The Covenants And The Covenanters | Page 6

a great host like the host of God."
Through this League and Covenant, the people of the British Isles were
protected by Omnipotence, and were as invincible against the despotic
forces that assailed them as were the white cliffs of their native shores
against the huge galleons of the invincible Armada.
"To Thine own people, with Thine arm, Thou didst redemption bring;
To Jacob's sons and to the tribes Of Joseph that do spring."
These Covenants were prepared and subscribed in a spirit of deep piety.
But for the sterling spirituality of the Reformers there would never
have been a Covenanted Reformation. The work of Covenanting is
itself a lofty spiritual exercise, and requires a people possessing much

of the Spirit of the living God. Every public act for the sake of Christ
should be the outcome of an impassioned devotion. The reading of
even the scant records of those times of Covenanting, telling of the
prayers, and tears, and love, and courage of those who gave themselves
to God, is fitted to inspire the coldest heart with noblest emotions.
Their inward piety made them men of power, and enabled them to bear
down every barrier to the kingdom of their Lord erected by the craft of
prince and priest. It is when Israel would call her Lord, Ishi, my
Husband, that "the names of Baalim would be taken out of her mouth
and be remembered no more." It was when the Christians of the Mearns
had communion at "the table of the Lord Jesus," ministered by Knox,
that they "banded themselves to the uttermost of their power to
maintain the true preaching of the Evangel of Christ." The historian,
Burton, describes the movement that resulted in the subscription of the
National Covenant as the fruit of "a great religious revival," and the
Reformation as "the great revival." And Kirkton says, "I verily believe
there were more souls converted to Christ in that short time than in any
other season since the Reformation." Their intense piety prepared the
Covenanters for the persecutions to follow and for crowns of
martyrdom. In and around their whole Covenanting procedure, there
was the atmosphere of a paradise of communion with God.
These Covenants exhibited the great ecclesiastical breadth of the
Covenanters. The enthronement of the Word of God over the Church
was one of the commanding objects of the Reformers. If only the
Church would hear and honour Christ, her King, speaking in that Word,
then would she be clothed with the sun, and have on her head a crown
of twelve stars. The Reformers resolutely set themselves to apply the
Word to the Church, in all her departments; she must be such an
institution as her Lord had instructed. The will of priest, and prince,
and presbyter, and people, must be set aside in the presence of the will
of her sole Sovereign. The works of demolition and reconstruction
must go on together. Built according to the design of her Lord, her
bulwarks, and towers, and palaces shall command the admiration of the
world. The pattern was not taken from Rome, nor "even from Geneva,
but from the blessed Word of God." No quarter shall be given to
hierarchy of Pope or prelate in the government of the Church, to the

"commandments of men" in the doctrine of the Church, or to
unscriptural rites in the worship of the Church. So great was their
success that the Reformers could say that they "had borrowed nothing
from the border of Rome," and had "nothing that ever flowed from the
man of sin." Often the battle raged most fiercely round the standard of
the independence of the Church, but ever the Covenanters emerged
from the struggle victorious. Valorously did they maintain that Christ
ought to "bear the glory of ruling His own kingdom, the Church," and
fearlessly they defied the monarchs in their invasions of Messiah's
rights. Besides, they were not satisfied with the attainment of a united
Church in their own kingdom alone. They were filled with the spirit of
the Saviour's prayer, "That they all may be one." In the present times,
those who publicly contend for the reunion of a "few scattered
fragments" of the Reformed Church are belauded as men of large hearts
and liberal aims. The Covenanters embodied in their Solemn League
and Covenant an engagement to "bring the Churches of God in the
three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity;" and they
also subsequently included the Churches on the Continent in their
efforts for ecclesiastical union. For the purposes of these ecclesiastical
unions, the Westminster Assembly sat for five years in Westminster,
after signing the Solemn League, and framed a basis for union in the
standards they produced--which still testify that the members of that
Assembly were in advance of