Earls of Cromartie > [NSLBLANK]

clxviii GEORGE FIRST EARL OF CROMARTIE. [1630-
the Protestant communion, in which he was educated, or proposed doing
so, and embracing the Roman Catholic religion. This caused considerable
anxiety and regret to Lord Cromartie, who wrote the following letter to his
son on the subject : —
Deare Sonne, — Albeit my haveing educat yow in a true religion, and my
indeavours to perswade your continuance in it have hitherto failed of the ex-
spected successe, yett my duty to yow as your father, and the superaddition of a
solemn vow, wherby I am bound to instruct yow in our true Catholick faith,
oblidge me uncessantly to doe what lyes in me for so good ane end ; nor can I
despair but that some good meane shall, by God's blessing, dissipat your clouds
of passion, or clear up your mistakes, which the false argueing of the Romish
emissaries have ledd yow in, and I will ever pray that it may be so. I am not
now to fall in argueing against there so oft and so fully defeated sophisms, wher-
with they made many people of the earth drunk. I did proferr to yow and desyr
that, or yow determined your change, yow wold hear me and other to reasone against
any motives which yow could offer for to induce in yow to change your religion.
I feared (what now I find) that these prevaricators would not easily allow yow to
stopp the carreer downward into which they had secretly puld yow ; but there
shameless doctrine prohibiting there converts, and all there flocks, to try and
examine there doctrines and tenets, should, methinks, raise true groonded suspi-
tiones against tenets which these doctors propose to be taken on trust. Those
preachers, whom God sent to preach against the corruptiones of a church who had
farr surer and clearer documents for their being God's visible and true church, and
farr stronger divine statutes oblidging the people to take the law from there
mouth, under severer paines then the Roman Church can pretend to, did call ther
hearers to search in the old way, in the law and the testimony, and to examine
ther religion. Our blessed Saviour, tho' God man, and who could and did confirm
his holy truths with evident miracles, did yett desyre his hearers, in order to
there religion, to search the Scriptures, and he submits his great self to there testi-
mony : how much then should yow and all men suspect, at least, [those] whose cheeff
(and indeed most sheltering) doctrine is to search none, to examine none, espe-
cially by that dark thing the Scripture, which is useless as Christ and his Apostles
preached it, untill it be drest up in there gloss. I leave all the grosse absurdities
and damnable consequences, which most be produced by this mother error, to