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

APPENDIX.
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tleman, David Hackstoun of Rathillet; and, lastly, for his ordinary cursing,
swearing, and drunkenness.
1 Next, I do, by virtue of the same authority, and in the same name, ex¬
communicate, cast out of the true church, and deliver up to Satan, Sir
George M'Kenzie, the king’s advocate, for his apostacy, in turning into a
profligateness of conversation, after he had begun a profession of holiness;
for his constant pleading against, and persecuting to death, the people of
God, and alleging and laying to their charge things which in his conscience
he knew to be against the word of God, truth, reason, and the ancient laws
of this kingdom ; and his pleading for sorcerers, murderers, and other crim¬
inals, that before God, and by the laws of the land, ought to die ; for his un¬
godly, erroneous, fantastic, and blasphemous tenets, printed to the world, in
his pamphlets and pasquils.
‘ And, lastly, I do, by virtue of the same authority, and in the same name,
excommunicate, cast out of the true church, and deliver up to Satan, Tho¬
mas Dalziel of Bins, &c., for his leading armies, and commanding the killing,
robbing, pillaging, and oppressing of the Lord’s people, and free subjects of
this kingdom ; and for executing of lawless tyrannies, and lustful laws ; for
his commanding to shoot, at a post, one Finley at Newmills, without any
form of law, civil or military, he not being guilty of any thing that they
themselves counted a crime ; for his lewd and Impious life, led in adultery
and uncleanness from his youth, with a contempt of marriage, which is the
ordinance of God ; for all his other atheistical and irreligious conversation ;
and, lastly, for his unjust usurping and retaining ol the estate of that worthy
gentleman, William Muir, of Caldwell; and his other injurious deeds, in
the exercise of his power.
‘ I think, none that acknowledge the word, can judge their sentences to be
unjust; yet some, it may be, to flatter the powers, will call them disorderly
and informal, there not being warning given, nor probation led. But, for
answer, there has been warning given, if not of all these things, at least of
a great part of them ; and for probation, there needs none, the deeds being
notorious and public, and the most of them such as they themselves do avow
and boast of. And as the causes are just, so being done by a minister of the
gospel, and in such a way as the present persecution would admit of, the
sentence is just; and there are no kings nor ministers on earth, without
repentance of the persons, can reverse these sentences upon any (such)
accounts ; God, who is the author of that ordinance, is the more engaged
to the ratifying of them ; and all that acknowledge the scriptures, ought to
acknowledge them. Yet some, perchance, will think, that though they be
not unjust, yet that they are foolishly rigorous. We shall answer nothing
to this, but that word which we may speak with much more reason than
they did who used it, “ Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot 1
Should he deal with our God as with an idol 1” “ Should they deal with
his people as murderers and malefactors, and we not draw out his sword
against theml”