Sketches of the Covenanters

by J. C. McFeeters

The head and hands of Cameron were cut off and carried in ignoble triumph through the streets of Edinburgh. The head was elevated on the point of a spear and borne in front of the prisoners to the city jail. Cameron's father was a prisoner there at that time. The head and hands were presented to him, with the sneering question, "Do you know them?" The aweful shock quickly gave place to a gush of fatherly affection. The blood, the pallor, even the stare of the lifeless face, seemed to disappear in the heart-kindlings of the aged parent; to him the countenance was sweet as ever, the eyes were beaming, the lips were vocal, the brow was wreathed with holy dignity. A thousand tender scenes of the past must have rushed in upon the soul of the agitated father. He took up the cold pieces, dearer to him than his own flesh and, while tears flowed plentifully, kissed them, saying, "I know them; they are my son's; my own dear son's: the Lord can harm neither me nor mine; good is the will of the Lord."

Cameron lived in the most critical period of the Covenanted cause. His life of service and sacrifice arose into gigantic strength just when the Covenanted Reformation seemed to be ready for burial. The floodtide of Indulgence had almost submerged the testimony of the Covenanters. Many of the ministers had been caught in that Satanic snare. The remainder were overawed, or disabled with disease and old age. Yet there was a host of brave men and honorable women, thousands in number, who without a leader faced the increasing' fierceness of the persecution, and continued their testimony for Christ in defiance of the king's wrath. These were called the Society People, and Cameron during his public ministry was their standard-bearer.

Cameron and the Society People, afterward known as the Cameronians, have been severely criticised for their exclusiveness. They refused to hold fellowship with the Indulged ministers who had assented to the king's supremacy over the Church, and likewise with the Field-ministers, who had become mute on the Covenanted testimony. They are often represented as having been stern, censorious, and uncharitable in the extreme. A glance at Cameron's commission will show how baseless is the charge.

Richard Cameron received ordination in Holland, four months after the battle of Bothwell Bridge. The ordination service was very solemn and touching. The presbytery felt that they were commissioning a servant of God to do a work that would cost his life. While the ministers rented their hands on Cameron's head in the act of ordination, he was told by one of them, that the head whereon their hands were laid would one day be severed from his body and set up before the sun and moon for public view. Such was the vision of blood that moved before his eyes during the eight months of his ministry. At that same time he received also the exhortation: "Go, Richard; the public Standard of the Gospel is fallen in Scotland; go home and lift the fallen Standard, and display it publicly before the world. But before you put your hand to it, go to as many of the Field-ministers as you can find, and give them your hearty invitation to go with you."

True to his commission Cameron went. He sought out the Field-ministers. They now numbered about sixty. These were keeping close to their hiding-places; their voices scarcely went beyond the mouth of their caves; they counted their blood more valuable than their testimony for Christ and His Covenant. Twenty years of unabating hardships had unnerved them; the late avalanche of the king's wrath had overwhelmed them; they were mostly mute in witnessing for Christ, as the rocks behind which they were hiding.

Of the sixty ministers Cameron found only two who were willing to stand with him and hold up the Banner of the Covenant before the eyes of the nation. One of these, Thomas Douglas, quickly disappeared leaving Cameron and Cargill alone to lead the Covenanted people of God in the fight that was growing harder every day. These two dauntless ministers of Christ accepted the responsibility, knowing too well the price to be paid was their own blood. And they have been censured for their exclusiveness.

[!--IMG--] Four Young Covenanters Discovered These young men had left their homes to save their lives. They lived among the hills, hid in the caves, slept on the ground, had little to eat, and were always in danger. They evidently had come here to sun themselves after a chilly night, and to comfort one another in Jesus Christ. They were found and sentenced to be shot. They said to their accusers, "If we had a hundred lives, we would willingly quit them all, for the truth of Christ".

Twenty years previous, the Covenanted ministers numbered one thousand. More than half of these had violated the Covenant by a resolution in 1650, to open the offices of public trust to men without moral qualification. Will the minority be censured for not following them? In 1662, the ministerial brotherhood was again rent in twain by the king's decree requiring them to submit, or quit the manse. Four hundred refused to comply. Will they be censured for withdrawing from their brethren who remained? In later years the Indulgences followed, one after another, capturing all except sixty. Will the sixty be censured for not following the others in submitting to the king's supremacy over the Church? And now all but two suspend the public testimony for Christ's crown. Will the two be censured for separating from the sixty, and holding forth the Banner of Christ?

Cameron and Cargill, with the Society people, stood on a basis separated from their brethren who had stepped off the basis, and had left them to struggle alone against mighty odds and fierce enemies, for the Covenanted Reformation to which all were bound by a solemn oath. These men, with the Society people at their back, stood by their Covenant and the oath of God, the others had departed. Censure the Cameronians for exclusiveness? Rather, be sincere and censure them for not slipping, and stumbling, and falling away, like their brethren from Covenant attainments. These worthies stood on the heights from which the others had departed, and waving the old battle-worn colors of the Covenant appealed unto them to come up and occupy the ground where they had formerly stood.

The Cameronians maintained a high position; but it was not chimerical or theoretical; it was practical and Scriptural; here was solid ground, a rock-foundation. On it were no sidings, no off-sets, no bogs. The truths they held were clear, clean-cut, adamantine, foundational, and unchangeable. Their oath bound them to defend the sovereignty of Christ, the kingdom of God, and the Reformed religion.