gent in their duties
therein, doth allow to themselves all the fines of any persons within
their jurisdictions, under the degree of heritors; and requires the
lords of his majesty's privy council to take exact trial of their care
and diligence herein; and if the sheriffs, stewarts, and bailiffs, be
negligent in their duties, or if the magistrates within burghs shall be
negligent in their utmost diligence, to detect and delate to the council
all conventicles within their burghs, that the council inflict such
censures and punishments upon them as they shall think fit. And the
lords of his majesty's privy council are hereby required to be careful
in the trial of all field and house-conventicles kept since the first
day of October, one thousand six hundred and sixty-nine, and before the
date hereof, and that they punish the same conform to the laws and acts
of state formerly made thereanent. And lastly, his majesty, being
hopeful that his subjects will give such cheerful obedience to the laws
as there shall not be long use of this act, hath therefore, with advice
foresaid, declared that the endurance thereof shall only be for three
years, unless his majesty shall think fit that it continue longer.

THE SANQUHAR DECLARATION.[19]

It is not amongst the smallest of the Lord's mercies to this poor land
that there have been always some who have given their testimony against
every course of defection, (that many are guilty of) which is a token
for good, that He doth not as yet intend to cast us off altogether, but
that He will leave a remnant in whom He will he glorious, if they,
through His grace, keep themselves clean still, and walk in His way and
method, as it has been walked in and owned by Him in our predecessors of
truly worthy memory, in their carrying on of our noble work of
reformation in the several steps thereof, from popery, prelacy, and
likewise Erastian supremacy, so much usurped by him, who (it is true so
far as we know) is descended from the race of our kings, yet he hath so
far deborded from what he ought to have been, by his perjury and
usurpation in Church matters, and tyranny in matters civil, as is known
by the whole land, that we have just reason to account it one of the
Lord's great controversies against us, that we have not disowned him and
the men of his practices, (whether inferior magistrates or any other) as
enemies to our Lord and His crown, and the true Protestant and
Presbyterian interest