6. Although the cruelty of the court had hitherto been very great, yet they had not wholly effectuated their wicked design of exterminating and destroying true religion, and the professors thereof, both ministers and people; but, like Israel under Pharaoh's yoke, the more they oppressed them, and suppressed their meetings, the more numerous and frequent they grew, so that their enemies were obliged to alter their course a little from cruelty into craft. This appeared in the first indulgence, granted _anno_ 1669, with design to divide Presbyterians among themselves, that they might the more easily destroy them. Hereby a pretended liberty was given to several ministers ejected by the act of Glasgow, 1662 (especially public resolutioners, who had formerly served the court interest in that matter), under certain restrictions, destructive of their ministerial freedom and faithfulness, to preach and exercise the other functions of the ministry in vacant churches. In this fraudulent snare many were taken; and even such of them as did accept of the indulgence, but did not keep by the instructions given them by the council, and observe the wicked anniversary, &c, were afterward prosecuted, fined, and some turned out. And those who refused compliance therewith, and testified against it, as flowing from that blasphemous supremacy and absolute power, which the king had assumed, were most severely handled, and their assemblies for public worship interdicted under the highest pains. A second indulgence was framed in the year 1672, in which net they expected to inclose such as the first had not caught. By this, liberty was granted to a number of non-conformed ministers, named by the council, not yet indulged, to exercise their ministry in such places as the council thought fit to ordain and appoint them, conforming themselves to the rules given by the council to those that were formerly indulged, besides other restrictions, wherewith this new liberty was clogged. And, as one special design of the court, in granting both the first and this second indulgence, was to put an effectual stop to the meetings of the LORD'S people, ludicrously called by them field conventicles, so they took occasion, on account of their contempt of this their indulgence and liberty, to prosecute all such as kept, or attended on, these meetings, in a more merciless and furious manner. This indulgence was accepted by many ministers; and part thereof, by others, represented as a grievance, and redress required. But although nothing of this kind was obtained, yet it was fallen in with and accepted by most of those who subscribed the remonstrance against it; and those few who rejected it, and continued faithfully to discharge their official trust in the open fields, without coming under any of these sinful restrictions, became, more especially, the butt of their enemies' malice and tyranny, were more vigorously prosecuted, and