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 sixteen years and upward, women as well as men, under pain of death; and many prisoners who having the oath tendered them, refused or declined it, were sentenced, and executed all in one day, according to the tenor of their proclamation.  And, moreover, they, on this occasion, renewed their orders and commission to the soldiers, for pursuing and chasing after the rebels (as they designed them) more vigorously and violently, and to shoot, or otherwise put them to death wherever they did light upon them.  In the midst of this confusion of slaughter and bloodshed, GOD cut off by death, February 6th, 1685, that vile person, the author and authorizer of all this mischief, Charles II, who, Antiochus like, came in peaceably, and obtained the kingdom by flattery (Dan. xi), reigned treacherously and bloodily, and like that wicked king, Jehoram (2 Chron. xxi), died without being desired or lamented, poisoned, as was thought, by his unnatural popish brother.  And, notwithstanding of all his bastards, begotten in adultery and fornication, at home and abroad, he died without any to succeed him, save him that was said to have murdered him.  GOD pursued him with the curse of Hiel the Bethelite, for his rebuilding of that cursed Jericho, prelacy; and of that impious and wicked tyrant, Coniah (Jer. xxii), for his treachery and cruelty; “Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days, for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting any more upon the throne of Israel.”