prejudicial to their interest: and herein they may verify that Scots proverb, 'o'er fast o'er loose,' and accomplish these divine sayings, 'He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, he taketh the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong.' For as they have put people upon this question, who would not otherwise have made such inquiries into it, and now finding they must be resolved in conscience to answer it, whenever they shall be brought before them; upon a very overly search, they see terrible tyranny written in legible bloody characters almost on all administrations of the government, and so come to be fixed in the verdict that their conscience and the word of God gives of it; so it may be thought, this question now started, for as despicable beginnings it hath, yet ere it come to a full and final decision, will be more enquired into through the world, and at length prove as fatal to tyranny, as ever any thing could be, and then they may know whom to thank. But however, though the question be extraordinary, and the sufferings thereupon be unprecedented, and therefore, among other contradictions that may be objected, that neither in history nor scripture we can find instances of private people's refusing to own the authority they were under, nor of their suffering for that refusal; yet nevertheless it may be duty without example. Many things may be done, though not against the law of God, yet without a precedent of the practice of the people of God. Though we could not adduce an example for it, yet we can gather it from the law of God, that tyranny must not be owned, this will be equivalent to a thousand examples. Every age in some things must be a precedent to the following, and I think never did any age produce a more honourable precedent, than this beginning to decline a yoke under which all ages have groaned.