[Transcriber's Note: All items in the Errata have been corrected in the text, however the Errata has still been included for completeness.]
[The Grassmarket, Edinburgh.]
The Covenants
and
The Covenanters
Covenants, Sermons, and Documents
of
The Covenanted Reformation.
With Illustrations.
Introduction on the National Covenants
by
Rev. James Kerr, D.D., Glasgow
EDINBURGH: R.W. HUNTER, GEORGE IV. BRIDGE.
THE COVENANTS AND THE COVENANTERS.
PREFATORY NOTE.
The Covenants, Sermons, and Papers in this volume carry the readers back to some of the brightest periods of Scottish history. They mark important events in that great struggle by which these three kingdoms were emancipated from the despotisms of Pope, Prince, and Prelate, and an inheritance of liberty secured for these Islands of the Sea. The whole achievements of the heroes of the battlefields are comprehended under that phrase of Reformers and Martyrs, "The Covenanted Work of Reformation." The attainments of those stirring times were bound together by the Covenants, as by rings of gold.
The Sermons here were the product of the ripe thought of the main actors in the various scenes—men of piety, learning, and renown. Hence, the nature, objects, and benefits of personal and national Covenanting are exhibited in a manner fitted to attract to that ordinance the minds and hearts of men. The readers can well believe the statement of Livingstone, who was present at several ceremonies of covenant-renovation: "I never saw such motions from the Spirit of God. I have seen more than a thousand persons all at once lifting up their hands, and the tears falling down from their eyes." In the presence of the defences of the Covenants as deeds, by these preachers, the baseless aspersions of novelists and theologues fade out into oblivion.
True Christians must, as they ponder these productions, be convinced that the Covenanters were men of intense faith and seraphic fervour, and their own hearts will burn as they catch the heavenly flame. Members of the Church of Christ will be stirred to nobler efforts for the Kingdom of their Lord as they meditate on the heroism of those who were the "chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof;" and they will behold with wonder that "to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the face of the serpent." And Statesmen will discover how Princes, Parliaments, and Peoples united in the hearty surrender of themselves to the Prince of the kings and kingdoms of the earth; and will be aroused to promote that policy of Christian Statesmanship which, illustrating the purpose and will of God, the Father, shall liberate Parliaments and nations from the bonds of false religions, and assert for them those liberties and honours which spring from the enthronement of the Son of Man, as King of kings and Lord of lords.
This volume of documents of olden times is sent out on a mission of Revival of Religion, personal and national, in the present times. It would do a noble work if it helped to humble classes and masses, and led them to return as one man to that God in covenant from Whom all have gone so far away. A national movement, in penitence and faith, for the repeal of the Acts Rescissory and the recognition of the National Covenants would be as life from the dead throughout the British Empire. The people and rulers of these dominions shall yet behold the brilliancy of the Redeemer's crowns; and shall, by universal consent, exalt Him who rules in imperial majesty over the entire universe of God. For, "The seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the Kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ."
GLASGOW, December, 1895.
ERRATA.
Page 29, line 8, instead of "1745," read 1712.
Page 29, line 10, instead of "Crawfordjohn," read Auchensaugh, near Douglas.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
11[THE NATIONAL COVENANTS—Introduction],
39[THE NATIONAL COVENANT, OR CONFESSION OF FAITH],
52[EXHORTATION TO LORDS OF COUNCIL],
54[SERMON AT ST. ANDREWS. By Alexander Henderson],
77[EXHORTATION AT INVERNESS. By Andrew Cant],
83[SERMON AT GLASGOW. By Andrew Cant],
109[SERMON AT EDINBURGH. By Andrew Cant],
[THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT]—
131[THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT],
138[EXHORTATION AT WESTMINSTER. By Philip Nye],
151[ADDRESS AT WESTMINSTER. By Alexander Henderson],
159[SERMON AT WESTMINSTER. By Thomas Coleman],
190[SERMON AT WESTMINSTER. By Joseph Caryl],
228[SERMON AT LONDON. By Thomas Case],
265[SERMON AT LONDON. By Thomas Case],
303[ORDINANCE OF THE LORDS AND COMMONS],
307[EXHORTATION BY THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY],
312[SERMON AT LONDON. By Edmund Calamy],
349[CORONATION SERMON AT SCONE. By Robert Douglas],
386[CHARLES II, TAKING THE COVENANTS],
408[THE TORWOOD EXCOMMUNICATION],
412[ACT AGAINST CONVENTICLES],
416[THE SANQUHAR DECLARATION],
419[PROTESTATION AGAINST THE UNION],
434[SECESSION FROM THE REVOLUTION CHURCH],
Illustrations.
