6. A formal consent to the wickedness of these impositions were the less matter, if the payment of them were not also a concurrence to assist them, and a strengthening their hands in it. But this is so manifest, that the paying of the cess, locality, fines, fees, &c. is a concurrence with, and contributing towards the promoving the wicked designs for which they are imposed, that he must have a conscience of brass, and in a great measure feared who will run upon such a formal engagement against the Lord and his anointed King in Zion. If it was Aaron's sin which made the people naked, and which brought so great a sin upon them, to take, and the people's sin and shame to give, that contribution of golden ear-rings for making a calf, Exod. xxii. 3. &c. And if it was Gideon's sin to take and Israel's to give, that contribution of the ear-rings of their prey, to make an ephod, Judg. viii. 25. Then, as it is our oppressors sin to take, so it must be our sin and shame to give, their demanded exaction to help them in erecting such idols of jealousy, as they have set up, and are commanding all to bow to, to provoke the Lord to jealousy, especially when they affrontedly require such contributions to be paid, both as punishments for not assisting, and as means to assist in their establishment. Should we thus help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord? 2 Chron. xix. 2. Alas! instead of arguing, it were more fit to fall a weeping, when it is come to be a question amongst us, whether, instead of coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty, we shall really help the mighty against the Lord, and that while they call for our assistance formally upon this declared account. As the very inscription of their acts, does carry it in their front, requiring a supply to his majesty, &c. If this be not a casting in a lot among them, who can tell what it is? Sure it is a preparing a table for that troop, and a furnishing a drink offering unto that number, Isa. lxv. 31. Seeing it is a supplying them with necessaries, to solemnize their idolatrous festivities, who forsake the Lord, and not only forget but lay waste his holy mountain, for which all that have any occasion to it, are threatened to be numbered to the sword. If any thing be a strengthening the hands of evil doers, Jer. xxiii. 14. certainly this is. For as they cannot accomplish their cursed ends without these exactions, so the payment of them is all the present, personal and public concurrence in waging this war with heaven, that is required of the nation, to wit, such a sum to furnish them with all necessaries, and maintain the executioners of their hell-hatched and heaven-daring decrees and orders: and the law requiring no more but contributing what is appointed, looks equally upon the givers, as followers of the command, and active concurrers in complying with its end, and carrying on and promoving its design, and so affoils them from all the statute severities, in case of deficiency.
7. If it were only a concurrence in their wickedness to pay those their exacted supplies, it were more easily comported with: but I fear it shall be found a hire and reward for their wicked service. At first they were only enacted and exacted, as helps to capacitate this popish, prelatical and malignant faction, to prosecute the war they had undertaken and declared against Christ: but now, having thereby been enabled to carry it through this length, that they have almost got all visible appearances for Christ, in owning his gospel, and propagating his testimony, quite suppressed by means of these impositions, and having got the fields cleared or those that formerly opposed their course and career, and all obstacles removed that might stand in the way of the reception they have prepared for their mistress the Babylonish lady, the mother of harlots; they now demand these payments, as their wages and hire for their labour; which to pay now, is more than a justifying, seeing it is a rewarding them for their work. And to pay these pimps, and to purchase their peace thereby, is worse than to bring the hire of a whore into the house of the Lord, (Deut. xxiii. 18.) since it is a hiring them to bring the whore into the house of the Lord. O how hath Scotland played the harlot with many lovers! is this the zeal we should have had to our covenanted husband, and the honour of his house, that we have not only suffered his enemies to come in and take possession of it, but consented to their invasion; and not only consented, but invited them to come in; and not only invited them, but prostitute our estates and consciences also to their arbitrary lusts; and not only played the harlot with them, but hired them also when they had done! and for this the Lord may say to Scotland, as he said to his people of old, 'They give gifts to all whores, but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side, for thy whoredom. And the contrary is in thee from other women in thy whoredoms—in that thou givest a reward, and no reward is given unto thee; therefore thou art contrary,' Ezek xvi. 33, 34. There Israel is taxed for hiring the Assyrians: but let it be considered and enquired into in the history, how this was. What evidence can be given of this in their transactions with them? Was it only that they were enticed, or did entice them into a communion with their idolatry, It is true, Ahaz may be an instance of that, in his sending the pattern of the altar he saw at Damascus, 2 Kings xvi. 10. And it cannot be denied, but in several respects they did partake with the Assyrians in their idolatry, which was their adultery. But what could be their hire they gave them for it, if it was not their taxations they paid, and money they sent unto them? as Ahaz did, verse 8. and Hezekiah also, though a good man, 2 Kings xviii. 