AN ACCOUNT Of the Present PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND IN SEVERAL LETTERS LONDON Printed for S. Cook 1690. Good Christian Reader BY the help of a very little Natural Logick thou mayst easily observe how far some Mens specious Pretences are out-done by their Actions their Principles to which they ought to stand in the Opinion of their great Master Hobbs exceeded and bafled by their Practice since those very Persons who lately Addressed for Liberty of Conscience in words full of flattery do now Usurp Tyrannize over others and deprive them not only of their freedom in Religious concernments but of their Possessions and that no Barbarity may be omitted even of their precious Lives only for adhering to that Holy Doctrine which was once delivered to the Saints and often established by sundry Laws in that Kingdom And it will be no hard matter after the perusal of the following Sheets to perceive the vast difference between an English and a Scotch Persecution as some call it how gently and orderly the Church of England proceeded against the Dissenters in comparison of the Kirk who by their Clubs and Batoons have come near to if not outdone the merciless fury of French Dragooning And here it may be worthy remark how dangerous it is for the best Constituted Established Government to connive at not to say encourage the profane Vulgar in their Riots A number of wild Beasts let loose have as much Conduct less Malice and cannot do half the Mischief The noise of the Waves the raging of the Sea may as soon be stilled as the madness of the People it is a Work only for a power Almighty that many headed Beast ought to be carefully looked after and watched But further methinks it is also very clear by the subsequent Tract that in some parts of the World there are a company of Resolute Christians that dare lay down their Lives for the Truth of those Doctrines which they have formerly Taught and that in those places there may be a large History written not only of the Doctrine but real Practice of Passive Obedience in the Sufferings of those Men who contrary to the new Maxims of Government pay Obedience where they can have no Protection And now Christian good Reader if thou shalt be convinced of the verity of these foregoing deductions by the subsequent undenyable Truths I have but one thing to request from thee and that is no more than what thy Profession will oblige and command thee I mean to put on Bowels of Mercy and Compassion to the Poor Afflicted Distressed to help them as much as thou art able with thy Substance and to extend that Charity which is already gone over the Alps and hath assisted the Protestants in France Hungary and Piedmont to thy Neighbouring Brethren and of thy Communion in Scotland and if thy Circumstances are too mean to assist them with thy Purse be sure to let them have thy Charity for their Sufferings in thy hearty Prayers for a happy and sudden Deliverance from those who so Cruelly and Despightfully use them Farewel The First LETTER My Lord Some instance of my duty to your Lordship may be justly expected though at this distance and none I think more seasonable and proper from this place than the present condition of the Church of Scotland which though your Lordship may more fully understand from some other better able to give it yet that consideration is no apology for my silence in so Important an Affair and this use at least will be made of my attempt to testifie to your Lordship how ready I shall be to give an account of other Transactions not so well known at London THE Church of Scotland is at this time under the Claw of an inraged Lion Episcopacy abolished and its Revenues alienated the Clergy routed some by a form of Sentence and others by violence and popular fury their Persons and Families abused their Houses ransack'd their Gowns torn to pieces with many other injuries and indignities done them which I forbear naming that I may not Martyr your Lordships patience by the bare recital of them My Post in the Army as it has carried me unto many places of this Kingdom so it has given me as many opportunities to see and lament their condition The occasion of all these disasters is the prevailing strength of the Cameronian Party a Faction here taking its name from one Cameron formerly their Leader and who was slain in his Rebellion They are a sort of rigid Presbyterians or rather Fifth Monarchy-men valuing neither K. William nor K. Iames any further than as these Princes happen to please them some designing Heads in the Council and Parliament have made use of those Mens hands to bring their ends about whose weakness otherways was too discernable From these disorders they represent abroad the inclination of the People to the Presbyterian Government and alledge the Popular Zeal when it is highly suspected they are only tumults of their own making otherways upon the Complaints and Petitions of injur'd Persons redress might be obtained which however they are so far from that after such remonstrances they fare the worse and have this aggravation to their miseries that they are unpitied by those who ought to protect them Nay now at last the Government it self is become a Party against them and where before good Neighbourhood and well affected Persons screned their Ministers from the Dissenters Barbarity now they suffer