many to the fellowship of their settled societies, who resolutely chose
rather to suffer affliction with the people of GOD than to enjoy the
pleasures of sin, which are but for a season. Upon this further attack
upon Satan's interest, his emissaries issue forth fresh orders, and give
commission to soldiers, foot and dragoons, to hunt, search, and seek
them out of all their most secret dens, caves, and lurking places, where
they might hide themselves, in the most remote and wildest glens and
recesses in the mountains and deserts, allowing them to kill, slay,
destroy, and any way to make an end of them, wherever they might be
found; commanding the whole country, at their peril, to assist them, and
raise the hue and cry after the poor wanderers, and not to reset,
harbor, succor, or correspond with them any manner of way, under the
highest pains, but to do their utmost in informing against them. Thus,
without regard to any of their unlawful forms of legal procedure, they
defiled and besmeared the high places of the field with innocent blood.
These unprecedented methods and measures obliged the sufferers, for
their own preservation, stopping the deluge of blood, and to deter the
insolence of intelligencers and informers, to publish the apologetic
declaration, which they affixed on several market crosses, and parish
church doors, upon the 28th of _October_, 1684; wherein they declare
their firm resolution of constant adherence to their covenanted
engagements; and to the declaration disowning the authority of _Charles
Stuart_, warning all bloody Doegs and flattering Ziphites, to expect to
be dealt with as they deal with them; to be regarded as enemies to GOD,
and the covenanted reformation, and according to their power, and the
degree of their offense, punished as such, &c. After this declaration,
these enemies were still more enraged, and their fury flamed more than
ever formerly. They framed an oath, commonly called the oath of
abjuration, renouncing and abjuring the same, and by a venomous bloody
proclamation, enjoined this oath to be taken by all universally, from