5. When was the First Reformation at its climax?
6. How should the success of the fathers inspire us?
VI.
SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL COVENANT.—A.D. 1581.
During the sixties of the Sixteenth century, the Presbyterian Church had her beautiful summer. The winter seemed to be past and the storms over and gone; the time of the singing of birds had come.
Hitherto the Church had been as a lily among thorns: now instead of thorns were fir trees, and instead of briers, myrtle trees, to the glory of the Lord, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.
Among the matchless sayings of Jesus, one specific word resounds through all the ages and falls upon listening ears like thunder from heaven: "WATCH". Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, the price of purity, the price of honor, the price of every thing worth having. The young Church, vigorous, victorious, and enthusiastic, seems to have been off her guard at a critical moment and while she slept the enemy sowed tares among the wheat.
The regent, the person who was acting as king while the coming king was a child, called a convention of ministers and others who favored the king's supremacy over the Church. The convention at his dictation introduced Prelacy. This occurred on January 12, 1572, a dark day for Scotland.
Prelacy is little else than Popery modified; Popery in another dress, trained and taught to speak a softer dialect. The power of Popery had been broken, but the residuum still remained, and now there appeared "the strange heterogeneous compound of Popery, Prelacy, and Presbyterianism" in the Church.