The foregoing deduction, being the first thing I proposed to be discussed in the method of this essay, hath now swelled to such a bulk, that the last period of it doth, in a manner, swallow up what I intended to have said on the second: because it gives grounds to gather the methods and measures that our adversaries have managed, for the ruin of this witnessing remnant, and also discover some special steps of their sufferings within these 27 years past, under the tyranny of both the brothers. It will now be the more easy to glean the gradations of the means and machines, used by this popish, prelatical, and malignant faction, to raze the work of reformation, and to build their Babel of popery and slavery on the ruins thereof; and to aggregate an account in brief of the great sufferings of the faithful. Which though it be beyond my power, and besides my purposes at present, to offer a narrative of it, with any proportion to the greatness of the subject; a more particular relation thereof, being now projected, if providence permit, to be published to the world, which will discover strange and unheard of cruelties: yet, in this little heap of some hints only of the kinds of their sufferings, I do not question but it will appear, that the persecution of Scotland hath been very remarkable, and scarcely out-done by the most cruel in any place or age, in respect of injustice, illegality, and inhumanity, though perhaps inferior in some other circumstances. But that none could be more unjust, illegal, or inhuman, I need not further, I cannot better, demonstrate than only to declare the matter of fact, as it fell out in the several steps of the last period.