rest, and enacted all these murders, and assisted him and his accomplices, and executioners of his murdering mandates, with their persons and estates, in paying the supplies professedly demanded, and declaredly imposed, for enabling them to accomplish these mischiefs.  Yea, many were so far from assisting, that they added afflictions to their afflicted brethren, their reproaches, and persecuting by the tongue those whom the Lord had smitten, and talking to the grief of those he had wounded.  And all sorts of us have been wanting in our sympathy with, and endeavoring succor to, our suffering brethren, let be to deliver them from their enemies’ hands according to our capacity.  So also, it is for matter of lamentation, that many ministers all alongst discovered great unconcernedness with, and contempt of, poor despised and reproached sufferers, condemned the heads of their suffering, forgot or refused to pray for them publicly.  And as this Article was all alongst through the persecuting times, most grossly violated, so to this day it continues to be.  Any that would appear in the least active in this cause, are so far from being assisted that they are borne down, derided, sentenced, and sometimes imprisoned; whatever motions are made in private discourses, or public sermons, which may import a respect to, or liking of, this noble cause of religion, or a dislike of, and displacency with the courses opposite unto it, are so far from being countenanced, that the movers are hated, vilipended, contemned or censured, as raisers of dust, formenters of division, pragmatic, turbulent and fractious spirits, and loaded with many other defamatory epithets and calumnies.  Many instances of which may be given since the Revolution.  For example, when in the year 1690, there was a paper of grievances presented to the Assembly by some of those who had been keeping up a witness against the iniquitous courses of the times, and were now expecting that as the fruit of a merciful delivery from tyrannical usurpations, and antichristian persecutions, Reformation should be revived, grievances redressed, judicatories rightly constituted, and duly purged, it was far from receiving a kind and friendly reception and they who presented it left without assistance and help, contrary to the tenor of the Covenant, so that that paper could not be allowed a hearing, let be a redress, and the persons who offered it to their consideration were, to their great sorrow and grief of heart, dismissed without a satisfying answer.  As also when Messrs. Linning, Shields and Boyd, who had been carrying on a Testimony against the time’s defection, and were now minded to join with the Assembly, after the exhibition of their Testimony, whatever acceptance it might meet with at their hands, had in prosecution of this their design, exhibited their proposals to the Committee of Overtures, these proposals, though both worthy of consideration and necessary to be redressed, were not allowed a hearing in open Assembly, but rejected