14, 15. which can no more be justified, than Asa's paying to Benhadad. It was then their confederacies, and the hire of them the Lord calls the hire they gave unto their lovers. With this also Ephraim is charged, that he hired lovers, Hos. viii. 9, 10. of this we have instances, in Menahem's giving to Pul a thousand talents of silver, and exacting it of the people, 2 Kings xv. 19, 20. And in Hoshea's becoming servant to Shalmanesar king of Assyria, and giving him presents, 2 Kings xvii. 3. If then hiring wicked men in confederacies to help the Lord's people, be a hiring of lovers so much condemned in scripture, what must a hiring of them to hurt them, and rewarding them after they have done, and when they formally seek it for such work, be? but a giving the reward, they seek to slay the innocent (Deut. xxvii. 25.) and a voluntary yielding that which they take, (Ezek. xxii. 12.) which if it be sin in the takers, cannot be justified in the givers, but will render both obnoxious to the indignation of a provoked God, in the day when he shall begin to contend for the wrongs he hath got, both by the work and the wages. Now let all the acts for the cess and continuation thereof, and other acts and edicts for fines and forfeitures, be considered in their just import, according to the true meaning of the enacters, and the causes for which they exact them, and will have them complied with; it will be found they were both declared, intended and improved, and accordingly approved by the compliers, not only as helps, but as hires for our oppressors and destroyers, and for such as have been, and are more destructive and explicitly declared enemies to Christ's interests and people in Scotland, than ever the Assyrians were to the church in the old testament. The cess was not only a help, but a hire to the tyrant and his accomplices, for suppressing meetings for gospel ordinances; especially the continuation of it, from time to time, was humbly, unanimously, chearfully and heartily offered, for themselves, and in name of, and as representing this kingdom, as a hire for the doing of it, and an encouragement to suppress what remained of these conventicles. The locality was intended as a help to the soldiers in their quarterings upon this account; but afterwards, being expressly discharged to be furnished, without payment according to the current rates of the country, Act 3. par. 3. X. Charles II. Aug. 20, 1681. The contribution of it for nought must be interpreted for a reward of their service, fines are appointed, not only for a punishment of contraveeners of their wicked laws, but for a hire to their most violent executors. Stipends for a hire to their hireling curates. And fees, as a hire to jailors, to keep the Lord's people in bondage. By which hires these destroyers have been rewarded, by them whom they have destroyed, and for which the righteous Lord will reward both.
8. Let it be considered, how far these submissions are short of, and how clearly these compliances are inconsistent with, that duty which lies upon us with reference to them. Our obligation to God and our brethren doth indispensibly bind us to a contrary carriage. If it bind us in our station and capacity to an active renitency, it doth much more bind us up from such compliances. Neither is it imaginable, how moral force can ever justify our doing that deed, we are obliged, by all imaginable bonds, yea, if in any probable capacity, by the utmost of real force, to counteract. Can we give them that which they require, and by which they are enabled to murder our brethren, when we are so indispensibly obliged to rescue our brethren, Prov. xxiv. 11, 12. to relieve the oppressed, Isa. i. 27, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke, Isa. lviii. 6. What do we owe to these enemies, but seeing they have constitute themselves by these acts implacable enemies to Christ, his people and interestin babite, not only plainly and importunely to pray that he would overturn them, but to oppose their course, to the uttermost of our power, and to concur to wrath that power out of their hands? And since they will needs make the whole nation a curse, they are so far from being to be complied with, that for these exactings and exactions they are to be looked upon, and carried unto, not only as these who have sold themselves to work wickedness, but endeavour also to engage with themselves all in the same guilt, and expose them to the same curse. And therefore, that the anger of the Lord may be turned away from his people, every one in his station is obliged to endeavour to bring these Achans to condign punishment.
