some of their number to foreign churches, on purpose to vindicate themselves from these calumnies, and to represent the justness of their cause, and the sadness of their case, and provoke them to some sympathy abroad, which was then denied at home: and withal to provide for a succession of witnesses, who might maintain the testimony, which was then in appearance interrupted, except by martyrdom and sufferings. Therefore by that means having obtained access for the instruction of some young men, at an university in the united provinces, in process of time, Mr. James Renwick received ordination there, and came home to take up the standard of his master, upon the ground where it last was left, and to carry on the testimony against all the oppositions of that day, from open enemies and backsliding professors: an undertaking more desperate-like than that _Unus Athanasius contra totam orbem_, and like that of a child threshing down a mountain. Which yet against all the outrageous rage of ravening enemies, ranging, ravaging, hunting, chasing, pursuing after him, through all the towns, villages, cottages, woods, moors, mosses, and mountains of the country; and against all the scourge of tongues, contradictions, condemnations, obliquies, reproaches, and cruel mockings of incensed professors, and generally of all the inhabitants of the land; he was helped to prosecute, by many weary wanderings, travels, and traversings thro' the deserts, night and day, preaching, conferring, and catechising, mostly in the cold winter-nights in the open fields: until, by the blessing of God upon his labours, not only was the faithful witnessing remnant that joined in the testimony, further cleared, confirmed, and encouraged, and their number much increased by the coming in and joining of many others to the fellowship of their settled societies; but also many others, in other places of the country were induced to the contracting themselves in the like, to the settling such fellowships in most of the southern shires. But then the fury of persecutors began to flame more flagrantly than ever; not only in sending out cruel soldiers, foot, horse and dragoons, habitually fleshed in, and filled with the blood of the saints, to hunt, hound, chase, and pursue after them, and seek them out of all their dens and hiding-holes, in the wildest glens, fens, and remotest recesses in the wilderness; but emitting edicts allowing them to kill, slay, hang, drown, and destroy such as they could apprehend of them _pro libitu_; and commanding the country to assist them, in raising the hue and cry after them, and not to refer, harbour, supply, or correspond any manner of way with them, under the hazard and pain of being liable to the same punishment. Whereby the country was harassed and spoiled in searching after them, and many villains were stirred up to give informations and intelligence of these wanderers wherever they saw them, or learned where they were.