are also three. 1. For frequenting field-meetings, to receive gospel ordinances from faithful ministers. 2. For maintaining the principle and practice of defensive resistance of superior powers. 3. For maintaining the privilege and duty of offensive revenge, in executing justice upon murdering enemies of mankind, in cases of extreme necessity, in prosecuting which, I shall intertex some subordinate questions relating to their respective heads, and endeavour to discuss them briefly.
HEAD I.
Where the sufferings of many, for refusing to acknowledge a corrupt ministry, are vindicated; and the question of hearing curates is cleared.
This question, though it may seem nice, and of no great moment, to persons of Gallio's or Laodicea's temper, indifferent and lukewarm dispositions, consulting their own more than the things of Christ, which make it pass without any enquiry with the most part of the world; yet, to all who are truly tender in keeping a good conscience, free of the times contagion, to all who have the true impression of the fear of God, who is jealous, especially in the matters of his worship; to all who have the true zeal of God eating them up, in a just indignation at the indignities done to him, in usurping the office and corrupting the administration of the ministry; to all who truly love the gospel, and put a due value on the ordinances of Christ, the corruptions whereof this question touches, it will be accounted of great importance.
There are three questions about the duty of hearing the word, concerning which the Lord Jesus gives us very weighty cautions, to wit, what we should hear, Mark iv. 24. how we should hear, Luke viii. 28. and whom we should hear. The last of which, though it be not so expressly stated as the other two, yet the searcher of the scriptures will find it as clearly determined, and as many cautions to guard from erring in it, as in any other case, and that the concern of conscience in it is very weighty. And certain it is, if there had been more advertency in this point, there would not have been such inconsideration and licentiousness in the matter and manner of hearing. Nor would that itching humour and luxuriancy of lust, in heaping up teachers to please the fancy, have been so much encouraged, to the great detriment of the church, disgrace of the gospel, and destruction of many poor souls. But through the ignorance and neglect of this duty of trying whom we should hear, by seeking some satisfying evidence of their being cloathed with authority from Christ, the world hath been left loose in a licence to hear what they pleased, and so have received the poison of error from the mountebanks, instead of the true and wholesome potions of Christ's prescripts from them that had power and skill to administer them. Hence the many sects, and schisms, and errors that have pestered the church in all ages, have in a great measure proceeded from this latitude and laxness of promiscuous hearing of all whom they pleased, whom either the world's authority impowered, or by other means were possessed of the place of preaching, without taking any cognizance whether they had the characters of Christ's ambassadors or not. If this had been observed, and people had scrupled and refused to hear these whom they might know should not have preached; neither the great antichrist, nor the many lesser antichrists, would have had such footing in the world as they have this day. It is then of no small consequence to have this question cleared. Neither is it of small difficulty to solve the intricacies of it, what characters to fix for a discovery of Christ's true ministers; whom we should submit to and obey in the Lord, and love and esteem them for their work's sake, and for their qualities sake, as standing in Christ's stead, having the dispensation of the word of reconciliation committed to them; and how we may discern those characters; what judgment is incumbent to private Christians, for the satisfaction of their own consciences in the case; and how they ought to demean themselves in their practice, without scandal on either hand, or sin against their own conscience; how to avoid the rocks and extremes that inadvertency or precipitancy in this matter may rush upon; so as to escape and sail by the Scylla of sinful separation on the one hand, and the Charybdis of sinful union and communion on the other, which are equally dangerous; especially how these cautions are to be managed in a broken, and disturbed, and divided case of the church. The question also is the more difficult, that as it was never so much questioned before this time, and never so much sought to be obscured, by the perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, to find out evasions to cover sin and escape sufferings upon this account; so it hath never been discussed by divines either at home or abroad, with relation to our case, except what hath been of late by some faithful men, who have suffered upon this head, from whom I shall gather the most of my arguments, in as compendious a way as I can without wronging them. The reason, I fancy, that we are at such a loss in our helps from the learned on this head, is partly, that they have written with relation to their own times, in a constitute case of the church, when corruptions and disorders might be orderly rectified, and people might have access to get their scruples removed in a legal way by church-order, in which case the learned and judicious Mr. Durham hath written excellently in his book on scandal; but therein neither he nor others did consult, nor could have a prospect of such a case as ours is; and partly, that foreign divines, not having this for their exercise, could not be acquainted with our circumstantiate case, and so are not fit nor competent arbiters to decide this controversy; hence many of them do wonder at our sufferings upon this head. Every church is best acquainted with her own testimony. Yet we want not the suffrage of some of the most learned of them, as the great Gisb. Voetius in his polit. eccles. in several places comes near to favour us: where he allows people to leave some, and hear such ministers as they profit most by, from these grounds, 'That people should choose the best and most edifying gifts, and from that scripture, 1 Thess. v. 21. Prove all things, &c. and answers objections to the contrary, and granteth, that, upon several occasions, one may abstain from explicit communion with a corrupt church, for these reasons, that such communion is not absolutely necessary, by necessity either of the mean or precept, where the Christian shall have more peace of conscience, and free exercise of Christian duties elsewhere, and that he may keep communion with more purity in other places, polit. eccles. quest. 17. pag. 68. And he approves of the people refusing to bring their children to be baptized by such corrupt ministers, because they may wait until they have occasion of a minister; for if the best gifts be to be coveted, why should not the best ministers be preferred? and why should not Christians shew by their deeds, that they honour such as fear the Lord, and contemn a vile person? They ought not to partake of other men's sins, 1 Cor. v. 9, 11. Eph. v. 11. They should not strengthen the hands of the wicked, and make sad the godly; the authority of such ministers should not be strengthened,' Voet. polit. eccles. pag. 637 to 640. But though it labour under all these disadvantages; yet it is not the less, but so much the rather necessary, to say somewhat to clear it, with dependence upon light from the fountain, and with the help of faithful men who have sufficiently cleared it up, to all that have a conscience not blinded nor bribed with some prejudices, by which more light hath accrued to the church in this point of withdrawing from corrupt ministers than ever was attained in former times; which is all the good we have got of prelacy. Insomuch that I might spare labour in adding any thing, were it not that I would make the arguments, vindicating this cause of suffering, a little more public, and take occasion to shew, that the grounds espoused by the present and reproached party for their withdrawings, so far as they are stretched, are no other than have been owned by our writers on this head; to the intent that it may appear, there is no discrepancy, but great likeness and harmony between the arguments and grounds of withdrawing, in the late informatory vindication, &c. and those that are found in other writings. And so much the rather I think it needful to touch this subject now, that not only this hath been the first ground of our sufferings, but many that suffered a while for it, now have fainted, and condemned all their former contendings for this part of the testimony, calling in question all these reasons that formerly satisfied them. But to proceed with some distinctness in this thorny point: some concessory assertions must first be permitted, and then our grounds propounded.