9. As it must be taken for granted, that these wicked oppressions by law are perjury avouched in the sight of God; yea in a peculiar manner, our covenanted subjection unto him is turned into an open war against him; so we cannot but believe, that for this height of wickedness, the curse of God (to which in the covenant the nation in case of breach, is liable by their own consent) and the Mediator's malediction shall follow, pursue, overtake, and fall upon the head of these, who have made the decrees, and upon all who concur in the execution, and carry on this course: Oh! it is impossible to keep them company, and not fall with them into the hands of the living God. Well then, seeing every one for whom these exactions are required, is under an anterior obligation to God and the brethren, to preserve these precious interests, which the imposers have been long essaying to root out and ruin, and his people whom they have been destroying, with the loss of all he hath, life not accepted. (For I suppose none, who acknowledged his soul is still under the bond of the covenant and it is likely to cost him his soul who denies it) but he will own this to be duty; nay, none who hath any sense of religion; but abstracting from the subjective obligation of a sworn covenant, he will own an objective obligation from the law of the great superior, that doth immediately bind the conscience to witness against this course, and to lay down, if it should come to that, his life for his brethren. Then for a man to give his goods to destroy these things and persons, which he is obliged to defend and preserve with the loss of all, is so clear a making himself a transgressor, in paying his proportion, and being at the expense of destroying what he built, and building what he destroyed, that it seems inexplicable how he can dream to be innocent; especially when more lies upon it than the souls of the compliers are worth even the interest of Christ in the land. And to close this, I would put home the question, and pose the confidence of any that took that covenant, if in that day the question had been asked at him, whether he would have judged the paying of a cess for the ends narrated, to suppress a testimony for that covenanted reformation, the paying of fines and fees, (for owning it) to the overturners, breakers and burners of it, to be a plain perjury and palpable counteracting of the ends thereof? And let him speak his soul, and it is beyond debate with me, he will not dare to say he took it in a sense which can subsist with these compliances. Nay, I doubt not, if to any morally serious it had been then said, You will pay money, &c. for destroying this covenant and its ends, and deleting the remnant that shall be found to adhere to it he would have given Hazael's answer. It concerns every man, that would be free of the curse of it, to consider how he is brought to make enquiry after vows; or to dream of consistencies betwixt the performing those engagements, and the plainest concurring in a counteracting thereof.
10. If then these impositions be so wicked, and for such wicked ends and causes; then, in order to my being free of this heinous guilt, there is a necessity of my giving a testimony, and such an one, which when brought to the touchstone, will get God's approbation, and be my acquittance from a concurrence. Now, it is not imaginable that my testimony can be the exact obedience to the law, against the wickedness whereof it is witnessed; but on the contrary, it must be at least a plain and positive refusing to yield obedience to that law, when I am in no other case to counteract these commands; for I must either obey and be guilty, or refuse and be innocent. I shall not here plunge into the labyrinth of these debates and difficulties, wherewith this matter of testimonies hath been perplexed, and mostly by those who have had no great mind to the thing. I shall only propound these few queries. (1.) Whether any thing less than a testimony can free me of this guilt, whereby the nation involved in it is made a curse? (2.) Whether, we believe that the testimony of every one shall be called for, in the day when God shall seek out this wickedness? (3.) Whether, if ever it be necessary, it be not then when Christ is openly opposed, and every one is called either to concur or to testify? (4.) Whether a testimony against a wicked law must not be notour for my testimony must make it evident that the law is not obeyed by me, else it is no testimony. (5.) Whether it be not necessary also, that it be with that plainness and boldness, as it may keep some proportion with the prodigiousness of that wickedness testified against? (6.) Whether to the making it a testimony indeed, it is not only required, that an opposition be made at first, but that this be so persisted in, as by no subsequent deed it be weakened? (7.) Whether we do not take it for granted, that according as a man hath testified, the sentence of the righteous Judge shall pass! For he who hath not purged himself thereby from the guilt of this conspiracy, shall be led forth and punished with these workers of iniquity. It is a saying which would sink in the soul of every one who would be saved, especially in such a day. Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven; but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny, &c. Oh that men would now judge of things and courses, as in that hour they desire to be judged! and then there would be little difficulty what to determine in that case.