Frontispiece[THE GRASSMARKET, EDINBURGH],
38[GREYFRIARS CHURCH, EDINBURGH],
130[ST. MARGARETS AND THE ABBEY, WESTMINSTER],
THE NATIONAL COVENANTS
Every person who enters rightly into covenant with God is on the pathway to gladness and honour. He comes into sympathy with Him who from eternity made a covenant with His chosen. He gives joy to Him who loves to see His people even touch the hem of His garments, or eagerly grasp His Omnipotent hand. The Spirit of God on the heart of the believer draws him into the firmest attachment to the Beloved. Under His gracious influence, the bonds of prejudice against covenanting are as green withs and the covenanter stands forth in liberty and in power. So also, when the people of a kingdom together come into covenant with the Lord. In the character of Israel as a covenanted people, there shines out a special splendour. One of the most brilliant events in Judah's chequered history is that in which, in the days of the good king Asa, "they gathered themselves together to Jerusalem and entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul; and all Judah rejoiced at the oath." More than any other nation of modern times, the people of the British Isles resemble in their covenant actings the people of Israel; and Scotland is the likest to Judah. Certainly, Scotland's covenants with God were coronets on Scotland's brow.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Scotland was a moral waste. The Papacy, which had attained the zenith of its power on the Continent, reigned in its supremacy throughout the land. In Europe, indeed, there were some oases in the desolation, but here there were "stretched out upon the kingdom the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness." The chaos was as broad and deep as that of the Papal States before the time of Victor Emanuel. By the presence of the Papacy, mind, conscience, heart, were blasted; while ignorance, superstition, iniquity, increased and prevailed. But the Lord that saw the affliction of Israel in the land of the Pharaohs, was "the same yesterday"; and His time of visitation was one of love. The first signs of the coming deliverance were the martyr fires kindled to consume those who were beginning to cry for liberty. The heroic efforts and successes of the Reformers on the Continent, in the presence of Papal bulls and inquisitions, were a trumpet call to independence to the people of this priest-cursed land; and many responded right nobly, ready to stand amid the faggots at the stake rather than bear the iron heel that bruised them.
Those valiant men were led to bind themselves together in "bands," or covenants, and together to God, in prosecution of their aims. At Dun, in 1556, they entered into a "Band" in which they vowed to "refuse all society with idolatry." At Edinburgh, in 1557, they entered into "ane Godlie Band," vowing that "we, by His grace, shall, with all diligence, continually apply our whole power, substance, and our very lives to maintain, set forward and establish the most blessed Word of God." At Perth, in 1559, they entered into covenant "to put away all things that dishonour His name, that God may be truly and purely worshipped." At Edinburgh, in 1560, they entered into covenant "to procure, by all means possible, that the truth of God's Word may have free passage within this realm." And these covenants were soon followed by the Confession of Faith prepared by Knox and five other Reformers, and acknowledged by the three Estates as "wholesome and sound doctrine grounded upon the infallible truth of God;" by an Act abolishing the "jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome within this realme," and forbidding "title or right by the said bishop of Rome or his sect to anything within this realme," and by the first General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Seven years thereafter, 1569, the Parliament recognised, by specific Act, the reformed Church of Scotland as "the only true and holy kirk of Jesus Christ within this realm." The young Church of Scotland was based on the Word of God, anti-papal, free, reformed, and covenanting, and in that character acknowledged by the State. "At this time," writes D'Aubigne, "the reformed church was recognised and established by the State—a triumph similar to that of Christianity when under Constantine the religion of the Crucified One ascended the throne of the Cæsars." In spite of the vacillating policy of the King and Parliament, and their repeated attempts to impose the order of bishops on the Church, the reformation proceeded steadily, and a great advance was reached by the National Covenant of 1580.