by a form of Law Acts of Council and are themselves reputed Malignants and suffer as a discontented Factious People And yet the Church Party both for number and quality was predominant in this Nation The Nobles and Gentry are generally Episcopal and so the People especially Northward where to my own knowledge they are so well affected that it would be no hard task to bring them Cultui Ritibus cum Anglis Communibus subscribere as Buchanan saith the Ancient Scots did when they stood in fear of the French and desired England's assistance against them my frequent reading of our Service and Preaching in their Churches to the Auditories satisfaction the Caresses of the Gentry and respect of the ordinary People whenever I met them infers so much and plainly discovers that they neither abhorred me nor my way of Religion At Perth I was readily admitted into the Church and Pulpit though the Magistrates refused the same favor to the Lord Cardross a Privy Counsellor and the Lord Argyle in behalf of two Cameronian Preachers and though the former of these forced his way thither upon one Sunday yet the Lord Provost was better provided against another and took the same method I mean the strength of the City to oppose and baffle the Latter and when it was urg'd by both these Lords that that liberty they desired was granted to me some Sundays before The Magistrates excus'd themselves with an order to that purpose from Sir Iohn Lanier Even at Edinburgh it self the Faction was
is more in it than you are aware of For besides that Sir Iohn Hall present Provost of Edinburgh is a Privy Counsellor and consequently is not to be supposed to have attempted such a thing without first consulting Crawford and some others who sit at that Table there is this at the bottom of it In each of these Parishes there is a Presbyterian Meeting-House and the Preachers though they stand on no other Found but King Iames his Toleration hold themselves for the rightful Pastors of these Parishes and so pretend that the use of these Utensils belongs to them and they ought to have them in their Custody this was that which put the Magistrates upon the foresaid Course Innumerable such things as these I could easily Collect and weary your patience with them but methinks by this time you have got Taste enough of the Episcopal Parties Troubles on the one hand and the Prebyterian Parties Temper on the other to make you understand both competently and that was all I intended Only there are two things perhaps which you may be desirous to have some further satisfaction about and I will try if I can give it The first is That possibly ye may apprehend I did not in my last sufficiently take off these Aspersions which are thrown upon the Episcopal Clergy by the Phanatick News Mongers in their Malicious Papers and Pamphlets which they are Printing and Dispersing so confidently every day at London To tell the truth Sir We only hear of these Papers at least for my part I have seen none of them they come not ordinarily to Scotland and I believe their Authors are no ways inclined they should it requires a great deal of Forehead to tell lies where they can be easily discovered and not coming to our hands how can we detect or expose their falsities I am sure I said enough in the general to fortifie you or any sober Man against them especially as to all these Ministers Deprived by the Council for as I said there the Council never took notice of any thing but Reading and Praying But what though Malicious Men tell false stories with a great deal of Confidence Are you such a Stranger to the World as not to know that Lying has ever been one of the chief Artifices by which that Party have carried on their purposes It is no new Politick of theirs I could tell you some of the oddest Stories that ever you heard since you was born concerning their dexterity in that Art in the late Times but I will trouble you only with one at present indeed the whole World should know it it has such peculiarities in it You know how Anno 1638. at the Assembly of Glasgow they not only pretended to Depose the Bishops but even to Excommunicate many of them amongst the rest that most Reverend and Worthy Prelate Spotswood Arch-Bishop of St. Andrews The Sentence of Deposition and Excommunication passed against him was ordered to be Read Publickly after the Forenoons Sermon in all the Churches within his Diocess and in it a great many horrid immoralities such as Incest and Adultery c. were amassed Amongst many others it was Read particularly in the Church of Kilrinny in Fife by Mr. Coline Adam then Minister there Beaton of Balfour was in the Church at the time he was not a little amazed at hearing such strange things charged upon the Arch-Bishop He had lived many a year in his Neighbourhood He had been frequently in Company with him but had never discovered such Crimes about him so that he was exceedingly surprized but that was the least on 't In the progress of the Sentence he heard himself named as one of four Witnesses who had been examined upon Oath and by their Testimonies had proven these things against him this astonished him quite for it was not only notorious to all the Neighbourhood that during the whole time that famous Assembly sate he was not at Glasgow but still at home but no body knew it better than Mr. Adam himself for he had not