As a brief recapitulation of Boog’s case, the writer says: ‘He was actually in the rebellion; continued in that state for four years; and now comes in with a false, sham certificate to fool the judges. For, being desired to give his oath that he had taken the bond, he positively refused. Being asked if Bothwell Bridge was a rebellion, refused to declare it so. Or the Bishop’s murder, a murder. And positively refused, in the face of the Court, the benefit of the King’s indemnity by taking the Test. Upon which the Judges, moved by the outcry of all the bystanders, as by their conviction of the wickedness of the man, referred the matter to the knowledge of an inquest, who brought him in guilty. After which, he begged to acknowledge his folly; and offered to take the Test, with the old gloss,—“as far as it consisted with the Protestant religion, and the glory of God.” And after that was refused him, offered in end to take it any way. By all which it clearly appears, that he would do anything to save his life, but nothing to be reconciled to Government.’ After having thus summarised the heads of the case, Claverhouse proceeds to justify the action of the Government in not allowing men to take the Test after they were condemned. All casuists agree, he says, that an oath imposed where the alternative is hanging cannot in any way be binding; and it may consequently be supposed that they who refused it when they had the freedom of choice, and took it after being condemned, did it only because they thought themselves not bound to keep it. In point of prudence, too, he argues, such leniency would be misplaced and pernicious; it would leave it in the power of the disaffected to continue all their tricks up to the very last day fixed for taking benefit of the indemnity, and then, if they should be apprehended and condemned, enable them to escape the punishment of their treason by taking the Test. Against this he protests as turning the whole thing into ridicule; ‘for great clemency has, and ought to be, shown to people that are sincerely resolved to be reclaimed, but the King’s indemnity should not be forced on villains.’ As to the effect which severity in Boog’s case might produce, Claverhouse scouts the idea that it would deter others from ‘coming in’; and in support of his opinion to the contrary, he points to the actual fact that twenty have taken the Test since the man was condemned, and that the ‘terror of his usage’ is generally looked upon as likely to induce many more to submit.