This National Covenant, or Second Confession of Faith, was prepared by John Craig, minister of Holyrood House. Its original title was "Ane Short and Generall Confession of the True Christiane Faith and Religione, according to God's verde and Actis of our Perlamentis, subscryved by the Kingis Majestie and his Household, with sindrie otheris, to the glorie of God and good example of all men, att Edinburghe, the 28 day of Januare, 1580, and 14 yeare of his Majestie's reigne." The immediate occasion of this memorable transaction was the discovery of a secret dispensation from the Pope consenting to the profession of the reformed religion by Roman Catholics, but instructing them to use all their influence in promotion of the "ancient faith." Though the King was still in sympathy to some degree with the policy of Rome against the "new faith," he could not dare to resist the indignation of the people against Romish intrigues, and their demand for a national bond as a means of defence. By the National Covenant, the Covenanters declared their belief "in the true Christian faith and religion, revealed by the blessed evangel, and received by the Kirk of Scotland, as God's eternal truth and only ground of our Salvation;" renounced "all kinds of Papistry," its authority, dogmas, rites and decrees, and pledged themselves to maintain "the King's majesty, in the defence of Christ, against all enemies within this realm or without." It was signed by the King and the Privy Council and throughout the kingdom, and was subscribed again in 1590 and 1596. "The Kirk of Scotland," wrote Calderwood, "was now come to her perfection and the greatest puritie that ever she attained unto, both in doctrine and discipline, so that her beautie was admirable to forraine kirks. The assemblies of the sancts were never so glorious." This period was the meridian of the first Reformation.
But the time of Scotland's rest and joy was short indeed. Ere the sixteenth century opened, the ecclesiastical edifice, raised by Knox, the Melvilles and other reformers, was almost in ruins. The monarch had been taught in his youth the doctrine of the divine right of kings, and he was now determined to assert it. Both church and state must be laid in the dust before his absolute will. Both had been delivered from a popedom on the banks of the Tiber, now they will be confronted by a popedom on the banks of the Thames; and the despotism of the Pope shall be even exceeded by the despotism of the Prince. Scotland is now to be the scene of a struggle with issues more momentous than any ever waged on any field of battle. Shall civil and religious liberty be saved from captivity by tyrants on the throne? Shall free assemblies and free parliaments be extinguished in the land that has, by its people and its Parliament, abolished the authority of Rome and taken its National Covenant with God? For nearly a hundred years this conflict was destined to continue till, at the Revolution Settlement, the divine right of kings was banished the realm.
