Having in prospect a united, public and solemn approach to our covenant God, some important principles should be understood, that we may proceed with intelligence and have sure ground for our faith.
"God is love;" and reciprocal love constitutes "the bond of perfectness" between God and rational creatures. Communion with God is the supreme felicity and highest honor of which angels and men are capable. The first emanation of divine love revealed to us was displayed in the covenant of works; although not called a covenant, the narrative contains all the elements essential to a federal deed, comprising a summary of the whole moral law. Thus the sovereign love of God was manifested through the medium of law and covenant inseparably combined; and this is the Lord's manner of dealing with mankind till the present time.
That covenant was made with us in Adam as our common father and public representative. By the breach of it we are born in Adam's image and "children of wrath;" for the principle of representative identification pervades the moral universe. Our rational and social nature fits us both for personal and federal responsibility.
When we had "destroyed ourselves" by apostasy from God, then did God "show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." The gift of his Son to be a covenant head to sinners is God's highest, and most glorious demonstration of his ineffable love. The breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love of Christ passeth knowledge; and the displays of this love through the covenant of grace will doubtless furnish matter of admiration to holy angels, and of adoring gratitude to redeemed sinners throughout eternity. Rev. i: 5, 6.
Ever since our fall in Adam God has dealt with our sinful race by covenant. This covenant was made with Christ as Mediator between God and man, and as the representative of all whom the Father gave him to be redeemed and brought to glory. John xvii: 2. Accordingly, the Lord Jesus, immediately on the fall of our first parents, entered upon his work of mediation. To them first he announced his commission, declaring his purpose to "bruise the serpent's head—to destroy the works of the devil." Gen. iii: 15; 1 John iii: 8. Christ is given "for a witness to the people; a leader and commander to the people; to have power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as the Father hath given him."
Throughout the whole of the mediatorial administration the law and the covenant are distinct, though inseparably connected: and although many covenants are mentioned in the Scriptures, and even distinguished as old and new. Jer. xxxi: 31; Heb. viii: 8; yet we must understand these as only different and successive modes of administering one and the same Covenant of Grace. This covenant was proclaimed before the deluge by prophets, as Enoch and Noah; after the flood by patriarchs; then by the ministry of Moses and other prophets, when John the Baptist and the Messiah in person proclaimed it; and from the day of Pentecost till the end of the world is the last dispensation—still, the covenant is immutably the same. The most solemn and memorable act of covenanting with God was at Horeb, otherwise called Sinai, when the Israelites were first and formally organized in ecclesiastical and civil relations. Then "Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion." Ps. cxiv: 2.
Besides circumcision and the passover, both of which involved covenant obligation, God instituted the additional ordinance of public and social federal transaction, that the whole body might glorify him by a united act of solemn dedication as his special property separated visibly from the world. Is. lxiii: 19. And that this is a moral ordinance, and of perpetual obligation, is evident from the practice of God's people, both under the Old and New Testament, and the language of prophecy. Deut. xxix: 10-12; 2 Cor. viii: 5; Is. xliv: 5.
Again, when we renew our covenant, we do not mean that the obligation has ceased, or that we can increase its obligation, for this is infinite and permanent; we intend by our personal act to deepen and render more durable our sense of preexisting obligation. This is, indeed, the immediate object of all renovations, by Moses, Joshua, kings of Judah and Nehemiah. And as we have seen, this ordinance was observed by Christians in the time of the apostles, so their practice may be traced through history afterwards, however obscure, until the time of the Reformation from Popery; when in Europe, both continental and insular, this ordinance was revived and exemplified. Among all nations in Christendom Scotland stands preeminent since first emancipated from bondage in mystical Babylon, for the frequency and fidelity of her ecclesiastical and national vows to the Most High. After many struggles with Popery and Prelacy, during which Christ's witnesses in that land derived strength and courage from vows renewed to withstand these organized oppressors; at length by their example and influence the kingdoms of England and Ireland were brought into a confederation by that famous and grand document, the Solemn League and Covenant. Taken in connection with the National Covenant of Scotland, those three nations and the churches in them were voluntarily bound to God and to each other by all the solemnity of cords and bands made in heaven. Yet, through the corruption of human nature and the restless malice of the Dragon and his angels, these bands were treacherously broken and the cords cast away. Although those symbols of the public faith were Scriptural documents, yet the reformation as truly described by the late Mr. Robert Lusk, was to the majority "a reformation only on paper." Like Israel of old the hearts of most of the people were not right with God, neither were they steadfast in his covenant. Ps. lxxviii: 37. This was soon made manifest by the Public Resolutions, accepting Indulgences, and the subsequent twenty-eight years of persecution inflicted upon those who "stood to the covenant." Then followed, in 1689, what the apostates called, and their successors still fondly hail, as the "glorious Revolution settlement!"—a settlement which, by forms of law, consigned the nations' solemn vows to oblivion, with all possible expressions of detestation by the infamous "Act Rescissory." In the year 1707, the "Act of Incorporation" brought the church and kingdom of Scotland under degrading bondage to the anti-Christian, Prelatic and Erastian throne of Britain.
While these steps of apostasy were in progress, the Lord preserved a "wasted remnant" of witnesses, who "resisted unto blood striving against sin." These valiant Christian patriots—"the Society People"—kept themselves and their garments clean, and kept also the word of Christ's patience. They never were dissenters, nor properly called the "Old Dissenters." During this hour of temptation they were destitute of the help and guidance of a public ministry. At length, in the year 1706, Mr. John M'Millan, wearing the honorable badges of suspension and deposition, imposed by his apostate brethren for advocating in their Assembly the continued obligation of the Covenants. National and Solemn League, (Is. lxvi: 5,) was joyfully received as their minister by the voice of the Society people. In the year 1712, at Auchensaugh, Mr. M'Millan, with the assistance of Mr. John M'Neil, licentiate, "resolved to set about this solemn and tremendous duty of renewing their national covenants with God." Their mode of procedure was Scriptural, following the examples of Moses and others to Nehemiah—"the footsteps of the flock." They framed three papers, History, Confession and Engagement. The text of the Covenants of our fathers was left entire, only some explanatory words and phrases being placed in the margin. These explanations were then necessary to clear that question of questions—"Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee?"—a question to be finally settled only at the sounding of the last Apocalyptic trumpet. Rev. xi: 15. That transaction was ever after incorporated with the Terms of Communion.
Some years after this transaction another renovation took place in Scotland, at a locality called Crawford-John; but no attainments were then made, nor has any authentic record of the proceedings been transmitted to posterity. Also the Seceders, soon after their erection as a distinct organization in Scotland, and repeatedly since in Britain and America, by public covenanting have contributed to the preservation of sound doctrine and Christian practice. We cannot, however, accord to them the honor of being the successors of the covenanted witnesses, which they unwarrantably claim, seeing that they disowned the "civil part" of the public Covenants, and thus unwittingly, we charitably believe, passed an implied censure on the One Lawgiver for having given us a second table in the moral law!