only been his constant Auditor every Sunday but he had seen him or might have done it every day there being but a very short distance perhaps not two hundred Paces betwixt their Dwellings In effect it put the Gentleman in such disorder that he had well nigh stopped the Ministers Reading any further if his Father who was by him had not hindered him telling him he would Ruin himself However after they came out he Challenged the Minister who easily confest he knew it was a Lie but pretended he behoved to Read it in Obedience to Authority And what might he not have done after that Tell me Sir was not this a well assured wickedness This passage I have from persons of great integrity yet alive who told me they had it twenty times from Beaton's own Mouth and it is but one of a thousand as good if I could be at the pains to Collect them Piae fraudes talk we what we please have done good Service and been excellent Christian Tools in their time for carrying on the Good Old Cause But it was not scarcity that made me go so far back for Proofs of Presbyterian Honesty these twelve or fourteen months by-gone afford variety enough in all Conscience Thus to instance but in two or three things What Effrontery was used last year at London for running down all the Accounts were sent up concerning the Persecution of the Western Clergy as I told you before Such ingrain'd impudence had it not been seen and felt I had believed could neither have come from Hell nor It the two grand Staple-Ports for that Commodity What Relations of Oaths what confident Assertions what Printed Papers had we for King Iames his being Dead at Brest in March last I remember the present Earl of Argile one day disturbed a whole Meeting-House with a forged Letter about it With what shamelessness did the News go up first and then come down again from London in September last and pass current here That the Streets of Edinburgh were thronged with the Heads or Chieftains of Clanns coming in dayly to take the benefit of King William's Indemnity that was published after Dundee's death Though all the Kingdom knows not so much as one has come in to this very day And what strange Tales have been told of the wonderful Feats of Iniskilling Men I remember some Gentlemen about two Months ago went in one Afternoon to a Presbyterian Coffee-House called for the News Book cast up the account of the Irish killed by them and after computation found the number amounted to above 48000. These are but their ordinary tricks and with us they have now ceased to be Scandalous for by Custom we are come to reckon it no more strange to find that Party Lie than to see Danes Drink or Englishmen eat Pork or Pork-Pudding so that indeed Sir I pity you heartily if your Charity towards the Episcopal Clergy in this Kingdom can be
in the least shaken by the boldness of these miserable Scriblers I will only add one thing more upon this Head and that is that whatever may be Published that way must needs be false upon this account that as very many have observed since ever the Deprivation-Work began all the favour shown has been to those who least deserved it and if there was any less Knowing less Circumspect in their Lives or any ways less Qualified for continuing in the Ministery they are the Men who have hitherto escaped Deprivation The Politick is no more Damnable than Understood for as the shewing some Favour to such with less discerning Persons may chance to pass for an Argument of the Councils Moderation so under this Cover they have the opportunity of doing a great deal of Mischief they Ruin more securely and with less observation those of unquestionable Lives and Abilities and disable them for being Remora's hereafter either to the Settling or Securing Presbytery which they are affraid they might have been after the present Ferment is over had they continued in their Stations and hereby they hope to Ruin their Reputations too with people who think little and Strangers who cannot know all the intrigues of their business for such may readily conclude they have deserved worse seeing these are Deprived while others are preserved and then besides all this to these least deserving the seeming Favour of sparing them at present is shewn upon this Design in all likelyhood that afterwards they may be Ruined and Disgraced with the greater contempt and ignominy for being the weaker Men of the Episcopal side they foresee they will not only not be able to make a suitable Resistance to the Zealous Gang when it shall be in Circumstances to dispute it with them but also it will be easie for the Ecclesiastical Visitations to Depose them and not only so but their Fall when it comes may be readily improven into an heavy Reflection on all of Episcopal Principles and Phanaticks will have in readiness to say that the whole Party was still such and by these it may be judged what all the rest either were or are This is truely the Politick Sir but by this time I think I have insisted too much on this purpose The other thing perhaps is more Material for when you have considered all I said in my last perhaps ye may think it strange that you have found nothing concerning the inclinations of the generality of the People and such a general Persecution of the Episcopal Clergy on the one hand and so deep a silence concerning the Resentments of the People on the