Kingcraft forthwith commenced its work of demolition and proceeded to deliver its blows in rapid succession. Summoning to its aid Laud and other sycophantic counsellors, it subtly resolved to lay its hand on the very conscience of the church. Mitres were offered some of her more prominent ministers, for Charles I. knew that Presbyterianism is the friend of civil freedom, and that Prelacy in the Church will more readily consent to despotism in the State. The "Black Acts" were passed confirming the "king's royal power over all states and subjects within this realm," discharging all assemblies held "without our Sovereign Lord's special licence and commandment," and requiring ministers to acknowledge the ecclesiastical superiority of bishops. The assembly was induced to adopt a proposal for the appointment of a number of commissioners to sit and vote in Parliament, become members of the Privy Council, and Lords of Session; and such honours would not readily be declined. Then came the Court of High Commission, instituted for the purpose of compelling the "faithful" ministers to acknowledge the bishops appointed by the king—a court called into existence by royal proclamation, "a sort of English Inquisition," writes Dr. M'Crie, "composed of prelates, noblemen, knights, and ministers, and possessing the combined power of a civil and ecclesiastical tribunal." After this came the Act giving full legal status to the "Anti-Christian hierarchy" of Episcopacy in Scotland; the formal consecration of the first Scottish prelates; the five articles of Perth; the Canons and Constitutions Ecclesiastical—a complete code of laws for the Church issued without any consultation with the representatives of the Church; an Act charging all His Majesty's subjects to conform to the order of worship prescribed by him, and the Semi-Popish Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments which was imposed upon all parishes and ministers. By these and other measures, the sovereign impiously assumed that spiritual power which belonged to Christ alone, as King and Head of the Church. Here, in its worst form, was "the absolutism that had so long threatened the extinction of their liberties; here was the heel of despotism openly planted on the neck of their Church, and the crown openly torn from the brow of Christ, her only King."
During all these years, the Reformers were resisting with courage the assaults of the enemy. At times there were secessions from their ranks when, under the bribes and threats of prince and prelate, some ingloriously succumbed. But, as Renwick said later in the struggle, "the loss of the men was not the loss of the cause." The champions of the Reformation, led by Andrew Melville, feared not to arraign that monarch who once told his bishops that "now he had put the sword into their hands they should not let it rust." They tabled petitions, published protests, obtained interviews, but all proved powerless to arrest the career of those who were bent on the annihilation of the Church, and the establishment on its ruins of the royal Supremacy. In one of their protests, they call upon the Estates to "advance the building of the house of God, remembering always that there is no absolute and undoubted authority in the world excepting the sovereign authority of Christ the King, to whom it belongeth as properly to rule the Kirk according to the good pleasure of His own will, as it belongeth to Him to save the Kirk by the merit of His own sufferings." The attempt to impose Laud's liturgy gave opportunity for an outburst of the slumbering flame of discontent. Janet Geddes flung a stool at the head of the officiating Dean, and the tumult that ensued extended far and wide. A tablet, recently erected to her memory in St. Giles, states that "she struck the first blow in the great struggle for freedom of conscience." The proclamation by the Council of the State, condemning all meetings against the Episcopal Canons and Service Book, brought the Reformers accessions from all parts of the kingdom. Could an oppressed people bear the tyranny longer? But, will they take up arms and scatter carnage and blood throughout the land? No, their weapons will not be carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. They will go to the Covenant God of the kingdom, and they will stand before Him, saying, "Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse." Scotland will renew her covenant with God.
The National Covenant of 1580 was produced. An addition was made, in two parts. The part summarizing the Acts of Parliament, condemning the papacy and ratifying the confessions of the Church, was drafted by Warriston; that with special religious articles for the time was by Henderson. The spot chosen for the solemnities of the first subscription was the Churchyard of Greyfriars, Edinburgh. "The selection," writes the historiographer-royal for Scotland, "showed a sound taste for the picturesque. The graveyard in which their ancestors have been laid from time immemorial stirs the hearts of men. The old Gothic Church of the Friary was then existing; and landscape art in Edinburgh has by repeated efforts established the opinion that from that spot we have the grandest view of the precipices of the Castle and the national fortress crowning them. It seemed a homage to that elevating influence of grand external conditions which the actors in the scene were so vehemently repudiating." In that memorable spot the Reformers gathered "the legitimate charters" of their nation into one document and presented them before heaven. Johnston unrolled the parchment in which these Scottish charters were inscribed, and read them in a clear, calm voice. "When he had finished, all was still as the grave. But the silence was soon broken. An aged man of noble air was seen advancing. He came forward slowly, and deep emotion was visible in his venerable features. He took up the pen with a trembling hand and signed the document. A general movement now took place. All the Presbyterians in the Church pressed forward to the Covenant and subscribed their names. But this was not enough; a whole nation was waiting. The immense parchment was carried into the churchyard and spread out on a large tombstone to receive on this expressive table the signature of the Church. Scotland had never beheld a day like that." "This," says Henderson, "was the day of the Lord's power, in which multitudes offered themselves most willingly, like dewdrops of the morning. This was, indeed, the great day of Israel, wherein the arm of the Lord was revealed—the day of the Redeemer's strength, on which the princes of the people assembled to swear their allegiance to the King of kings." Charles I. understood well the force of that mighty movement when, on hearing of it, he said, "I have no more power in Scotland than a Doge of Venice." The renewal of that covenant, 28th February, 1638, was a thunderbolt against despotism in Scotland, and the world over. "The chariots of God are twenty thousand."
