The Covenants And The Covenanters | Page 6

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 their times. Yes, the Covenanters were not narrow, sectarian, bigoted; but large, liberal, Catholic.
These Covenants were deeds of lofty imperial significance. The reformation of the Church, however complete, would have been a limited Reformation. There are two powers ordained of God and both must be reformed. The comprehensive aims of the Covenanters embraced both State and Church. Their deeds were civil as well as ecclesiastical. A Church thoroughly reformed and