The dying man's testament to the Church of Scotland, or, A treatise concerning scandal…

THE Publisher to the Reader.

There are, I suppose, few or none amongst us, or about us, so great strangers to the observation of Providential Occurrents in Scotland, as to be altogether without the knowledge of what hath come to pass here in these days, How the holy, just and sovereign Lord, who sometime lifted us up, hath now cast us down; who crowned us with glory and honour, hath stripped us of our glory and made the crown to fall from our head, (though we have not said, Woe unto us, for we have sinned) who sometime made us a praise in the earth, hath now made us a hissing, a by-word and reproach to all that are round about us; How He, who once by our unity and one shoulder▪ service did make us beautiful as Tirza, comely as Jerusalem, and terrible as an Army with Banners, hath now, alas, (which is one of the most embittering ingredients in our cup) in stead of giving us one heart and one way, in His anger, divided, sub-divided, weakened, disjointed and broken us; So that Judah vexeth Ephraim, and Ephraim envieth Judah, and every mans hand almost is against his brother; and through our lamentable and most unseasonable intestine jars and divisions we bite and devour one another, and are like to be consumed one of another; O tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice▪ lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph! that when God hath cast us all down together, we endeavour to keep down and tread upon one another, That when He hath been justly angry with our mother▪ her children are sinfully angry one with another, and when He hath cast us all into the furnace, we are even there struggling and wrestling one with another to the increasing of the ⟨image 7⟩flame; And when brotherly love and loathness to give or take offence, is in a special manner called-for, love did never wax▪ more cold, nor offences more abound. Now, when our Church thus in a manner distracted and drunk with the wine of astonishment, is in so sad a posture, and but few of the sons she hath brought forth to guide her or take her by the hand, they all almost fainting and lying at the head of every street as it were so many wild bulls in a net, full of the fury of the Lord and of the rebuke of our God;