The covenant was transcribed into hundreds of copies, carried throughout the country from north to south and east to west, and subscribed everywhere. The spirit that thrilled the thousands filling and overflowing Greyfriars Church and churchyard, spread with rapidity over the whole land. It combined the "whole nation into one mighty phalanx of incalculable energy." The last sparks of the King's fury burst out in secret instructions to his followers to use all power against the "refractory and seditious," and in a threat to send his army and fleet to Scotland, but these soon died away. The "refractory and seditious" king eventually surrendered to the Covenanters, abolished courts, canons, liturgies, and articles, and consented to the calling of a General Assembly. This was the first free General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for the last forty two years. It was held in Glasgow, on 21st November, 1638; and its work in the overthrow of Prelacy and the royal supremacy and in the re-assertion of the spiritual independence of the Church, was one of the most signal successes in the still progressing conflict of the second Reformation.
Meanwhile, Charles II. was endeavouring to secure the recognition of his absolute monarchy in England. There also he rigorously demanded submission to despotic claims. By abolishing Parliaments, annulling charters, appointing the star chamber, he introduced a reign of terror. In the room of those legislative bulwarks of liberty, which the nation had constructed through the skill and experience of generations, a "grim tyranny," writes Dr. Wylie, "reared its gaunt form, with the terrible accompaniments of star chamber, pillory, and branding irons. It reminded one of sunset in the tropics. There the luminary of the day goes down at a plunge into the dark. So had the day of liberty in England gone down at a stride into the night of tyranny." The oppressed people turned to the Covenanters of Scotland for sympathy and counsel. The negotiations resulted in the preparation of an international league in defence of religion and liberty. Against the banner of the King they raised the banner of the Covenant. Alexander Henderson drafted the new Bond. The document breathed the spirit of the National Covenant of Greyfriars, condemned the Papal and Prelatic system, pled for a constitutional monarchy, and outlined a comprehensive programme for future efforts in extending the principles of the Reformation. On September 25, 1643, it was subscribed in St. Margarets Church, Westminster. The members of Parliament in England and the Westminster Assembly of Divines stood with uplifted hands, and, as article after article was read, they took this Oath to God. The Commissioners from Scotland to the Westminster Assembly united with the people of England in the solemnity of the day. Thus the representatives of the two nations stood before the Lord. This was the Solemn League and Covenant, "the noblest in its essential features," writes Hetherington, "of all that are recorded among the international transactions of the world." The Parliament and Westminster Assembly issued instructions for its subscription throughout the kingdom. The classes and the masses in England, Scotland, and Ireland received it with gladness. In the face of a despotism unexampled in the history of these lands, high and low, rich and poor, bowed themselves as one before the throne of God. "For at that time day by day there came to David to help him, until it was a great host like the host of God." Through this League and Covenant, the people of the British Isles were protected by Omnipotence, and were as invincible against the despotic forces that assailed them as were the white cliffs of their native shores against the huge galleons of the invincible Armada.
