The Covenants And The Covenanters | Page 2

THE NATIONAL COVENANT--
THE NATIONAL COVENANT, OR CONFESSION OF FAITH, 39
EXHORTATION TO LORDS OF COUNCIL, 52
SERMON AT ST. ANDREWS. By Alexander Henderson, 54
EXHORTATION AT INVERNESS. By Andrew Cant, 77
SERMON AT GLASGOW. By Andrew Cant, 83
SERMON AT EDINBURGH. By Andrew Cant, 109
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT--
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, 131
ACT OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY, 136
EXHORTATION AT WESTMINSTER. By Philip Nye, 138

ADDRESS AT WESTMINSTER. By Alexander Henderson, 151
SERMON AT WESTMINSTER. By Thomas Coleman, 159
SERMON AT WESTMINSTER. By Joseph Caryl, 190
SERMON AT LONDON. By Thomas Case, 228
SERMON AT LONDON. By Thomas Case, 265
ORDINANCE OF THE LORDS AND COMMONS, 303
EXHORTATION BY THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY, 307
SERMON AT LONDON. By Edmund Calamy, 312
THE NATIONAL COVENANTS--
CORONATION SERMON AT SCONE. By Robert Douglas, 349
CHARLES II, TAKING THE COVENANTS, 386
THE ACTS RESCISSORY, 398
THE TORWOOD EXCOMMUNICATION, 408
ACT AGAINST CONVENTICLES, 412
THE SANQUHAR DECLARATION, 416
PROTESTATION AGAINST THE UNION, 419
SECESSION FROM THE REVOLUTION CHURCH, 434

Illustrations.
THE GRASSMARKET, EDINBURGH, Frontispiece

GREYFRIARS CHURCH, EDINBURGH, 38
ST. MARGARETS AND THE ABBEY, WESTMINSTER, 130

THE NATIONAL COVENANTS
Every person who enters rightly into covenant with God is on the
pathway to gladness and honour. He comes into sympathy with Him
who from eternity made a covenant with His chosen. He gives joy to
Him who loves to see His people even touch the hem of His garments,
or eagerly grasp His Omnipotent hand. The Spirit of God on the heart
of the believer draws him into the firmest attachment to the Beloved.
Under His gracious influence, the bonds of prejudice against
covenanting are as green withs and the covenanter stands forth in
liberty and in power. So also, when the people of a kingdom together
come into covenant with the Lord. In the character of Israel as a
covenanted people, there shines out a special splendour. One of the
most brilliant events in Judah's chequered history is that in which, in
the days of the good king Asa, "they gathered themselves together to
Jerusalem and entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their
fathers with all their heart and with all their soul; and all Judah rejoiced
at the oath." More than any other nation of modern times, the people of
the British Isles resemble in their covenant actings the people of Israel;
and Scotland is the likest to Judah. Certainly, Scotland's covenants with
God were coronets on Scotland's brow.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Scotland was a moral waste.
The Papacy, which had attained the zenith of its power on the
Continent, reigned in its supremacy throughout the land. In Europe,
indeed, there were some oases in the desolation, but here there were
"stretched out upon the kingdom the line of confusion and the stones of
emptiness." The chaos was as broad and deep as that of the Papal States
before the time of Victor Emanuel. By the presence of the Papacy,
mind, conscience, heart, were blasted; while ignorance, superstition,
iniquity, increased and prevailed. But the Lord that saw the affliction of
Israel in the land of the Pharaohs, was "the same yesterday"; and His

time of visitation was one of love. The first signs of the coming
deliverance were the martyr fires kindled to consume those who were
beginning to cry for liberty. The heroic efforts and successes of the
Reformers on the Continent, in the presence of Papal bulls and
inquisitions, were a trumpet call to independence to the people of this
priest-cursed land; and many responded right nobly, ready to stand
amid the faggots at the stake rather than bear the iron heel that bruised
them.
Those valiant men were led to bind themselves together in "bands," or
covenants, and together to God, in prosecution of their aims. At Dun, in
1556, they entered into a "Band" in which they vowed to "refuse all
society with idolatry." At Edinburgh, in 1557, they entered into "ane
Godlie Band," vowing that "we, by His grace, shall, with all diligence,
continually apply our whole power, substance, and our very lives to
maintain, set forward and establish the most blessed Word of God." At
Perth, in 1559, they entered into covenant "to put away all things that
dishonour His name, that God may be truly and purely worshipped." At
Edinburgh, in 1560, they entered into covenant "to procure, by all
means possible, that the truth of God's Word may have free passage
within this realm." And these covenants were soon followed by the
Confession of Faith prepared by Knox and five other Reformers, and
acknowledged by the three Estates as "wholesome and sound doctrine
grounded upon the infallible truth of God;" by an Act abolishing the
"jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome within this realme," and