31. If those Ministers formerly silenced may not for a time be connived at, and permitted to preach?
32. If your Majesty aim at more for the present, than establishing the Peace of the Country?
33. If more, it is humbly desired, Your Majesty may be pleased to express it?
In execution of all which, or what else Your Majesty shall think fit to command, it is most humbly desired, that I may be so warranted, that the labouring to put them in execution may not turn to my Ruine, nor hazard the losing of Your Majesties Favour, dearer to me than life?
38. _Instructions by the King to Hamilton._[63]
I. Before you publish the Declaration which We have signed, you shall require all the Council to sign it, and if you find that it may conduce to Our Service, you shall make all the Council swear to give their best assistance in the execution of the same: but this of putting them to their Oaths, We leave to your discretion, to doe as you shall find occasion; but if you shall find it fit to put them to their Oaths, those that refuse must be dismissed the Council till Our further Pleasure be known.
II. We give you Power to cause the Council to sir in whatsoever place you shall find most convenient for Our Service, Edinburgh onely excepted, and to change the Meeting thereof as often as occasion shall require.
III. You may labour to prepare any of the refractory persons to conceive aright of Our Declaration before it be published, so that it be privately and underhand.
IV. You are to get an Act of Council to pass, to declare, that this Declaration of Ours ought to free all honest Subjects from the fears of Innovations of Religion or Laws: but this you are not to propose publickly except you be sure to carry it.
V. If any Protestation be made against Our Declaration, the Protesters must be reputed Rebels, and you are to labour to apprehend the chiefest of them.
VI. If Petitions be presented to demand further satisfaction than that We have already given by Our Declaration, you are to receive them, and to give them a bold Negative, both in respect of the Matter and the Form, as being presented from a Body which you are no ways to acknowledge.
VII. If it should be objected against the High Commission, that it ought not to be introduced but by Act of Parliament: your Answer must be, that We found it left Vs by Our Father, and therefore We meane to continue it, having first regulated it in such a way that it shall be no just Grievance to Our Subjects, or against Our Laws: and when there is a Parliament, We shall be content that it be ratified as We shall now rectifie it.