"To Thine own people, with Thine arm,
Thou didst redemption bring;
To Jacob's sons and to the tribes
Of 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 Christian in a State unreformed and anti-Christian, would never have satisfied the Reformers. The State also must be no longer a vassal of the Pope, it must be a servant of the blessed and only Potentate. God in His word here also as in the Church must be joyfully granted the exclusive supremacy. The Covenanters vowed to defend the King in the defence and preservation of the reformed religion. They secured the recognition of the Church by Parliament. The members of Parliament themselves became Covenanters. In short, Christianity pervaded and adorned the constitution and administration of civil government in the United Kingdom. The Covenanters were convinced that no power, except that provided by the Word of God, could possibly resist the arbitrary claims of the monarchs, secure the safety of the State, and promote civil liberty in the land. Religion in the realm of citizenship is the very crown of any realm. In the face of the despotisms of Pope and Monarch, it would not have been surprising had the Covenanters invented and endeavoured to apply to the State the modern theory of religious equality, which denies the right of the State to even acknowledge the Prince of the kings of the earth. If ever they dreamt of such a theory, their thought of the supremacy of Jesus would make it vanish as a dream. Much less would they ever admit the possibility of deliverance by the theory of a concurrent recognition of all religions, as this would lower a nation to the position of heathenism with its "gods many," and would soon involve the strongest empire in disaster. Papalism in the State in the ascendancy, absolute Monarchism in the State, Secularism in the State, Polytheism in the State—these are four despotisms, and must be flung with detestation out of all Christian lands. The State that is not on the side of Christ, and Christ alone, is in antagonism to all the moral forces of the universe. Its throne is against the throne of the Highest. The Scottish Covenanters placed the crown of the State on the Head of its rightful Monarch, and so lifted their kingdom to imperial grandeur.
There are some spots of this world that have secured undying memorials, as they have been stages for the settlement of questions of momentous importance in the destinies of nations. There is Marathon in Greece, Waterloo in France, Sadowa in Austria, and Trafalgar on the sea, but probably the scenes associated with these pale in glory in the presence of Greyfriars and Westminster, where nations won unparalleled victories in the surrender of themselves to their Covenant God. These two spots were the earthly centres of spiritual movements of mighty magnitude, and possess in the eyes of the God of Heaven and of the principalities about His Throne a splendour not eclipsed by any that ever shone on a battlefield. When the day of millennial glory comes, the people of the new Era will not look to the Sadowas and the Sedans, but to such spots as these where the greatest heroes of the pre-millennial times reflected millennial light and anticipated millennial triumphs. For there, by an army without sword or spear, the absolutism of Monarchies and the tyranny of Hierarchies were scattered like chaff before the wind. As the Covenanters entered into and rejoiced in their vows to God, the Imperialism of King Jesus conquered the Imperialism which prince and priest had been enforcing with rigour; and this Imperialism shall be in the ascendancy yet the world over when the empires of earth shall crown the Christ of God as King of the Church and King of nations.
But the Covenanters have scarce time to estimate and enjoy the benefits of their conquests before a tempest burst forth suddenly and threatened the destruction of all the attainments of the past. In a moment of national infatuation the Stuart dynasty was restored to the throne, and Charles II. instantly proceeded to set up once more the Dagon of the Royal Supremacy and enforce its recognition by all his power. On two occasions he had subscribed the Solemn League, and he had issued instructions in its favour, professing warm admiration of both Covenants and of the Reformation. But now the perjured monarch employed all his craft and power to overthrow the whole Covenanted Reformation in Church and State. Parliament, the slave of his 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 the Church yielded submission. Her standards were assigned her before she met; her assemblies were summoned and prorogued at the sovereign's pleasure; Presbyterianism was established, not because it possessed a jus divinum but because the people willed it; her government was controlled through the admission into her ministry, by royal request, of many who had accepted indulgences and were supporters of Prelacy. The whole period of the Second Reformation was almost annihilated by the settlement of the Church, not according to the periods, 1638 and 1643, but according to 1592. The Acts of the Assemblies of the Revolution Church never once mention the Solemn League and Covenant. Ministers who pled for its recognition exposed themselves to the censures of their brethren. An attempt by the Church, soon after the Revolution to assert the supremacy of Christ and the Church's independence under Him, issued in the dissolution of the Assembly by the royal Commissioner. And this departure of the Church and State at the Revolution was strikingly and sadly endorsed when, at the Union with England, Scotland consented that the Prelatic Establishment in England should be allowed to remain "inviolable for ever." A few "stones had been gathered from the wreck of the Reformation to be incorporated with the new structure, but the venerable fabric itself was left in ruins."
