Religion & morality > Cloud of witnesses, for the royal prerogatives of Jesus Christ, or, The last speeches and testimonies of those who suffered for the truth in Scotland, in the years 1681-1688, with an appendix, containing the Queensferry paper, Torwood excommunications, &c

PREFACE-
hereof would serve their turn; and though some of the mar"
tyrs offered a distinction between the two, professing to own
his civil authority abstract from the ecclesiastical, (as for in¬
stance, Mr. John Dick,) yet they were not absolved, because
they would not own his authority in gross. And, besides,
their including the supremacy over church matters, into the
formal notions of the king’s authority, they could be pleased
with no less from any that they called before them, than an
owning the whole acts and laws, and bn tire exercise and ad¬
ministration of things in church and state, which was an im¬
plicit condemning of all the preceding reformation, and
consenting to the persecution and murder of the saints, who1
stood up for its defence.
It is true, indeed, these things were so impious and abom¬
inable, that had they been proposed without mask, they
would presently have produced horror in the mind of every
one, not entirely lost to all conscience and goodness; and
therefore, these children of the old serpent had so much of
their father, that they made it their work to hide these horrid
hooks with some specious baits, that they might the more
easily entice simple people into the snare they had laid for
them : and hence, knowing how much it is the effect of true
religion to make men loyal, and that the Presbyterians were,
of all others the readiest to yield all lawful subjection to
their rightful princes, they still made use of the specious
title of authority as a blind to hide the ecclesiastical suprem¬
acy, and bloody exercise of their government, from those
they labored to ensnare. They saw the supremacy they
intended to fix in the king, was such a monstrum horrendum,
informs, ingens, Heccate, atque Erebo ortum, that without
some veil of this nature, no man would be so mad as to em¬
brace it. But when this would not do, but that still its ill-
favored face appeared through the vizard; and all good men
saw, that that authority which sought no other way to main¬
tain itself, than by blood and rapine, was really degenerated
into tyranny, then they pretended to come steps lower, and
said, That they required no more at the hands of the people
in order to dismiss them, but that they would, at their desire
pray for the king in their prescribed form of words, viz.,
‘God save the king;’ or that they would drink the king’s good
health. These were by them represented to be so minute
and easy things, and by a great many professors looked upon