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two or three together, with convenient intervals for avoiding suspicion, and he (the said Middleton) and his man riding up, observed where they alighted and stabled their horses; and coming to them, pretended a great deal of kindness and civility to Mr Donald Cargill and him, desiring that they might have a glass of wine together. When they were set [i.e., seated] and had taken each a glass, Middleton laid hands on them, and told them they were his prisoners, commanding, in the king's name, all the people in the house to assist, which they all refused save a certain waiter [i.e., excise officer], through whose means the governor got the gates shut, till his soldiers came up; and when the women of the town, rising to the rescue of the prisoners, had broke up the outer gate, Henry Hall, after some scuffle with the governor in the house, making his escape by the gate, received his mortal blow upon the head with a carabine, by Thomas George, waiter; and being conveyed out of the town by the assistance of the women, walked some pretty space of way upon his foot, but unable to speak much, save only that he made some short reflection upon a woman that, interposing between him and the governor, hindered him to kill the governor, and so to make his escape timeously.

So soon as he fainted, the women carried him to a house in the country, but notwithstanding the care of chirurgeons [i.e., surgeons] he never recovered the power of speaking more. General Dalziel being advertised, came with a party of the guards, and carried him to Edinburgh. He died by the way. His corpse they carried to the Canongate Tolbooth, and kept it there three days without burial, though a number of friends convened for that effect, and thereafter they caused bury him clandestinely in the night. Such was the fury of these limbs of antichrist, that, having killed the witnesses, they would not suffer their dead bodies to be decently put in graves.

There was found upon him a rude draught of a paper containing a mutual engagement to stand to the necessary duty of the day against its stated enemies; which was called by the persecutors Mr Cargill's covenant, and frequently in the foregoing testimonies, the Queensferry Paper, because there it was seized by the enemies. This paper Divine Providence seems to have made, as it were, the dying words and testimony of that worthy gentleman, and the enemies made it one of the captious and ensnaring questions they constantly put to the sufferers; and therefore it will not be impertinent here to insert the heads of it, as they are compendised by the learned author of the

"Hind let Loose," page 133 [Edition of 1744, p. 148]; for it was still owned by Mr Donald Cargill, that the draught was not digested and polished as it was intended, and therefore it will be so far from being a wrong to recite the heads of it only, that it is really a piece of justice done him, who never intended it should see the world as it was when the enemies found it. I shall not pretend to justify every expression in it, but rather submit it entirely to better judgments; nor did the sufferers for most part adhere to it, without the limitation, "in so far as it was agreeable to the Word of God, and our National Covenants," and, in so far as it seems to import a purpose of assuming to themselves magistratical authority, their practice declares all along, that they did not understand it in that sense.

The tenor of it was an engagement

"1. To avouch the only true and living God to be their God, and to close with His way of redemption by His Son Jesus Christ, whose righteousness is only to be relied upon for justification; and to take the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the only object matter of our faith, and rule of conversation in all things.

"2. To establish in the land righteousness and religion, in the truth of its doctrine, purity, and power of its worship, discipline, and government; and to free the Church of God of the corruption of Prelacy on the one hand, and the thraldom of Erastianism on the other.

"3. To persevere in the doctrine of the Reformed churches, especially that of Scotland, and in the worship prescribed in the Scriptures, without the inventions, adornings, and corruptions of men; and in the Presbyterian government exercised in sessions, presbyteries, synods, and general assemblies, as a distinct government from the civil, and distinctly to be exercised, not after a carnal manner by plurality of votes, or authority of a single person, but according to the Word of God making and carrying the

sentence.

4. To endeavour the overthrow of the kingdom of darkness, and whatsoever is contrary to the kingdom of Christ, especially Idolatry and Popery in all its articles, and the overthrow of that power that hath established and upheld it; and to execute righteous judgment impartially, according to the Word of God and degree of offences, upon the committers of these things, especially, to wit, blasphemy, idolatry, atheism, sorcery, perjury, uncleanness, profanation of the Lord's day, oppression, and malignancy.

"5. Seriously considering that there is no more speedy way of relaxation from the wrath of God, that hath ever lain on the lands since it engaged with these rulers, but of rejecting them, who have so manifestly rejected God-disclaiming His Covenant, governing contrary to all right laws, Divine and human, and contrary to all the ends of government, by enacting and commanding impieties, injuries, and robberies-to the denying of God His due, and the subjects theirs; so that, instead of government, godliness, and peace, there is nothing but rapine, tumult, and blood, which cannot be called a government, but a lustful rage; and they cannot be called governors, but public grassators and land-judgments; which all ought to set themselves against, as they would do against pestilence, sword, and famine raging amongst them-seeing they have stopped the course of law and justice against blasphemers, idolaters, atheists, sorcerers, murderers, incestuous and adulterous persons; and have made butcheries on the Lord's people, sold them as slaves, imprisoned, forfeited, etc., and that upon no other account but their maintaining Christ's right of ruling over their consciences, against the usurpations of men. Therefore, easily solving the objections :

"(1.) Of our ancestors' obliging the nation to this race and line: that they did not buy their liberty with our thraldom, nor could they bind their children to anything so much to their prejudice, and against natural liberty (being a benefit next to life, if not in some regard above it), which is not as an engagement to moral things; they could only bind to that government which they esteemed the best for common good; which reason ceasing, we are free to choose another, if we find it more conducible for that end:

"(2.) Of the Covenant binding to defend the king: that that obligation is only in his maintenance of the true Covenanted Reformation, which homage they cannot now require upon the account of the Covenant which they have renounced and disclaimed; and upon no other ground we are bound to them—the crown not being an inheritance that passeth from father to son, without the consent of tenants:

"(3.) Of the hope of their returning from these courses, whereof there is none, seeing they have so often declared their purposes of persevering in them. And suppose they should dissemble a repentance-supposing also they might be pardoned for that which is done, from whose guiltiness the land cannot be cleansed but by executing God's righteous judgments upon them-yet they cannot now be

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