“To denude the people of armour because they may abuse the prince,

is to expose them to violence and oppression unjustly,

for one king may more easily abuse armour than all the people.

–Lex Rex, Samuel Rutherford

“We know no other bond betwixt a king and his Subjects but religion and law; if these be broken, men’s lives are not dear to them…”

–The Covenanters

.

[While I was working on the post, “The Killing Times,” I was led to inquire, “What caused this to happen?” “Why would people still be loyal to a king trying to kill them?” “What would keep men and women sane when they were being persecuted by a government that they had agreement with?” “Were these Covenanters just a “choice few” of the country?” As I read further, I became deeply grateful to a people who gave so much of their concepts of freedom and government to our own country… But that is the substance of another Post. –MWP]

.

There is a vague notion that those Covenants were altogether the work of the austere Scottish Presbyters.

But this is not the case. The Covenants, as much as anything could be, were the work of the whole nation “the voice of the whole people”. The National Covenant was brought forward by the famous Tables, as they were called “the four great Standing committees organized in 1637, and formed so as to represent the nobles, the gentry, the clergy, and the burghers; and it was ratified and made law by the king himself, when he presided in person over the Scottish Parliament of 1641. The Solemn League and Covenant, again, was framed with much care, and formally arranged between the Scottish Parliament and the English Commissioners; and it was received and adopted by the English Parliament on the 21st September 1643.

In short, the Covenants were public legislative acts, expressing what in those days were the fixed ideas and resolutions of the people as to government, as to liberty, as to religion. They were the terms more especially on which Scotland offered allegiance to her sovereign. They were the constitution by which the monarch must be bound in rule, no less than the people in loyalty and obedience.

Intolerance was the universal vice of the age, and was inevitable in the transition through which mankind were then passing. It was but half a century from the awful struggles of the Reformation; and there had been war, war, war and bloodshed ever since. Through the whole length and breadth of Europe. Romanists and Protestants stood on the opposite banks of a small stream, ready to rush across; and Romanism had latterly been closing in, and gaining the advantage on all sides. Protestantism was fresh and young and confident, little used to those doubts, those different views of things, with which the modern mind is familiar, and which have taught us at last, it is to -be hoped, some lessons of mutual forbearance and charity.

Young Protestantism, therefore, at first partook largely of the intolerance of old Romanism; although, as can easily be proved from the writings of those very Covenanters, there were visions of loftier things beginning to dawn and glimmer on the inner sense of Protestant Christians. The Westminster Confession, compiled when the Covenanters were at the height of their influence, both in England and Scotland, contains this golden proposition:

“God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men…. And the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.”

Henderson, in a Sermon preached before the House of Lords in Westminster Abbey, in 1645, enforces, with his usual judgment, clearness, and gravity, the entire spirituality of Christ’s kingdom. Christ “came from heaven for things Divine, to work upon the consciences of men, and was appointed to be Judge of quick and dead; but never meddled with the office of a temporal king.” “The kingdoms of the world have carnal weapons and strength of arms to pursue their ends; but the weapons of the kingdom of Christ are spiritual to procure spiritual obedience unto him.” “Domination is forbidden churchmen; ministration is commanded.”

If the Covenanters are to be blamed for intolerance, remember, their fault was the blindness of their times, in which their opponents, and other sects and parties, were as much, if not more, involved than themselves. And Presbyterianism was at least self-curing; it carried in its bosom the antidote as well as the bane.

After many premonitory acts, which excited general distrust and alarm, the king introduced into of Liturgy Scotland, by his own sole prerogative, without any other sanction, a Book of Canons for the regulation of the Church, by which the Presbyterian polity was completely subverted, as well as the civil rights and privileges of the people invaded; and he followed up this by a Liturgy, framed under the auspices of Laud, largely impregnated with Romish conceits, which contradicted and shocked all Scottish ideas and habits in the matter of religious worship, and many of their most solemn religious convictions.

.

This was in 1637. The national mind was outraged.

.

To confront and avenge the insolence of tyranny which had been displayed, the people, under the guidance of “The Tables” rose in a mass, joined heart and hand, and, as one man, swore and subscribed the NATIONAL COVENANT.

