therein; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings." Lev. xxiii. 3.

"Six days shalt thou do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest, that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed." Exod. xxii. 12.

"Also the sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant, even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people." Isa. lvi. 6, 7.

"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias; and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Luke iv. 16-19.

"And that day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew on. And the women also which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments, and rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment." Luke xxiii. 54-56.

"But when they departed from Perga, they came to Antioch in Pisidia, and went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and sat down. And after the reading of the law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, Ye men and brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say on. Then Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand, said, Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience."" For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him."-" And when the Jews were gone out of the synagogue, the Gentiles besought them that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath." Acts xiii. 14, 15, 16. 27. 42.

"Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat." Amos viii. 4-6.

E

"If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable, and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasures, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." Isaiah lviii. 13, 14.

"And on the Sabbath, he went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made." Acts xvi. 13.

"And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, and continued his speech until midnight." Acts xx. 7.

The toil-worn horse set free. P. 28. 1. 2.

3 "A Sabbath day's journey," says a late able and faithful labourer in the vineyard of the Lord, "was, among the Jews, a proverbial expression for a very short one. Among us it

can have no such meaning affixed to it. That day seems to be considered by too many, as set apart, by divine and human authority, for the purpose, not of rest, but of its direct oppo-' site, the labour of travelling; thus adding one day more of torment to those generous, but wretched animals, whose services they hire; and who, being generally strained beyond their strength the other six days of the week, have, of all creatures under heaven, the best and most equitable claim to suspension of labour on the seventh. Considerations such as these may perhaps appear to some below the dignity of this place, and the solemnity of a Christian assembly. But benevolence, even to the brute creation, is, in its degree, a duty, no less than to our own species; and it is mentioned by Solomon as a striking feature in the character of a righteous man, that he is merciful even to his beast.' He, without whose permission not a sparrow falls to the ground, and who feedeth the young ravens that call upon him,' will not suffer even the meanest work of his hands to be treated cruelly with impunity. He is the common Father of the whole creation. He takes every part of it under his protection. He has, in various passages of scripture, expressed his concern even for irrational creatures, and has declared more especially, in the most explicit terms, that the rest of the Sabbath was meant for our cattle and our servants, as well as for ourselves." Bishop Porteus.

Their constancy in torture and in death. P. 32. 1. 16.

The following passage from Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time, will give some notion of the kind, though not of

the extent, of that hideous persecution, from which the people of Scotland were delivered by the Revolution. "When any are to be struck in the boots, it is done in the presence of the council; and upon that occasion almost all offer to run away. The sight is so dreadful, that without an order restraining such a number to stay, the board would be forsaken. But the Duke, while he had been in Scotland, was so far from withdrawing, that he looked on all the while with an unmoved indifference, and with an attention, as if he had been to look on some curious experiment. This gave a terrible idea of him to all that observed it, as of a man that had no bowels nor humanity in him. Lord Perth observing this, resolved to let him see how well qualified he was to be an inquisitor-general. The rule about the boots in Scotland was, that upon one witness, and presumptions, both together, the question might be given: But it was never known to be twice given, or that any other species of torture, besides the boots, might be used at pleasure. In the courts of inquisition, they do, upon suspicion, or if a man refuses to answer upon oath as he is required, give him the torture; and repeat it, or vary it, as often as they think fit; and do not give over, till they have got out of their mangled prisoners all that they have a mind to know from them.

"This Lord Perth resolved now to make his pattern; and was a little too early in letting the world see what a government we were to expect under the influence of a prince of that religion. So, upon his going to Scotland, one Spence, who was a servant of Lord Argyll's, and was taken up at London, only upon suspicion, and sent down to Scotland, was required to take an oath to answer all the questions that should be put to him. This was done in a direct con tradiction to an express law against obliging men to swear, that they will answer super inquirendis. Spence likewise said, that he himself might be concerned in what he might know; and it was against a very universal law, that excused all men from swearing against themselves, to force him to take such an oath. So he was struck in the boots, and continued firm in his refusal. Then a new species of torture was invented: he was kept from sleep eight or nine nights. They grew weary of managing this; so a third species was invented Little screws of steel were made use of, that screwed the thumbs with so exquisite a torment, that he sunk under this; for Lord Perth told him, they would screw every joint of his whole body, one after another, till he took the oath. Yet such was the firmness and fidelity of this poor man, that, even in that extremity, he capitulated, that no new questions should be put to him, but those already agreed on; and that he should not be a witness against any person, and that he himself should be pardoned: so all he could tell them was, who were Lord Argyll's correspondents. The chief of them was Holmes, at London, to whom Lord Argyll writ in a cypher, that had a particular curiosity in it.A double key was necessary: the one was, to show the way of

placing the words, or cypher, in an order very different from that in which they lay on the paper; the other was, the key of the cyphers themselves, which was found among Holmes's papers when he absconded. Spence knew only the first of these; but he putting all in its true order, then by the other key they were decyphered. In these, it appeared what Argyll had demanded, and what he undertook to do upon the granting his demands; but none of his letters spoke any thing of any agreement then made.

