CLOUD OF WITNESSES, FOR THE ROYAL PREROGATIVES OF JESUS CHRIST: OR, THE LAST SPEECHES AND TESTIMONIES OF THOSE WHO HAVE SUFFERED FOR THE TRUTH IN SCOTLAND, SINCE THE YEAR 1680, WITH A COPIOUS APPENDIX. Rev. vii. 14. These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have A NEW EDITION. LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE BOOKSELLERS. PREFACE. Chriflian Reader. T HE glorious frame and contrivance of religion, revealed by the ever Blessed JEHOVAH, in the face or person of Jesus Chrift, for the recovery of loft mankind into a state of favour and reconcilement with himself, is so excellently ordered in the councils of infinite wisdom, and exactly adjusted to the real delight, contentment and happiness of the rational world; that it might justly be wondered why so many men in all ages, have not only had a secret disgust thereat themselves, but laboured to rob others of the comfort and benefit of it, and make the world a chaos of confufion, by perfecutions raised against it; had not the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures laid open the hidden springs of this malice and enmity, which exerts itself in so many of the children of men. We are told in these divinely inspired writings, that the first source of this opposition that the true religion meets with in the world, flows originally from Satan, that inveterate enemy of God's glory, and man's happiness, who having himself left his original state of obedience to, and enjoyment of God his Creator, hath no other alleviament of his inevitable miseries, but to draw the race of mankind into the like ruin, which is the only fatisfaction that malicious spirit is capable of. This restless adversary perceiving, that through the grace and love of God manifested in Christ, a great number of these whom he thought he had fecured to his flavery are redeemed, and called by the gospel out of that intolerable fervitude into a glorious liberty, and fecured by faith to falvation, labours by two great engines of open force and fecret fraud, to keep them in, or regain them to his obedience; hence the facred Scriptures defcri him, both as a dragon for cruelty, and a ferpent for fubtilty. But, because he either cannot, or thinks not fit to do this visibly in person, therefore he does it more invisibly, and fo more fuccessfully by his agents, in whom he works; who, because of their unreasonable unbelief,, a 2 ( unbelief, are called children of imperfuafion. These he acts and animates as it were so many machines, to endeavour by crafty seduction, or violent perfecution, to draw or drive the followers of the Lamb from their fubjection, obedience, and loyalty, to the Captain of their falvation, that he may drown them in perdition and deftruction. This is the latent origin of all persecution, the mint where all the other more visible causes of the bloody violence the people of God meet withal are struck and framed. This is the grand design to which they tend to root out the obedience of faith out of the world, and deprive the Son of God of his rightful dominion over his fubjects whom he hath chosen, redeemed and fanctified for himself. As this holds true of all the perfecutions raised against the church and truths of God, whether in the perfons of Jews or Christians, by whatever hands, Pagan or Antichristian, so it is eminently verified of the perfecutions of the Church of Scotland, profecuted by a profane wicked generation of malignant prelatists, during the reigns of the late kings Charles II. and James VII. For as the other perfecutions were all levelled against some point of truth or other, wherein the obedience of faith was concerned, respecting either the existence and worship of the true God, or the person, natures or offices of Jesus Chrift, &c. so this perfecution was directly bended against that office and authority of Jesus Christ, whereupon his formal claim to the obedience of his church is founded, viz. His headship over his Church. Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, having received the Church of Scotland, as one of the utmost ifles of the earth for his possession, by folemn grant from JEHOVAH, was pleased, as to call her from the deplorable state of Pagan, and reform her from the ruinous condition of Antichriftian darkness; so to dignify her in a peculiar manner, to contend and fuffer for that truth, that he is king and lawgiver to his church, having power to institute her form of government, to give her laws, officers, and cenfures, whereby the should be governed, and hath not left it ambulatory and uncertain, what government he will have in force for the ordering of his houfe, but hath exprefsly determined in his word every neceffary part thereof, and hath not put any power into the hands of any mortal, whether pope, prelate, prince, 4 5 prince, or potentate, as a vicarious head in his personal abfence, whereby they may alter the form of government at their pleasure, and make what kind of officers, canons, and cenfures, they please; but all the power that this king hath left in his church, concerning her government, is purely and properly ministerial, under the direction and regulation of his fovereign pleasure, revealed in his written word. This is the most radiant pearl in the Church of Scotland's garland; that the hath been honoured valiantly to stand up for the headship and royal prerogative of her King and Husband, Jesus Christ, in all the periods of her reformation. For no fooner had the thrown off the yoke of the pope's pretended jurifdiction and authority, but presently, while she was labouring by means of these cenfures that Christ had institute, to root out the damnable herefies which that enemy had fown, all on a fud. den King James VI. naturally ambitious, and instigate by interested and projecting counsellors, attempts a rape upon her chastity and loyalty to her husband and Lord; and by his royal order stops her freedom of fitting, voting, and acting in her fupreme courts, imprisons fome of her most zealous and faithful ministers, calls them before his council, indicts them of treason and leese majesty, for their making use of the freedom. Christ had given them; and after their declining his and his council's. ufurped authority in spiritual matters, and fo witneffing. a good confession for the royal dignity of their Master, banish them their native country.. But the church's fun of profperity is foon at the tropic: Scarce was that spring time well begun to bloffom and bud, when behold a world of malignant vapours, arifing out of the earth, clouded all her sky again, and turned her fpring to a deplorable winter. Various herefies in England, growing popery in Ireland, public resolutions for advancing malignants to places of power and truft in Scotland, like fo many inundations breaking in upon the church of Christ, laid all her pleafant things waste. And no fooner was Charles II. advanced to the exercise of the royal authority, but drowning the sense of all facred obligations with a glut of fenfual pleasures, he authorifed a malignant crew of statesmen to perfecute and destroy the people of God for their adherence to the covenants, which himself had entered into as the funda-.. mental a 3 1 |