other may perchance seem to you a Demonstration of the Truth of that Article in our new Claim of Right for we may thank our Stars we have once gotten an Original Contract betwixt King and People which affirms That Prelacy and the Superiority of any Office in the Church above Presbyters is and hath been a great and insupportable Grievance and Trouble to this Nation and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the People c. But the Truth is Sir as from the beginning I was unwilling to fall foul upon the State so I thought that did not come so naturally in my way for my design was only to acquaint you with the treatment of the Clergy and not to Canvass every Assertion that has been boldly obtruded on the World by their Persecutors But seeing that Article makes such a noise and I hear some of your English Pamphleteers are taking notice of it and talking Confidently that it is True I am content to trouble you with a dozen of Lines or so about it And in the first place Perhaps it might be sufficient to say no more but What then What tho the generality of the People were so enclined Will it follow therefore Episcopacy ought be abolished in Scotland If I mistake not I have heard as good Arguments answered with a Non sequitur But if I am mistaken and the Argument is good then all you Gentlemen the Divines of England are most miserably affronted affronted I say by the Scotch Meeting of Estates tho there was not so much as one Divine amongst them when they voted their Claim of Right You have been wretchedly out all this while in your Disputes with the Papists tho you made a great noise with them and they were too weak for you these four or five Years by gone You have never hit upon the true Rule of Faith and Manners shall I call it or the Judg the infallible Judg of Controversies that Honor was reserved for the Scotch Laicks they are the Men who have been the true Students of the Disciplina Arcani and have fallen upon the Knack The inclinations of the generality of the People tho God knows what a Rule it would have made in our Saviours time are the thing they are Rule or Judg or whatever you please to call them and what more would ye have Lord what a Field has a Man here if he pleased to be wanton But I must cut short and therefore let me return to be serious Why then to tell you in a word Sir if I may say it without giving the Lye to the Convention There 's not a falser Proposition in the World than that the Inclinations of the generality of the People of Scotland are against Episcopacy or that they look upon it as a great and insupportable Grievance and Trouble to the Nation And let us have a Poll for it when they will and you shall quickly see the Demonstration If this does not satisfie you I have more yet to say I can affirm with a well grounded assurance that if by the People you mean the Commonalty the rude illiterate Vulgus the third Man through the whole Kingdom is not Presbyterian and if by the People you mean those who are Persons of better Quality and Education whose sense in my opinion ought in all reason to go for the sense of the Nation I dare boldly aver not the 13th For notwithstanding all the Clamors that are made on that Head 't is well known to all the Kingdom that Fanaticism has all alongst had little footing in that far wider half of the Kingdom which lies on the North of the Tay. And tho the Party has been infinitely earnest and active to encrease and multiply their Numbers every where yet in all that Country they could never get above three or four Meeting-Houses erected and these too very little frequented or encouraged Nay even on this side the Tay except in the five associated Shires in the West the third Man was never engaged in the Schism For convincing you of this I 'll ask no other Postulate than what I suppose you and all considering Men will readily grant and that is that Phanaticism is more apt to spread and prevail in Towns than in the Country so that by them we may best judg of the Numbers of the Party It would make
hazard of being turn'd out of his favour and excluded his Eternal Kingdom These and twenty more such Questions I say I am strongly tempted to ask you but I forbear Only before I conclude As I said before I will not recriminate with our Presbyterian Brethren I will not go to tell them back again that they are ignorant or scandalous c. I will not treat them so uncivilly as to throw back their dung in their own faces I am not fond of such Retaliations But this I will say if they plant the Church of Scotland so well as it was planted when the Prince of Orange came to England so long as he lives if for all their pretensions to the Spirit the Gospel be Preached so purely so rationally and so disinterestedly under their Government as it has been by the Episcopal Clergy these many years by-gone if ever the State have Peace or the Church come to a settlement if ever our King sit securely on his Throne or Caesar have the things that are Caesars If ever the Church of England as little as she has been concerned hitherto in her Sisters afflictions want a horn in her side or be secur'd against attempts for her ruin and if ever there be Peace or Order or desirable Concord if ever Animosities Divisions Contentions and such other Plagues of Humane Society and Christian Unity be wanting at home so long as their Dagon