11. From what is said it appears, that there is no other way of testifying against it, or shunning the sin of this wickedness, imposing and enjoining these compliances, but by refusing them; which as it is clear duty, so it hath many advantages to countervail all the supposed loss that can be sustained thereby. It is a shameful subterfuge to say, I strengthen them more by doing thus, which will make them take all, and so put themselves in better case to do the mischief decreed. For as it is then my suffering, not my sin, so it is simply false that I do hereby strengthen their hands: for hereby I do more certainly weaken their hands, and wound their cause, by my counteracting, testifying and suffering. For, 1. I do really, to the uttermost of the sphere of my activity, counteract their design; and hence, besides my own upmaking peace of conscience, (which is my hundredfold in this life) I glorify God in the day of visitation, behaving as the subject and soldier of the prince Michael; and though I lose my life in the conflict, yet the victory over the dragon, and his lieutenant and trustees, and their lictors, is thereby gained, and they are foiled, while I fight and overcome, by my not loving my life in the present case unto the death. 2. I do by my example encourage my brethren to stand fast, and withstand in this evil day. 3. I hereby transmit to posterity a pattern for imitation, and so propagate an opposition to this course to succeeding generations. 4. I hereby (so to speak) engage God to arise and appear to plead his own cause and his people's: for when we, out of love to him and zeal for his interests, take our lives in our hands, or expose our substance as a prey in witnessing for him, then he is engaged to own us, and to plead his cause, taking the quarrel then to be against himself. Hence it is that when he puts on the garments of vengeance for cloathing, and goes forth to meet them, who, in their risings up against his people, run upon the bosses of his buckler, his arm is said to bring salvation to himself, Isa. lix. 16, 17. and Isa. lxiii. 5. This keeps a man in case to pray against such a party; whereas a compliance with them, in the least degree, will wound a man's faith and weaken his confidence, so that he cannot wrestle with God to prevail: For that wherein his strength lay, a good conscience, being sinned away, in vain doth he essay, when he hath cut his own hair, to shake himself as at other times. Alas! if by keeping a due distance from his enemies, we were in case to play the Samsons or Jacobs on our knees, this enemy, who think it their stability to stand upon the ruins of Christ's interest, should not stand long upon their feet. He who would have his prayer heard, Thy kingdom come, should make his practice, in a conformity thereto, speak this plain language, If I perish, I perish, but comply I will not: for it is not necessary that I live, or have an estate, but it is necessary I should witness a good confession against the wrongs done to Christ. 6. This keeps a man in ease, either to act for God with advantage, if an opportunity be put in his hand, or to suffer, as under his supportings, and the shinings of his face, whereby, even while dying, he becomes an ornament to his profession, gives a dash to the enemy, and so becomes more than a conqueror.
