The Covenants And The Covenanters | Page 4

number of commissioners to sit and vote in Parliament, become
members of the Privy Council, and Lords of Session; and such honours
would not readily be declined. Then came the Court of High
Commission, instituted for the purpose of compelling the "faithful"
ministers to acknowledge the bishops appointed by the king--a court
called into existence by royal proclamation, "a sort of English
Inquisition," writes Dr. M'Crie, "composed of prelates, noblemen,
knights, and ministers, and possessing the combined power of a civil
and ecclesiastical tribunal." After this came the Act giving full legal
status to the "Anti-Christian hierarchy" of Episcopacy in Scotland; the
formal consecration of the first Scottish prelates; the five articles of
Perth; the Canons and Constitutions Ecclesiastical--a complete code of

laws for the Church issued without any consultation with the
representatives of the Church; an Act charging all His Majesty's
subjects to conform to the order of worship prescribed by him, and the
Semi-Popish Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the
Sacraments which was imposed upon all parishes and ministers. By
these and other measures, the sovereign impiously assumed that
spiritual power which belonged to Christ alone, as King and Head of
the Church. Here, in its worst form, was "the absolutism that had so
long threatened the extinction of their liberties; here was the heel of
despotism openly planted on the neck of their Church, and the crown
openly torn from the brow of Christ, her only King."
During all these years, the Reformers were resisting with courage the
assaults of the enemy. At times there were secessions from their ranks
when, under the bribes and threats of prince and prelate, some
ingloriously succumbed. But, as Renwick said later in the struggle, "the
loss of the men was not the loss of the cause." The champions of the
Reformation, led by Andrew Melville, feared not to arraign that
monarch who once told his bishops that "now he had put the sword into
their hands they should not let it rust." They tabled petitions, published
protests, obtained interviews, but all proved powerless to arrest the
career of those who were bent on the annihilation of the Church, and
the establishment on its ruins of the royal Supremacy. In one of their
protests, they call upon the Estates to "advance the building of the
house of God, remembering always that there is no absolute and
undoubted authority in the world excepting the sovereign authority of
Christ the King, to whom it belongeth as properly to rule the Kirk
according to the good pleasure of His own will, as it belongeth to Him
to save the Kirk by the merit of His own sufferings." The attempt to
impose Laud's liturgy gave opportunity for an outburst of the
slumbering flame of discontent. Janet Geddes flung a stool at the head
of the officiating Dean, and the tumult that ensued extended far and
wide. A tablet, recently erected to her memory in St. Giles, states that
"she struck the first blow in the great struggle for freedom of
conscience." The proclamation by the Council of the State, condemning
all meetings against the Episcopal Canons and Service Book, brought
the Reformers accessions from all parts of the kingdom. Could an

oppressed people bear the tyranny longer? But, will they take up arms
and scatter carnage and blood throughout the land? No, their weapons
will not be carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of
strongholds. They will go to the Covenant God of the kingdom, and
they will stand before Him, saying, "Thine are we, David, and on thy
side, thou son of Jesse." Scotland will renew her covenant with God.
The National Covenant of 1580 was produced. An addition was made,
in two parts. The part summarizing the Acts of Parliament, condemning
the papacy and ratifying the confessions of the Church, was drafted by
Warriston; that with special religious articles for the time was by
Henderson. The spot chosen for the solemnities of the first subscription
was the Churchyard of Greyfriars, Edinburgh. "The selection," writes
the historiographer-royal for Scotland, "showed a sound taste for the
picturesque. The graveyard in which their ancestors have been laid
from time immemorial stirs the hearts of men. The old Gothic Church
of the Friary was then existing; and landscape art in Edinburgh has by
repeated efforts established the opinion that from that spot we have the
grandest view of the precipices of the Castle and the national fortress
crowning them. It seemed a homage to that elevating influence of grand
external conditions which the actors in the scene were so vehemently
repudiating." In that memorable spot the Reformers gathered "the
legitimate charters" of their nation into one document and presented
them before heaven. Johnston unrolled the parchment in which these
Scottish charters were inscribed, and