The experience I have had of your worth and the happiness I have enjoyed in your friendship are wounding considerations to me when I look upon this present distance between us. Certainly, my affections to you are so unchangeable, that hostility itself cannot violate my friendship to your person. But I must be true to the cause wherein I serve. The old limitation _usque ad aras_, holds still; and where my conscience is interested, all other obligations are swallowed up. I should most gladly wait upon you, according to your desire, but that I look upon you as engaged in that party beyond the possibility of a retreat, and consequently uncapable of being wrought upon by any persuasion. And I know the conference could never be so close between us, but that it would take wind, and receive a construction to my dishonour. That great God who is the searcher of my heart, knows with what a sad sense I go on upon this service, and with what a perfect hatred I detest this war without an enemy. But I look upon it as sent from God; and that is enough to silence all passion in me. The God of Heaven in his good time send us the blessing of peace, and in the mean time fit us to receive it. We are both upon the stage, and must act such parts as are assigned us in this tragedy. Let us do it in a way of honour, and without personal animosities.... THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY (1644). =Source.=--_Letters and Journals of R. Baillie._ Edinburgh: the Bannatyne Club, 1823. Vol. ii., p. 117. _R. Baillie to (?) David Dickson in Scotland, despatched Jan. 1, 1644._ REVEREND AND BELOVED BROTHER,