stands in the Temple Experience has deceiv'd me and I have mistaken my Measures Thus Sir you have a brief prospect of the present State of the Scottish Clergy fuller by much than at first I intended perhaps then you are pleased with and ye may think it tedious But I acknowledge I have that weakness I have not the faculty of dispatching things so smoothly and so shortly as possibly your palate would require But my Apology is ready I have omitted an hundred things proper to have been inserted if I am tedious it is in telling truth and if the length of this weary you you shall not be so troubled again For these Reasons expecting your Pardon I am c. The Third LETTER SIR I Told you in the Conclusion of my last that I had omitted many things proper to have been inserted I could easily justifie it by giving you another every whit as long and full of matter of Fact as it was Particularly I could give you a great many more instances of Ministers who received hard Measure from the Council such as Pitcairn of Logie who was Deprived though these eight or ten years by-gone he has been intirely disabled for the Pulpit through old age and infirmity and has been obliged to maintain an Assistant Ionkine at Abernethy upon his not appearing the very minute he was first called though he kept the day precisely to which he was Cited and was present about twelve of the Clock and had the Forth to cross that morning and the Council at that time used to sit as well after as before Noon for Depriving Ministers Falioner a Minister in Murray notwithstanding he pleaded for himself that the Lord Dundee was his Hearer that day on which the Proclamation was ordered to be Read that it was easie to conjecture what might have been his hazard had he Read it in his hearing that after that he had Prayed publickly for King William and Queen Mary That if the Council should yet enjoyn him he would Read the Proclamation and that for his part he believed Presbytery was as agreeable to the Word of God and as subservient to the ends of Christianity as Episcopacy and therefore was as willing to keep his Ministry under the one as the other but there was Original sin in him he was a Bishops Son and so no Mercy for him But Moncrief Minister at Herriot his Case is prettiest of all he has done all Duty and made all Complyances yet his Church is disposed of and a Presbyterian Preacher actually and formally admitted to it Twenty other instances might easily be Collected I could likewise tell you what severities have been used in turning Ministers out of their Dwellings this Winter after their Deprivaon as in the Case of Mr. Galbraith Minister at Iedburgh a very Reverend and worthy Person All the Gentlemen within the Parish Addressed to the Council in his behalf protested they were sorry that he was Deprived supplicated that he might be permitted to live this Winter in the Manse i. e. Parsonage-House for no body was making pretensions to it no Presbyterian Preacher was settled there and it was a Thatcht House it would be endamaged if it were not inhabited if Fire were not kept in it c. But for all that the good Parson was forced to remove by the Councils Order The same was also the Case of Mr. Millar Minister at Mussleburgh and very many others Nay I know not if they have got their secret instructions renewed for it the Rabbling work is revived in the West lately and now they will not suffer the poor afflicted Ministers who were thrust out a year ago to stay so much as in that Country though they have no mony to Transport their Families with being refused payment of their by-gone Stipends So it has fared within these few days with Mr. Hamilton Minister at Kirkoswald and Irwine at Kilbride and I am told there is a Design to banish from that Town all who live in Dumfries and those in Glasgow dread the same likewise I cannot forbear neither to tell you what has happened lately at Edinburgh there are five or six of the Episcopal Clergy in that City who have given all Obedience so they still possess their Churches Each of these Churches has its own Utensils Basons Lavers Chargers Chalices Communion-Table-Cloaths c. All Dedicated long ago by private Persons who lived in the respective Parishes A Church-Treasurer is Chosen yearly by the Church Sessions to whom these Utensils are Concredited and to these Sessions he is accountable for them at the years end This has been one immemorial Custom in that City yet the present Magistrates all Rank Presbyterians would needs have these Utensils delivered up to them particularly they required them of him who this year bears the Office of Church-Tresurer or which is all one who is the Elder or Church-Warden to whom the Utensils of that Church for this year are entrusted for that which is commonly called the Tolbooth Church he refused to surrender them and why should he have done it They were not so much as Dedicated by the Publick and they were that Churches Property No Magistrates had ever demanded the like before and the present Magistrates are no more concerned in them than in any private Citizens Furniture For this he was thrust into Prison but he made Application to the Lords of Session who found the thing so infinitely illegal that they forthwith ordered his Liberation and discharged such Proceedings for the future Perhaps you may think this is but a trifle but there