By what is above premitted, the reader may see the series and succession of the testimony of Christ's witnesses in Scotland from time to time, in all the periods of that church; how it hath been transmitted from one generation to another down to our hands; how far it hath been extended, and what increasements it hath received in every period; how it hath been opposed by a continued prosecution of an hereditary war against Christ, by an atheistical, papistical, prelatical, and tyrannical faction; and how it hath been concerted, contended for, maintained, and sealed actively and passively, by an anti-pagan, anti-popish, anti-prelatical, anti-erastian, anti-sectarian, and anti-tyrannical remnant of the followers, professors, confessors, and martyrs of Christ in all ages. Now it remains in the third and last place, to consider the merit of the cause as it is now stated, to see whether it will bear the weight of those great sufferings wherewith it hath been sealed. I hope all the lovers of Christ, who have an esteem even of his reproaches above all the treasures of Egypt, will grant, that if these sufferings be stated on the least or lowest of the truths of Christ, then they are not mistated, nor built upon a bottom that will not bear them, or is not of that worth to sustain them. For certainly every truth, the least of truths, is of greater value than any thing that we can suffer the loss of for it; yea, of infinitely greater value, than the whole world. So that if I prove these heads of suffering to be truths wherein conscience is concerned, the cause will be sufficiently vindicated from the loadings and lashings of such as prefer peace to truth, and ease to duty, who to justify their own backwardness and detestable lukewarmness, call some of them only state questions about things civil, and not gospel truths and heads to state suffering upon: and if they be truths and duties, the cause will some way be rendered more illustrious, that it is stated upon the smallest hoofs and hair-breadths of the concerns of Christ's declarative glory; as being a greater witness of its owners love and loyalty to Christ, and of their pure and tender zeal for his honour, than if for more substantial and fundamental truths, which a natural conscience may reclaim to decline, when for the meanest circumstantials of Christ's truths they dare and are ambitious to bestow their dearest blood. But if the complex of them be impartially considered, no unprejudiced arbiter will suffer himself to have such extenuating impressions of the present word of patience, and testimony of the suffering remnant in Scotland this day: but it will appear to be a very weighty and worthy concern, as any that either men or Christians can be called to witness for; being the privilege of all mankind, the duty of all Christians, and the dignity of all churches, to assert; it is for the glory and crown prerogatives and imperial regalia of the King