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

XIV
preface.
adherence to these declarations, and other papers. I con¬
ceive it is not necessary to swell this preface with a parti¬
cular defence of these declarations, that being so well
done by themselves in the Informatory Vindication, which
the reader may have recourse to : and as to the paper
found upon Mr. Hall, of Haugh-head, when he was mur¬
dered at Queensferry, the reader may see it, with a short
relation concerning that worthy gentleman’s death, in the
Appendix.
Another question commonly put to sufferers, was,
‘ Whether they owned the excommunication at the Tor-
wood ?’ Which they did with much freedom, as a necessary
duty and lawfully performed, so far as that broken state of
the church would permit, and upon most weighty and suf¬
ficient grounds. The form and order of which excommunica¬
tion will also be found in the Appendix<
But their finest topic, wherein they insulted and gloried
most, was the death of James Sharp, archbishop of St. An¬
drews, which they reckoned a cruel murder, and therefore
hoped, that if the sufferers should approve of the same, they
would have a colour to destroy them, as men of assassinat¬
ing and bloody principles, deserving to be exterminated out
of any well-governed commonwealth ; and therefore it was
still one of their questions, ‘Was the bishop’s death murder?’
To which question some answered directly, that it was a
just and lawful execution of God’s law upon him, fgr his
perjurious treachery, and bloody cruelty; others were si¬
lent, or refused to answer any thing directly to the point,
as conceiving that it being no deed of theirs, they were not
obliged by any law, divine or human, to give their judgment
thereupon, especially when they could not exactly know
the circumstances of the matter of fact, and saw that the
question was proposed with a design to ensnare them, or
take away their life ; yet was their very silence or refusal
to give their opinion, made a cause of their indictment, and
ground of their sentence, and some were put to torture to
make them give their sentiments anent it. If any would
be further satisfied on this head, let him see Hind let Loose,
chap. VI.
But however these murderers of the servants and people
of God made use of such questions as these to entangle
them, yet still the grand state of the quarrel was, ‘Whether