may be evident, that notwithstanding of all this darkness and distress, defection and division, under which the church of Scotland hath been so long, and is still labouring, there is yet a poor wasted, wounded, rent, and almost ruined, but still wrestling and witnessing remnant of professors and confessors of Christ there, who though they have not only had their souls exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud; but their bodies also killed all day long, and counted as sheep for the slaughter, have yet through grace endeavoured to overcome by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony, and have not loved their lives dear unto the death, and have continued to this day contending both against professed enemies, and also declining friends, sustaining from both the utmost of rage and reproach. And since that little book gives an account, what their contendings have been against their backdrawing brethren on the right and left hand, I shall spare labour to offer a discussion of them, only endeavour to make it not difficult to decide and determine, on whose side truth lies, by what is here hinted. I shall conclude with advertising the reader of one thing further, that, as this reproached people, for testimony I am pleading, is now the only party that is persecuted in Scotland, (some few excepted, who are exempted from the pretended favour of the current indemnities) and their persecution still continues, notwithstanding of the impudent, as well as insnaring declarations of universal liberty to all dissenters, which they look upon as their honour and happiness, to be thought incapable of tyrannical and antichristian favours; so their past and present oppressions and sufferings are only here in general aggregated, described as to their kinds, and vindicated as to their causes: the particular deduction of their number, weight, and measure, of their names that have been martyred and murdered, both by formality of law, and without all formality of law, by sea and land, city and country, on scaffolds, and in the fields; of the manner of their sufferings; and of the form of their trials and testimonies, being intended shortly (if the Lord will) to be emitted and published in a book by itself; which will discover to the world as rare instances of the injustice, illegality, and inhumanity of the Scottish inquisition, and of the innocency, zeal, ingenuity, and patience of the witnesses of Christ, as readily can be instanced in these latter ages. Only here is a taste till more come; which if the Lord bless for its designed end, the glory of God, the vindication of truth, the information and satisfaction of all serious sympathisers with Zion's sorrows, and the conviction or confutation of reproachers, so far, at least, as to make them surcease from their invidious charge of things whereof the innocency is here vindicated, I have obtained all my design, and shall desire to give the Lord the