The Covenants And The Covenanters | Page 8

behests,
passed the Act of Supremacy, giving legislative sanction to all the
rights he claimed. The Acts Rescissory followed, declaring the
Covenants unlawful and seditious deeds, and repealing all
Parliamentary laws in their favour. Then came the abolition of
Presbyterianism, Indulgences, the restoration of Prelacy, the
appointment of High Commission Courts, the ejection of all ministers
who would not obey the royal mandates, and the erection of scaffolds.
The monarch seemed determined to extinguish every spark of liberty in
the kingdom. The reign of peace was supplanted by a reign of terror.
The Covenants were broken, burnt, buried, by public orders. The
Covenanters met to worship God in the moorlands and dells, setting a
watch for the dragoons of Claverhouse. Thousands upon thousands of
the noblest patriots were imprisoned, tortured, mangled, shot. At times
their indignation burst forth through arms, as at Rullion Green,

Drumclog, and Bothwell Bridge. Their most brilliant victories were on
the scaffold when they passed triumphantly to the crown; for there was
"a noble army" of martyrs, from Argyle the proto-martyr of the "Killing
times," down to the youthful Renwick, last of the white-robed throng.
The ruin wrought by Charles I. in England "we have likened," says Dr.
Wylie, "to a tropical sunset, where night follows day at a single stride.
But the fall of Scotland into the abyss of oppression and suffering
under Charles II. was like the disastrous eclipse of the sun in his
meridian height, bringing dismal night over the shuddering earth at the
hour of noon."
"The hills with the deep mournful music were ringing, The curlew and
plover in concert were singing; But the melody died 'midst derision and
laughter, As the hosts of ungodly rushed on to the slaughter.
"When the righteous had fallen and the combat had ended, A chariot of
fire through the dark cloud descended; The drivers were angels on
horses of whiteness, And its burning wheels turned on axles of
brightness.
"On the arch of the rainbow the chariot is gliding; Through the paths of
the thunder the horsemen are riding; Glide swiftly, bright spirits, the
prize is before you, A crown never fading, a kingdom of glory."
Throughout the long thirty years of persecution, the decimated
Covenanters still lived. The Banner for Christ's Crown and Covenant
was still waved by them through the blood-stained land. Oftentimes
they issued declarations and protests against the tyranny of their
oppressors, many of which concluded with those inspiriting words at
the close of the last of them, "Let King Jesus reign and all His enemies
be scattered." The most famous of these papers was the Sanquhar
Declaration. On the 22nd of June, 1680, twenty horsemen rode into the
burgh of Sanquhar, and at the market cross read their declaration, in
which they "disowned Charles Stuart that has been reigning (or rather
tyrannizing as we may say) on the throne of Britain these years bygone,
as having any right, title to, or interest in the said Crown of Scotland
for government, as forfeited several years since by his perjury and
breach of Covenant both to God and His Kirk, and usurpation of His

Crown and Royal Prerogatives therein." That courageous act of those
twenty patriots proclaimed the doom of the House of Stuart.
"Men called it rash, perhaps it was crime: Their deed flashed out God's
will, an hour before the time."
A few years afterwards, the nations of England and Scotland endorsed
the action of Richard Cameron and his compatriots. The blood of
Guthrie, and Cargill, and MacKail had cried for vengeance, and the
God of the Covenanters hurled the Stuart dynasty from the throne.
"Alas! is it not true?" writes Carlyle in his Heroes, "that many men in
the van do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of
Schwiednitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass
over them dry-shod, and gain the honour? How many earnest, rugged
Cromwells, Knoxes, poor peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for
very life, in rough, miry places, have to struggle and suffer and fall,
greatly censured, bemired, before a beautiful Revolution of eighty-eight
can step over them in official pumps and silk stockings, with universal
three-times-three!"
The stedfast followers of the Covenanters expected that, on the
cessation of the persecution, there would be the restoration of the whole
Covenanted Reformation in Church and State. But their just
expectations were doomed to bitter disappointment. Neither by Church
nor State was any proposal ever seriously entertained of renewing the
national Covenants with God, as at the commencement of the Second
Reformation. Instead, the Acts Rescissory were permitted to remain on
the Statute-book, and the Covenants to lie under the infamy to which
the King and the Royalists had consigned them. The State exerted an
Erastian control of the Church, and