II. In these recesses, they had the advantage, both of outward peace, when others were in trouble, and of inward peace of conscience, when others were debauched with many conjurations and abjurations, combinations and confederacies, imposed and exacted by them that prevailed for the time, whereby they might both keep themselves free of ensnaring oaths, perfidious compliances, and associations with the wicked, and also entertain and encourage the oppressed for equity, who fled unto their sanctuary for safety. We find they refused to enter into league with malignant enemies. One memorable passage I shall insert (though strictly it belong not to this period, as I distinguish it, yet falling out, within eighty years thereafter, in the time of the Culdees, it will not obscurely evidence the truth of this) Goranus the forty-fifth king of Scots, earnestly dissuaded Lothus king of Picts to entertain the league with the Saxons, not only because they were treacherous and cruel, but because they were enemies to the country and to the religion they professed, concluding thus: _Homini vero Christiano id longe omnium videri_, &c. "But to a Christian nothing must seem more grievous, than to consent to such a covenant, as will extinguish the Christian religion, and reduce the prophane customs of the heathen, and arm wicked tyrants, the enemies of all humanity and piety, against God and his laws." Whereupon Lothus was persuaded to relinquish the Saxons, Buchan. Hist. Rer. Scotic. III. Though they were not for partaking in wicked unnecessary wars, without authority, or against it; yet we have ground to conclude, they were for war, and did maintain the principle of resisting tyranny; since there was never more of the practice of it, nor more happy resistances in any age, than in that; where we find, that, as their ancestors had frequently done before, so they also followed their footsteps, in resisting, reducing to order, repressing, and bringing to condign punishment tyrants and usurpers; and thought those actions, which their fathers did by the light of nature and dictates of reason, worthy of imitation, when they had the advantage of the light of revelation and dictates of faith; the one being indeed moderate and directed, but no ways contradicted by the other. Therefore we read, that, as their predecessors had done with Thereus the 8th king of Scotland, whom they banished in the year before Christ's incarnation 173; with Dustus the 11th king, whom they slew in battle in the year before Christ 107; Evenus the 3d, who was imprisoned, and died there, in the year before Christ 12; Dardanus the 20th king, who was taken in battle, beheaded by his own subjects, his head exposed to mockage, and his body cast into a sink, in the year of Christ 72; Luctatus the 22d king, who was slain for his leachery and tyranny in the year 110, Mogaldus the 23d king, slain in the year 113; Conarus the 24th king, a leacherous tyrant, died in