But to conclude this tragical deduction: as these hints we have heaped together of the kinds and several sorts (the particulars being impossible to be reckoned) of barbarities and arbitrary methods, used in carrying on this persecution, demonstrating the reign, or rather rage of these two dominators, under which we have howled these twenty-seven years, to be a complete and habitual tyranny, to discover the inhumanity and illegality of their proceedings, having no other precedent save that of the French conversions, or Spanish inquisition, out-done by many stages, in respect of illegality, by the Scottish inquisition, and the practices of the council of Scotland, and judiciary court; so I shall shut up all in a summary relation of the common practices and forms of procedure in these courts: which will be useful to understand a little more distinctly, to the end the innocency of sufferers may more clearly appear. 1. They can accuse whom they will, of what they please; and if by summar citation, he will not, may be, because he cannot, compear; if once his name be in their Porteons' rolls, that is sufficient to render him convict. 2. They used also to seize some, and shut them up in prison year and day, without any signification of the cause of their imprisonment. 3. They can pick any man off the street; and if he do not answer their captious questions, proceed against him to the utmost of severity; as they have taken some among the croud at executions, and imposed upon them the questions. 4. They can also go through all the houses of the city, as well as the prisons, and examine all families upon the questions of the council's catechism, upon the hazard of their life, if they do not answer to their satisfaction, as has been done in Edinburgh. 5. When any are brought in by seizures, sometimes (as is said before) they let them lie along without any hearing, if they expect they cannot reach them; but if they think they can win at them any way, then they hurry them in such haste, that they can have no time to deliberate upon, and oftentimes have no knowledge or conjecture of the matter of their prosecution: yea, if they be never so insignificant, they will take diversion from their weightiest affairs, to examine and take cognizance of poor things, if they understand they dare vent or avow any respect to the cause of Christ: and the silliest body will not escape their catechization about affairs of state, what they think of the authority, &c. 6. If they be kept in prison any space, they take all ways to pump and discover what can be brought in against them: yea, sometimes they have exactly observed that device of the Spanish inquisition, in suborning and sending spies among them, under the disguise and shew of prisoners, to search and find out their minds, who will outstrip all in an hypocritical zeal, thereby to extort and draw forth words from the most wary, which may be brought in judgment against them the next day. 7.