The History of the Reformation of the Church of Scotland

If ye think that we be criminal, because that we dissent from your opinion, consider, we beseech you, that the Prophets under the Law, the Apostles of Christ Jesus after his Ascension, his Primitive Church and holy Martyrs, did disagree from the whole world in their days. And will ye deny but that their action was just, and that all those that persecuted them were murderers before God? May not the like be true this day? What assurance have ye this day of your Religion, which the world that day had not of theirs? ye have a multitude that agree with you, and so had they: ye have antiquity of time, and that they lacked not: ye have Councils, Laws, and men of reputation, that have established all things, as ye suppose: but none of all these can make any Religion acceptable unto God, which only depended upon his own will, revealed to man in his most sacred Word.¹ It is not then a wonder that ye sleep in so deadly a security in the matter of your own salvation; considering that God giveth unto you so manifest tokens, that ye and your leaders are both declined from God. For if the tree shall be judged by the fruit (as Christ Jesus affirmeth that it must needs be) then of necessity it is, That your Prelates, and the whole rabble of their Clergy be evil trees: For if Adultery,² Pride, Ambition, Drunkenness, Covetousness, Incest, Unthankfulness, Oppression, Murder, Idolatry, and Blasphemy, be evil fruits, there can none of that Generation which claim to themselves the title of Churchmen, be judged to be good trees: For all these pestilent and wicked fruits do they bring forth in greatest abundance. And if they be evil trees (as ye your selves must be compelled to confess they are) advise prudently with what consciences ye can maintain them to occupy the room and place in the Lords Vine-yard. Do ye not consider that in so doing ye labour to maintain the servants of sin in their filthy corruption, and so consequently ye labour that the devil may reign, and still abuse this Realm by all iniquity and tyranny,³ and that Christ Jesus and his blessed Gospel be suppressed and extinguished. The name and the cloak of the authority which ye pretend, will nothing excuse you in Gods presence, but rather shall ye bear double condemnation, for that ye ⟨p. 141⟩