If blind affection leads you to have respect to the sustentation of those carnal friends of yours, who tyrannously have empired above the poor flock of Christ Jesus, rather than the zeal of God's glory provoke and move you to set His oppressed Church at freedom and liberty, we fear sharp and sudden punishment for you, and that the glory and honour of this enterprise will be reserved unto others.
Yet shall this our judgment abide to the generations following for a monument, and witness how lovingly God called you and this realm to repentance, what counsellors God sent unto you, and how ye have used the same. If obediently ye hear God now calling, we doubt not but He shall hear you in your greatest necessity. But if, following your own corrupt judgments, ye contemn His voice and vocation, we are assured that your former iniquity, and present ingratitude, shall together crave just punishment from God, who cannot long delay to execute His most just judgments, when, after many offences and long blindness, grace and mercy offered is contemptuously refused.
God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of His Holy Spirit, so illuminate your hearts, that ye may clearly see what is pleasing and acceptable in His presence; so bow the same to His obedience, that ye may prefer His revealed will to your own affections; and so strengthen you by the spirit of fortitude, that boldly ye may punish vice, and maintain virtue within this realm, to the praise and glory of His holy name, to the comfort and assurance of your own consciences, and to the consolation and good example of the posterities following. Amen. So be it.
By your Honours'
Most humble servitors, etc.
From Edinburgh, The twentieth of May 1560.
Act of Secret Council, xxvii January,
Anno &c., 1560.[272]
We, who have subscribed these presents, having advised with the Articles herein specified, as is above mentioned from the beginning of this book, think the same good, and in conformity with God's Word in all points, subject to the notes and additions thereto eked; and we promise to set the same forward to the uttermost of our powers. Providing that the Bishops, Abbots, Priors, and other Prelates and beneficed men, who already have joined themselves to us, bruik the revenues of their benefices during their lifetimes, they sustaining and upholding the ministry and ministers, as is herein specified, for preaching of the Word, and administering of the Sacraments of God.