At length, on the 4th of February 1701, the wretched man sent a petition to the Privy Council, shewing ‘that more than ten years’ miserable imprisonment had brought [him] to old age and extreme poverty, accompanied with frequent sickness and many other afflictions that are the constant attendants of both.’ He protested his being all along wholly unconscious of any guilt. He was then ordered to be liberated, without the security for reappearance which was customary in such cases.[50] [Sidenote: 1691. JAN.] Scotland is sometimes alluded to in the south, with an imperfect kind of approbation, as an excessively strait-laced country; but if our neighbours were to consult the records of the General Assembly [Sidenote: 1691.] on the subject, they would find it powerfully defended from all such charges. An act was passed by that venerable body for a national fast to be held on the second Thursday of this month, and the reasons stated for the pious observance are certainly of a kind to leave the most free-living Englishman but little room for reproach. It is said: ‘There hath been a great neglect of the worship of God in public, but especially in families and in secret. The wonted care of sanctifying the Lord’s day is gone ... cities full of violence ... so that blood touched blood. Yea, Sodom’s sins have abounded amongst us, pride, fulness of blood, idleness, vanities of apparel, and shameful sensuality.’ Even now, it is said, ‘few are turned to the Lord; the wicked go on doing wickedly, and there is found among us to this day shameful ingratitude for our mercies [and] horrid impenitency under our sins.... There is a great contempt of the gospel, and great barrenness under it ... great want of piety towards God and love towards man, with a woful selfishness, every one seeking their own things, few the public good or ane other’s welfare.’ The document concludes with one noble stroke of, shall we say, self-portraiture?—‘the most part more ready to censure the sins of others, than to repent of their own.’[51] [Sidenote: JAN. 20.]