your worldly dignity, and help us to
exalt the kirk of Christ: but I fear ye have hardened yourselves so
against the truth, that nothing will prevail with you, except ye keep
your worldly monarchy; yet ye shall be forced to take up my apostrophe,
"O mountains of Gilboa, on whom the anointed of the Lord is fallen,
neither come dew nor rain upon you." Ye are these mountains, upon whom
Christ and His Anointed have been slain; the dew and rain of God's grace
are not on you: ye may well receive fatness from beneath, to make you
great in this world; but from above, ye are not bedewed with the grace
of God, without which, whatever your bodies be, ye have clean souls.
Under this curse I leave you, and turn to you, O great mountains; great
men, who are putting your shoulders to hold up this mountain of prelacy;
I beseech you, if ye have any love to Christ, to take your shoulders,
and help from this pestiferous mountain the wreck of Christ's kirk. And
if exhortance will not prevail with you, I charge you in the name of the
great God, and His Son Jesus Christ, to whom one day ye must give your
account, that ye in nowise underprop this mountain; the which if ye
obey, I am sure the Lord will bless you, and your posterity; but if ye
will not, though ye were never so high a mountain in this kingdom, ye
shall become a plain.

In particular, I speak to all ranks of persons. O noblemen, who are the
high mountains of this kingdom, bow your tops, and look on the kirk of
Christ, lying in the vallies, sighing, groaning, swooning and looking
towards you with pitiful looks: if the Sun of Righteousness hath shined
on you, let her have a shadow, as ye would have God to be a shadow to
you in the day of your distress.

Barons and gentlemen, who are as the pleasant hills coming from the
mountains (I speak to you for the relation that is betwixt you and the
mountains, for by your descent ye are hewn out of the mountains) my
heart is glad to see you lift your tops, as the palms of your hands
reached to the mountains, that they and ye may be as a shelter for the
kirk of Christ. I pray you separate not your hands from theirs, till our
work be brought forth with shouting.

Burrows (Burghs), who are as the vallies God hath blessed with the
fatness of the earth, and the merchandise of the sea; the mountains and
hills are looking to you, and ye to them: join yourselves in an
inseparable union, and compass the vineyard of Christ; be to her a wall
of def