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A

CLOUD OF WITNESSES,

FOR THE

ROYAL PREROGATIVES

OF

JESUS CHRIST:

OR, THE

LAST SPEECHES AND TESTIMONIES

OF THOSE WHO HAVE SUFFERED FOR THE

TRUTH IN SCOTLAND,

SINCE THE YEAr 1680,

WITH A

COPIOUS APPENDIX.

Rev.vii.14. These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have
wafbed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

A NEW EDITION.

GLASGOW:

PRINTED FOR J. & A. DUNCAN, J. & M. ROBERTSON,

AND J. & W. SHAW.

PREFACE.

T

Chriflian Reader,

HE glorious frame and contrivance of religion, revealed by the ever Bleffed JEHOVAH, in the face or perfon of Jefus Chrift, for the recovery of loft mankind into a ftate of favour and reconcilement with himself, is fo excellently ordered in the councils of infi nite wisdom, and exactly adjufted to the real delight, contentment and happiness of the rational world; that it might juftly be wondered why fo many men in all ages, have not only had a secret disgust thereat themselves, but laboured to rob others of the comfort and benefit of it,. and make the world a chaos of confufion, by perfecutions raised against it; had not the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures laid open the hidden springs of this malice and enmity, which exerts itself in fo many of the children of men. We are told in thefe divinely inspired writings, that the first fource of this oppofition that the true religion meets with in the world, flows originally from Sa. tan, that inveterate enemy of God's glory, and man's happiness, who having himself left his original ftate of obedience to, and enjoyment of God his Creator, hath no other aleviament of his inevitable miseries, but to draw the race of mankind into the like ruin, which is the only fatisfaction that malicious fpirit is capable of. This reftlefs adverfary perceiving, that through the grace and love of God manifefted in Chrift, a great number of these whom he thought he had fecured to his flavery are redeemed, and called by the gofpel out of that intolerable fervitude into a glorious liberty, and fecured by faith to falvation, labours by two great engines of open force and fecret fraud, to keep them in, or re gain them to his obedience; hence the facred Scriptures defcribe him, both as a dragon for cruelty, and a ferpent. for fubtilty. But, because he either cannot, or thinks not fit to do this visibly in perfon, therefore he does it more invifibly, and fo more fuccefsfully by his agents, in whom he works; who, because of their unreasonable.

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