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them than the enemies' promise of life and liberty.
In August, 1679, fifteen of Bothwel-prisoners got indictments of death. Mr. Edward Jamieson, a worthy Presbyterian minister, as Mr. Woodrow calls him, was sent from that Erastian meeting of ministers, into the Tolbooth to these fifteen, who urged the lawfulness of taking the Bond to save their lives; and the refusal of it would be a reflection on religion, and the cause they had appeared for, and a throwing away their lives, for which their friends would not be able to vindicate them. He prevailed with thirteen of them, which soured in the stomach of some of those thirteen, and lay heavy upon them both in their life, and death. The prisoners taken at and about the time of Bothwel, were reckoned about fifteen hundred.
The faithful Mr. Jown Blackader did write to these prisoners dissuading them from that foul compliance: and some worthy persons of these prisoners, whom he wrote to, said to me with tears, that they slighted his advice, and swallowed the unhappy advices of these ministers who were making peace with the enemies of God, and followed their foul steps, for which they would go mourning to their graves. I heard the same Mr. Blackader preach his last public sermon, before his falling into the enemies’ hands in the night-time in the fields, in the parish of Livingstone, on the side of the Mair, at New-house, on the 23rd of March, after Bothwel, where he lectured on Micah iv. from the 9th verse, where he asserted. That, the nearer the delivery, our pains and showers would come thicker and sorer upon us; and that we had been long in the fields, but ere we were delivered we would go down to Babylon. That either popery would overspread this land, or be at the breaking in upon us, like an inundation of water. And preached upon that text, “Let no man be moved with these afflictions, for ye yourselves know that ye are appointed thereunto.” Where he insisted on what moving and shaking
