Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

society: no friend, no relation, durst give them a
night's lodging, or a meal, or a cup of cold water,
or address a word or a letter to them; they were
forbidden all help and sympathy of their fellowcreatures.
For a minister to preach in the fields was
to incur the penalty of death, and a price was set
upon his head. The nation was divided into two
classes, the oppressors and the oppressed.
Government had become a system of lawless
tribunals, of arbitrary edicts, of spies, imprisoning,
and murdering. Such was the state of Scotland in
the year 1676. Nevertheless, the conventicle still
flourished.
Till the field-preaching was entirely and utterly
swept away, the persecutor felt that he had
accomplished nothing. After all the severities he
had put in force:, would it be possible to find more
rigorous means of suppressions? The persecutor's
invention was not yet at an end. More terrible
severities were devised; and Sharp proposed and
carried in Council the most atrocious edict which
had yet been passed. The edict in question was no
less than to make it a capital crime on the part of
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