And his regimen we acknowledge to be so free, that none of his creatures dare present them in judgment, to reason or demand the question, why hast thou done this or that? But the fountain of this their damnable error, (which is, that in God they can acknowledge no justice except that which their foolish brain is able to comprehend,) at more opportunity, God willing, we shall intreat.”[299] He assigns his reasons for warning them so particularly against the seduction of these erroneous teachers. Under the cloak of mortification, and the colour of a godly life, they “supplanted the dignity of Christ,” and “were become enemies to free justification by faith in his blood.” The malice of papists was now visible to all the world; the hypocrisy of mercenary teachers and ungodly professors would soon discover itself; and seldom had open tyranny been able to suppress the true religion, when it had once been earnestly embraced by the body of any nation or province. “But deceivable and false doctrine is a poison {211} and venom, which, once drunken and received, with great difficulty can afterward be purged.” Accordingly, he charged them to “try the spirits” which came to them, and to suffer no man to take the office of preacher upon him of his own accord and without trial, or to assemble the people in secret meetings; else Satan would soon have his emissaries among them, who would “destroy the plantation of our heavenly Father.”[300] His admonitions, on this head, were not without effect; and the protestants of Scotland, instead of being distracted with these opinions, remained united in their views, as to doctrine, worship, and discipline. His letter to the protestant lords breathes an ardent and elevated spirit. Its object was to purify their minds from selfish and worldly principles――to raise, sanctify, and christianize their views, by exhibiting and recommending to them the examples of those great and good men whose characters were delineated, and whose deeds were recorded, in the sacred annals. The glory of God, the advancement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the salvation of themselves and their brethren, the emancipation of their country from spiritual and political bondage――these, and not their own honour and aggrandizement, or the revenging of their petty private feuds, were the objects which they ought to keep steadily and solely in view.