3.  On what points did they refuse to obey the king?

4.  Were they justifiable?  On what grounds?

5.  How did the persecuted people increase?

6.  What new attempt to divide and destroy them?

7.  How many Indulgences were offered?

8.  On what terms were ministers permitted to return home?

9.  What effect had the Indulgences on the Covenanters?

10.  What present danger along the line of Indulgence?

XXXII.

The field meetings under fire.—­A.D. 1679.

The king’s Indulgence did double work on the persecuted ministers.  The Indulgence was a surgical knife that removed the spinal nerve of the Indulged; and it was a sharp sword launched at the heart of those who refused the Indulgence.  The proclamation that offered pardon announced desperate measures against all who declined the offer.  The persecution thereby grew fiercer and the sufferings more insufferable.

The Indulgence thinned the Covenanted ranks; many ministers withdrew from the Old Blue Banner with its golden motto:  “For Christ’s crown and covenant.”  Home! sweet, sweet home had charmed the heart.  The Indulged were no more worthy of being called Covenanters.  They had lost zeal, courage, place, and name among the worthies.  Some however repented and returned to the solitudes.  Their home, as they had crossed the threshold, was to them no more like home, but a gloomy prison, a dreary waste, an intolerable place, because the heart condemned them, and God was greater than the heart.  These went back to their brethren, to endure hardness as good soldiers for Christ’s sake.  Persecution with all its hardships, in comparison with the Indulgence, was a paradise while the love of Jesus Christ enamored the soul.

The ministers who remained loyal to the Lord and the Covenant were pursued by men who drove like Jehu.  The Conventicles, however, continued.  The Covenanters swarmed on the grounds where the preaching was appointed.  They refused to hear the curates of the Episcopal Church, and likewise the ministers who had returned through the king’s Indulgence.  The latter had forfeited their confidence and respect.  The people, forsaking the parish churches, traveled to the moors and mountains for their preaching.  There they found their own ministers, the unconquerable ambassadors of Christ, the uncompromising messengers of God.

A price was placed upon the heads of these ministers, by the government of King Charles.  They were hunted like partridges upon the mountains.  Let them be brought in, dead or alive, and the prize will range in value from $500 to $2,000.  The people were commanded to refuse them bread, lodging, fellowship, all kindness and support, that they might perish without a helping hand or a consoling word.  To attend their preaching was accounted a crime to be punished by the judges, an act of rebellion worthy of imprisonment or death.