This memorable document, first publicly read and subscribed in the Greyfriars’ Church of Edinburgh, on the last day of February 1638, the noble men, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers, and commons, under subscribing, express their resolution —

All the days of our life constantly to adhere unto and to defend the true religion,” and “to labour, by all means lawful, to recover the purity and liberty of the gospel, as it was established and professed before the introduction of the late innovations;” “and that we shall defend the same, and resist all these contrary errors and corruptions, according to our vocation, and to the utmost of that power that God hath put into our hands, all the days of our life.”

They pledged themselves,

“that we shall, to the utmost of our power, with our means and lives, stand to the defense of our dread sovereign the king’s majesty, his person and authority, in the defense and preservation of the foresaid true religion, liberties, and laws of the kingdom; as also to the mutual defense and assistance every one of us of another, so that whatsoever shall be done to the least of us for that cause shall be taken as done to us, all in general, and to every one of us in particular; and that we shall, neither directly nor indirectly, suffer ourselves to be divided or withdrawn, by whatsoever suggestion, combination, allurement, or terror, from our blessed and loyal conjunction.” They engage, “for ourselves, our followers, and all other under us, both in public, in our particular families and personal carriage, to endeavour to keep ourselves within the bounds of Christian liberty, and to be good examples to others of all godliness, soberness, and righteousness, and of every duty we owe to God and man.”

I need scarcely describe the scene of the first signing of the National Covenant. It is imprinted on the memory of every reader of history. It seems to have stamped itself, as if with a photographic stroke, on the minds of all who were contemporary with the event. All were awed, startled, subdued, as if they had been the witnesses of the rushing mighty wind, and the cloven tongues as of fire, of a new Pentecost.

How the dullest old chronicler kindles into a reverential glow, as he relates, how the commissioners, who had charge of the momentous task, assembled on the early dawn of that February morning. How the myriads, from Tweed to Tay, from Merse to Galloway, flocked to the Greyfriars, filling church and churchyard. How one great historic face after another appeared on the scene! With what heavenly ardor Henderson prayed to the High and Lofty One, with whom a whole nation essayed to enter into covenant, “the vessels of clay with the almighty Potter!” With what sweetness, force, and persuasion Loudon spoke to the vast assemblage,”he who was famed as the most eloquent man of his time,” enforcing upon them, ”that they should carefully keep themselves together in a cause that was common, and in which all and every one was so deeply interested.” How earnestly and devoutly the people listened, as Warriston read the Covenant, which owed to his experienced pen much of its comprehensiveness, boldness, and precision. How, after the reading of the document, there was a solemn pause, as if men were bowed down by a feeling of the immediate presence of Divinity. How this dread expressive stillness was broken, when the Earl of Sutherland advancing, deeply affected, affixed the first signature to the National Covenant. Then, how a tempest of long pent-up enthusiasm ran through the assembled multitudes. Name followed name, as with electric speed,” eye gleamed to eye, hand grasped hand. The fullness of the heart, long with difficulty repressed, now burst free from all restraint. Some wept aloud; some raised a shout of exultation, as from the field of battle and victory; some, after their signatures, added the words, “till death;” some opened their veins, and subscribed their names with their own blood!

It was one of those moments of rapt and transcendental emotion, which will sometimes seize nations as well as individuals: when there is flashed into them intuitions and resolutions which many rolling generations might fail to teach; when they are marvelously emboldened to do, at a heat, the work of long centuries; and seem borne aloft, as by an irresistible impulse, on the strength and swiftness of invisible wings.

This, in the fond language of the Presbyterian historians, is commemorated as the “Second Reformation.”

[Thus, was set up the Covenant of a people with their government and their God. But it was not to stand. While the people stood by their covenant, and were faithful to God and to King, as set forth by the covenants included in this great and historic document, the king did not. Being betrayed by their government and their king, the Covenanters were slaughtered in epic proportion; martyrs for their faith and faithfulness.]

————————————————————-

Taken from, “The Fifty Years Struggle of Scottish Covenanters, 1638 – 1688”

Written by James Dodd.

Published 1860

Edited for thought and sense by Michael W. Pursley

0.000000 0.000000