12. Let us consider the matter of scandal in the present case, and remember whose words these are, "Wo to the world because of offences, and wo to him by whom offences come:" and it will appear, the payer of these exactions becomes highly guilty before God. 1. In stumbling and hardening this party of enemies: for though there was never a party before them in the nation (and I much doubt if ever a party can come after them to outdo them) who had so many evidences of plagues poured upon their hearts, that he may pour forth his wrath, and cause his fury to rest upon them; and that in his spotless justice, he will rain snares upon them, that thereafter he may rain fire and brimstone, and horrible tempest, as the portion of their cup, when he shall come to plead his own cause: yet we would beware lest we do any thing that may embolden them, or make them bless themselves in this their stated opposition to Christ's. And because we know not but some of the elect may, for a time, be carried down with the current of this impetuous opposition to him, and may concur actively for a season in promoving this course, we ought, even upon this supposition, so to witness, and so to keep a distance from all apparent or interpretative compliance with what they contrive and carry on, as they may, by beholding our stedfastnes, be provoked to consider their own course; that considering at last how their feet go down to death, and their steps take hold on hell, they may hasten their escape from the company of his enemies, lest they be consumed with the fire of his indignation, if found congregate with the men of these God provoking practices. 2. By paying what is required, I stumble also and offend my weak brethren, while by my example they are encouraged to rush into the same compliance. O! let every man, whose practice may be pleaded as a pattern, remember that word, and who spoke it, "It were better that a milstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the midst of the sea, than offend any of these little ones." 3. Sufferers for refusing this payment are offended, when the payer doth not only encourage the persecutors to proceed with rigour and rage against him, as a peevish and froward malecontent, but does what in him lies to wound the heart and weaken the hands of such a faithful witness: whereas, if the poor sufferer saw himself, by a joint testimony owned by his brethren, he would be comforted, strengthened, and become more confident in the conflict. 4. In paying these things the compliers, either by their example, lay a snare for the posterity, to whose knowledge their carriage may come; and so instead of the leaving them a pattern of contending earnestly for the faith, they spread a net for their feet, yea pave them a way to defection and apostasy; or else they engage the great God, out of zeal to his own glory, and tenderness to his people who shall succeed, for preventing of their following of such progenitors, wherein they have not been followers of him fully, to give such a testimony against their untenderness, and set such marks of displeasure upon their course, that the thoughts of turning aside with them, and following their steps shall be terrible to all that hear of it, lest, for such a compliance, they fall as they did, for falling from their own stedfastness into the hands of the living God. But alas! for the posterity, under whose curse we are like to go off the stage, because of our not having done what we ought, yea what we might; both for transmitting pure ordinances unto them, and for not transcribing in our practice the noble example of our zealous and heroic ancestors, who valiantly resisted when violently attacked, and by their valour wrestled us into a state of liberty. Well, if we leave those that shall succeed us such an example as this, he is like to make us such an example as will fright the following generations, and force them to serve themselves heirs to them who have gone before us, who did acquit themselves as the good soldiers of Jesus Christ, and not to us, the debt of whose declensions and defections cannot be paid, without the destruction of those who shall serve themselves heirs to us. But alas! who does think on what he owes to the poor posterity; or who doth make confidence to preserve for them that precious treasure put in our custody, and judges it more necessary than to live, to leave the tract of a way contending zealously for God, and the preservation of his interests, and the propagation of his own pure ordinances to the posterity, shining so clearly by suffering and blood, as the way-faring man, and they who shall come after, though fools, need not err therein? Our only comfort is, that the Lord, who shall see his seed, and must prolong his days, will make his pleasure prosper, and preserve some to be witnesses of it to his praise.
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Transcriber's note:
Numbering of headings and subheadings were left as they were in the original. Spelling of many words vary in the text; for example, expressly/expresly, abbreviation for Matthew as Mat. and Matt., Dumfermline/Dunfermline.
Page 82—supplied the word "year" "For resistance of superior powers, we have in this period, first the practice of some noblemen at Ruthven, in the 1582. who took the King, …"
Long "f" characters were replaced with the standard English "s"; the "ct" ligature was replaced with "ct".