Читать книгу A Hind Let Loose - Shields Alexander - Страница 16

Containing the Testimony through the continued tract of the present deformation from the year 1660 to this day.

Now comes the last catastrophe of the deformation of the church of Scotland, which now renders her to all nations as infamously despicable, as her reformation formerly made her admired and envied; which in a retrograde motion hath gradually been growing these 27 years, going back through all the steps by which the reformation ascended, till now she is returned to the very border of that Babylon, from whence she took her departure, and reduced through defection, and division, and persecutious to a confused chaos of almost irreparable dissolution, and unavoidable desolation. Through all which steps notwithstanding, to this day, Scotland hath never wanted a witness for Christ, against all the various steps of the enemy's advancings, and of professed friends declinings: though the testimony hath had some singularities, some way discriminating it from that of former periods; in that it hath been more difficult by reason of more desperate and dreadful assaults of more enraged enemies, more expert and experienced in the accursed art of overturning than any formerly; in that it hath been attended with more disadvantages, by reason of the enemies greater prevalency, and friends deficency, and greater want of significant asserters, than any formerly; in that it hath been intangled in more multifarious intricacies of questions, and debates, and divisions among the assertors themselves, making it more dark, and yet in the end contributing to clear it more than any formerly; in that it hath been intended and extended to a greater measure, both as to matter and manner of contendings against the adversaries, and stated upon nicer points; more enixly prosecuted and tenaciously maintained, and sealed with more sufferings, than any formerly; in that it hath had more opposition and contradiction, and less countenance from professed friends to the reformation, either at home or abroad, than any formerly. And yet it hath had all these several speciallties together, which were peculiar to the former testimonies, in their respective periods: being both active and passive, both against enemies and friends; and in cumulis stated against atheism, popery, prelacy, and erastian supremacy, which were the successive heads of the former testimonies, and also now extended in a particular manner against tyranny. And not only against the substance and circumstance, abstract and concret root and branch, head and tail of them, and all complying with them, conforming to them, or deduced from them, any manner of way, directly or indirectly, formally or interpretatively. This is that extensive and very comprehensive testimony of the present period, as it is now stated and sealed with the blood of many: which in all its parts, points and pendicles is most directly relative, and dilucidly reducible, to a complex witness for the declarative glory of Christ's kingship and headship over all, as he is Mediator, which is the greatest concern that creatures have to contend for, either as men or as Christians. The matter of this testimony, I shall give a short manuduction to the progress and result of its management.

During the exile of the royal brothers, it is undeniably known that they were, by their mothers caresses and the jesuits allurements, seduced to abjure the reformed religion (which was easy to induce persons to, that never had the sense of any religion) and to be reconciled to the church of Rome: and that, not only they wrote to the pope many promises of promoting his projects, if ever they should recover the power into their hands again, and often frequented the mass themselves; but also, by their example and the influence of their future hopes, prevailed with many of their dependents and attendants abroad, to do the like. Yet it is unquestionably known, that in the mean time of his exile, he renewed and confirmed, by private letters to presbyterians, his many reiterated engagements to adhere to the covenant, and declared that he was and would continue the same man, that he had declared himself to be in Scotland, (wherein doubtless, as he was an expert artist, he equivocated, and meant in his heart he would continue as treacherous as ever) which helped to keep a loyal impression of his interest in the hearts of too many, and an expectation of some good of him, of which they were ashamed afterwards. And immediately before his return, it is known what promises are contained in that declaration from Breda (from whence he came also the second time, with greater treachery than at the first) to all protestants that would live peaceably under his government; beginning now to weigh out his perfidy, and perjury, and breach of covenant, in offering to tolerate that in an indulgence, which he swore to maintain as a duty. But in all this he purposed nothing, but to ingere and ingratiate himself into the peoples over credulous affections, that they might not obstruct his return, which a jealousy of his intended tyranny would have awakened them to withstand. And so having seated himself, and strengthened his power against the attemptings of any, whom his conscience might suggest an apprehension that they ought to resist him, he thought himself discharged from all obligations of covenants, oaths, or promises, for which his faith had been pledged. And from the first hour of his arrival, he did in a manner set himself to affront and defy the authority of God, and to be revenged upon his kingdoms for inviting him so unanimously to sway their sceptre; in polluting and infecting the people with all debaucheries and monstrous villanies; and commencing his incestous whoredoms that very first night he came to his palace, wherein he continued to his dying day outvying all for vileness. Yet he went on deluding our church with his dissimulations, and would not discover all his wickedness hatched in his heart at first, till his designs should be riper; but directed a letter to the presbytery of Edinburgh, declaring he was resolved to protect and preserve the government of the church of Scotland, as it is settled by law without violation: wherein it was observed he altered the stile, and spake never a word of the covenant, our Magna Charta of religion and righteousness, our greatest security for all interests intrusted to him, but only of law; by which, as his practice expounded it afterwards, he meant the prelatical church, as it was settled by the law of his father, since which time he reckoned there was no law but rebellion. This was a piece and prelude of our base defection, and degeneration into blind blockish, and brutish stupidity; that after he had discovered so much perfidy, we not only at first tempted him to perjury, in admitting him to the crown, upon his mock-engagement in the covenant, whereby God was mocked, his Spirit was grieved, his covenant prostituted, the church cheated, and the state betrayed; but after the Lord had broken his yoke from off our necks, by sending him to exile ten years, where he was discovered to be imbibing all that venom and tyrannical violence, which he afterward vented in revenge upon the nation; and after we had long smarted for our first transaction with him; yet notwithstanding of all this, we believed him again, and Issachar-like couched under his burdens and were so far from withstanding, that we did not so much as witness against the re-admission and restoration of the head and tail of malignants, but let them come in peaceably to the throne, without any security to the covenanted cause, or for our civil or religious interests, and by meal, at their own ease, leisure and pleasure, to overturn all the work of God, and reintroduce the old antichristian yoke of absurd prelacy, and blasphemous sacreligious, supremacy, and absolute arbitrary tyranny with all their abominations: which he, and with him the generality of our nobility, gentry, clergy, and commonality by him corrupted, without regard to faith, or fear of God or man, did promote and propogate, the nation was involved in the greatest revolt from, and rebellion against God, that ever could be recorded in any age or generation; nay attended with greater and grosser aggravations, than ever any could be capable of before us, who have had the greatest privileges that ever any church had, since the national church of the Jews, the greatest light, the greatest effects of matchless magnified love, the greatest convictions of sin, the greatest resolutions and solemn engagements against it, and the greatest reformation from it, that ever any had to abuse and affront. O heavens be astonished at this, and horribly afraid! for Scotland hath changed her glory, and the crown hath fallen from off her head, by an unparalelled apostasy, a free and voluntary, wilful and deliberate apostasy, an avowed and declared and authorized apostasy, tyrannically carried on by military violence and cruelty, a most universal and every way unprecedented apostasy! I must a little change my method, in deducing the narration of this catastrophe, and subdistinguish this unhappy period into several steps; shewing how the enemies opposition to Christ advanced, and the testimony of his witnesses did gradually ascend, to the pitch it is now arrived at.