"When the torture had this effect on Spence, they offered the same oath to Carstairs: and, upon his refusing to take it, they put his thumbs in the screws, and drew them so hard, that as they put him to extreme torture, so they could not unscrew them, till the smith that made them was brought with his tools to take them off." Burnet.

July 22. 1668. Anna Ker, relict of Mr James Duncan, was brought before the council. "The Lords caused bring in the boots before her, and gave her to five of the clock to think upon it, apprizing her, if she would not give her oath in the premises, she was to be tortured. In the afternoon Mrs Duncan continued firm to her purpose, and had certainly been put to the torture, had not Rothes interposed, and told the council, It was not proper for gentlewomen to wear boots." Wodrow, Vol. I. p. 994.

"Some time after Bothwell, George Forbes, a trooper in Captain Stewart's troop, then lying in Glasgow, came out one morning with a party of soldiers to the village of Langside, in the parish of Cathcart, not two miles from that city, and by force broke open the doors of John Mitchell, tenant there, his house, who, they alleged, had been at Bothwell. John was, that morning, happily out of the way, whereupon they seized Anna Park, his wife, a singularly religious and sensible country-woman, whose memory is yet savoury in that place, and pressed her to tell where her husband was. The good woman peremptorily refusing, they bound her, and put kindled matches between her fingers, to extort a discovery from her. Her torment was great; but her God strengthened her, and she endured, for some hours, all they could do, with admirable patience, and both her hands were disabled for some time. Wodrow, Vol. II. p. 77.

A people doom'd, &c. P. 32. 1. 23.

By the tyrannous and sanguinary laws that were passed between the year 1661, and the ever-memorable year of the Revolution, the whole inhabitants of extensive districts in the Lowlands of Scotland might be said to have lived under sentence of death.

Old men, and youths, and simple maids. P. 32. 1. 24.

"One morning, between five and six hours, John Brown, having performed the worship of God in his family, was going, with a spade in his hand, to make ready some peatground. The mist being very dark, he knew not until cruel and bloody Claverhouse compassed him with three troops of horse, brought him to his house, and there examined him; who, though he was a man of stammering speech, yet answer. ed him distinctly and solidly; which made Claverhouse to examine those whom he had taken to be his guide through the muirs, if they had heard him preach? They answered, No, no, he never was a preacher.' He said, If he has never preached, meikle has he prayed in his time.' He said to John, Go to your prayers, for you shall immediately die.' When he was praying, Claverhouse interrupted him three times: one time that he stopped him, he was pleading that the Lord would spare a remnant, and not make a full end in the day of his anger. Claverhouse said, I gave you time to pray, and you are begun to preach;' he turned about upon his knees, and said, Sir, you know neither the nature of praying nor preaching, that calls this preaching;' then continued without confusion. When ended, Claverhouse said, Take goodnight of your wife and children.' His wife standing by with her child in her arms that she had brought forth to him, and another child of his first wife's, he came to her, and said, Now, Marion, the day is come that I told you would come, when I spake first to you of marrying me.' She said, Indeed, John, I can willingly part with you.' Then he said, This is all I desire, I have no more to do but die.' He kissed his wife and bairns, and wished purchased and promised blessings to be multiplied upon them, and his bless ing. Claverhouse ordered six men to shoot him: the most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground. Claverhouse said to his wife, What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman ? She said, I thought ever much of him, and now as much as ever. He said, It were justice to lay thee beside him.' She said, If ye were permitted, I doubt not but your cruelty would go that length: but how will you make answer for this morning's work?" He said, To man I can be answerable; and for God, I will take him in mine own hand.' Claverhouse mounted his horse, and marched, and left her, with the corpse of her dead husband lying there. She set the bairn on the ground, and tied up his head, and straighted his body, and covered him in her plaid, and sat down, and wept over him. It being a very desert place, where never victual grew, and far from neighbours, it was some time be. fore any friends came to her: the first that came was a very fit hand, that old singular Christian woman in the Cummerhead, named Elizabeth Menzies, three miles distant, who had been tried with the violent death of her husband at Pentland,