Yes! the Revolution came but not the Reformation. The sword was returned to its scabbard, but Church and State did not return to their Covenant God. Into sympathy and fellowship with institutions founded on principles subversive of those they had vowed to maintain, the faithful followers of the Reformers and Martyrs could not enter. The banner for Christ's Crown and Covenant had waved over the fields of Scotland when the storms of persecution had raged most fiercely, and how could they be justified in dropping it now when the God of Zion was pleased to command a calm. The minority who thus preserved an unbroken relationship with the pre-Revolution and Martyr period continued to meet in "Societies" for sixteen years, when they were joined by a minister—Rev. John M'Millan—who was driven out of the Revolution Church because of his testimony for the whole Covenanted Reformation. Some years afterwards, another minister espoused the cause then represented by Mr. M'Millan and the United Societies, and this union resulted in the constitution of the Reformed Presbytery. Two years afterwards, in 1712, the members of the Reformed Presbyterian Church engaged in the work of Covenant Renovation, at Auchensaugh, near Douglas, in Lanarkshire. Since that time this Church has had an unbroken history, excepting a disruption in 1863, when a majority departed from her distinctive position.
But what is the bearing of Scotland's Covenanted Reformation of three centuries ago, on the Scotland of the present times? Has it no instruction for all times? Is the whole prolonged struggle, with all its chequered scenes, but a panorama on which spectators may gaze with but passing emotions? Is it all but a story with interest, however thrilling, for the study of the antiquarian? If so then the whole contendings of Reformers and Covenanters and Martyrs sink into insignificance indeed; they have been assigned a magnitude far beyond their desert. If the doctrines and principles for whose application in Church and State they fought and suffered, were unscriptural, then let an enlightened posterity bury with shame the story of their warfare. Or, if they were of mere temporary importance, then the Covenanters merit no higher admiration than that accorded to those who, like the Armenians now in Turkey, cry out against the oppressions of the civil power. But these doctrines and principles were brought from the Word of God and possess imperishable excellency. Their glory was not temporal; it is eternal. And they shall yet undergo a resurrection and receive universally a joyous recognition.
The obligation of these national Covenants on the British nation still has been oftentimes demonstrated by indisputable arguments. The Word of God teaches in the most pointed manner this principle of devolving Covenant obligation. The God of Israel threatened His people with chastisement for breaking the Covenant He had made with their fathers four hundred years before. The Covenanters themselves bound their posterity to God by express words in their bonds. The renovation of Covenants at various times proceeded on this principle. In the time of persecution, the sufferers again and again declared that they and others were bound by the vows of their fathers. "God hath laid engagements upon Scotland," said Argyle on the scaffold, "we are tied by Covenants to religion and Reformation; and it passeth the power of all the magistrates under heaven to absolve from the oath of God." The scriptural character of their contents infers the perpetual obligation of these Covenants. All who accept the Scriptures as the Word of God, must renounce the errors condemned by the Covenants and contend for the truths those who subscribed them pledged themselves to maintain. No Christian should ever dare to seek relief from the claims of Christ; it is his honour to acknowledge and live and die for them. These deeds were as national as any in the statute-book and therefore they are obligatory still, for the nation in its corporate character is the same now as three hundred years ago. Their perpetual obligation may be resisted, as it often is, on the plea that a people have no right to bind posterity. But should such a plea be declared valid, then society would be thrown into the wildest disorder and temporal ruin would overtake millions. Heirs could be justified in refusing to fulfil the instructions of testators; young people could condemn the baptismal vows taken by parents; governments and cabinets could tear up the treaties of their predecessors; and the nation itself could repudiate the national debt. Those who enter into the possession of valuable estates, secured for them by the toil and struggles of ancestry, do not renounce their estates because they themselves were not consulted in the execution of the title deeds. These deeds of the Covenanters, and the heritage secured by them, were obtained through the noblest sacrifices. They were deeds presented before the Throne, and registered in the Court of heaven, and those who repudiate them incur the risk of an awful forfeiture.
