had the apologue of the mice laid out before them; that the mice fell upon deliberating how to be rid of the cat, and concluded that the best way was to put a bell about her neck; but when it came to be put in execution, never a mouse durst undertake it: the Earl quickly made application, saying, I will bell the cat; and forthwith went out, and meeting Cochran, one of these wicked counsellors, took hold of him, and hanged him with a horse halter over the bridge of Lauder; and, rushing into the King's presence, proceeded to snatch Ramsay, another of the country's enemies, out of the King's arms; but that he yielded at length to the King's earnest entreaties to spare him. However we see how generously zealous these noble patriots were for the country's good, against tyranny, though they were ignorant of religion: yet this all along was still the character of the Scots in these days, none more terrible to tyrants, none more loyal to Kings than they. PERIOD III. _Containing the_ TESTIMONY _of the_ REFORMATION _from_ POPERY. As in the former, the testimony was mostly passive; so, in the following period, when they were encreased in number and strength that embraced the gospel, the Lord called, and spirited to an active testimony, for these two twins, religion and liberty, that were then sought to be stifled in the birth, and are now designed more declaredly to be destroyed, after they have grown up to some maturity: which, as it renders the cruelty of the present destroyers the more grassant and grievous, so it rubs the more indelible infamy on the shameful security and ass-like stupidity of this generation, that have received such an excellent testimony deposited to their trust, transmitted to them through a continued tract of the witnessings and wrestlings of their worthy ancestors, and now let it slip and slide through their feeble fingers; and does the more justify, yea magnify, the poor endeavours of the present sufferers, who, at least, when they cannot re-act these mighty works, in defending religion and liberty, do chuse rather to die than to resign the testimony, or quit the least privilege that their progenitors possessed them of: and though they be superciliously despised, as little insignificant nothings in the eyes of the bulk of the big boasters of this blind age; yet if these valiant heroes, who did such exploits for their God, in commencing and carrying on the work of reformation, were now to see the dull dotages of this dreaming generation, (not only suffering and consenting to, but congratulating and applauding, the introduction and re-establishment of idolatry and tyranny, popery and slavery, upon the ruins of the work they built with so great expence); and were to read the pitiful petitions, and airy and empty, flattering and fawning addresses, to this antichristian tyrant, for the toleration of that religion and liberty, under the odious notion of a crime, which they had conveyed to them under the security of a