Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

twenty men to dethrone the sovereign of Great
Britain, but however we may denounce the act as
extravagant and even treasonable, the treason of
these men lay in their not having fleets and armies
to put down the tyrant that the law might reign. The
Sanquhar Declaration however, with all its seeming
extravagance, did not exhaust itself in the solitude
in which it was first heard. It startled the court. The
Government, instead of letting it die, took it up,
and published it all over the three kingdoms. It was
read, pondered over, and it operated with other
causes in awakening and guiding public sentiment,
till at last the feeble echoes first raised among the
moors of Lanark, came back in thunder in 1688
from the cities and capitals of the empire.
The close of the persecution was distinguished
by two remarkable deaths. As Argyle and Guthrie
had opened the roll of Scottish martyrs, so now it is
closed by Argyle and Renwick. It was meet surely
that the son of the proto-martyr of the Twentyeight
Years' Persecution, should pour out his blood
on the same scaffold on which that of his great
ancestor, and of so many besides, had been shed,
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