And further, obtruded upon the church a
service book, a book of popish and prelatical canons, which was followed
with a violent prosecution of the faithful contenders for the former
laudable constitutions of the church, carried on by that monstrous
Erastian high-commission court, patched up of statesmen and clergymen:
and hereby was the church again brought under the yoke of anti-christian
prelacy, and tyrannical supremacy; which lese-majesty to Zion's King was
also ratified with the sanction of civil authority. To this yoke,
oppressing CHRIST'S loyal subjects, many of his professed servants
submitted their necks, and, Issachar-like, became servants to tribute
for a considerable time.
But when the LORD'S set time to favor Zion came, he made the long
despised dust thereof again to be more pleasant and precious than ever
unto his servants and people, and the long night season and thick clouds
of adversity under which his church labored, amid some day-sky, and
sun-blinks of prosperity, she at times enjoyed, to issue in the dawning
of a day of clearer light wherein the glorious SUN of Righteousness
shone in his meridian splendor, with greater brightness both in this and
the neighboring nations, than at his first arising therein, in a gospel
dispensation; whose benign influences caused the small grain of good
seed, sown by the skill of the Great Husbandman, to grow up to a
fruitful plant, the tender twig to spread itself into a noble vine, and
the little cloud, like a man's hand, to cover the whole hemisphere of
the visible church of Scotland, which long ago, as a church and nation,
had enlisted themselves under the LORD JESUS CHRIST, as their Royal
Prince; whose peaceful and righteous scepter being now also extended to
England and Ireland, they soon submitted themselves thereto, in a
religious association and union with Scotland in covenant engagements,
for reformation from prelacy, as well as Popery, which they had never
hitherto yielded to.
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