The present conditions in Church and State throughout the British Isles, force upon the minds of all who admire the Reformation the facts that the doctrines and principles of those Reformations are even now ignored and despised, and that the systems which were cast out by the whole nation through their Covenants are now in power. The objects sought by the Covenants have not yet been realized. In several sad respects, both Church and State are in positions of acute antagonism to those great catholic objects. An ecclesiastical supremacy in the British sovereign rears its head over these Covenanted kingdoms; for, as Blackstone writes, this supremacy is "an inherent right of the British Crown." The "Anti-Christian" hierarchy of Prelacy is implanted in the national constitution and sustained by the whole prestige of the realm. Under its lordly bewitchery, Erastianism prevails in the Established Churches of the kingdom. The Oath of Allegiance implicates all who take it in an acknowledgment of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the sovereign as "by law established," and this Oath must be taken by every member of Parliament before he can sit and vote in the House, under a penalty of five hundred pounds. The basis of qualification for membership in Parliament has been so much altered in recent times that Roman Catholics, atheists, and now idolaters are admitted—changes which have been demanded by the vast majority of the non-established Churches, who are pleading for the exclusion of religion from all State institutions. The Papacy, through its various agencies, is in receipt of more than a million and a quarter pounds annually from the national funds. A wide-spread reaction in favour of the Romish religion is going forward, and is being powerfully assisted by the Romanizing movement in the Church of England, and the Ritualistic in the Presbyterian Churches throughout the kingdom.
Had the two nations and their Churches adhered to their National Covenants and the Solemn League and Covenant, and to the formularies prepared by the international Assembly at Westminster, the lovers of the Covenanted Reformation would not have had these portentous conditions to deplore to-day. Would their adherence to those deeds and documents have done them any dishonour? And would it not be to the lasting honour of their posterity now, if a movement were originated and carried through to reproduce with all possible fulness the scenes of the past—another Greyfriars, Edinburgh, and another St. Margarets, Westminster. But, even apart from the historical aspect of the whole matter, the question may, in the presence of these monstrous evils, be pressed upon the attention and heart of all the people throughout the land? What ought to be done to remove these evils and avert the disaster which their continuance must entail? What ought the British subject, if a patriot, do, in the face of evils which threaten the ruin of his kingdom? What ought the Protestant to do, in the presence of a government and administration which are daily advancing the court of Rome to power? What the Presbyterian, who cannot take the Oath of Allegiance without committing himself to the hierarchy of Prelacy? What the Christian, in the presence of systems in imperial politics which have already dethroned Christ and are hastening to expel Him from all national institutions? Is there no means by which the Christian citizen can exonerate himself from national sins, and free himself of all responsibility for national calamity? Must he still exercise his right to vote and give his support to governments which, in the hands of both political parties, are augmenting rather than diminishing the existing evils? If the members of one political party secede from that party, when changes they cannot accept are welcomed to their programme, and henceforth refuse them their support at the polling-booth, would it not be proper that men, sensible of the utter inadequacy of the performances of both parties to meet the evils under which the nation lies, should stand aloof from both government and opposition? The leading Unionists in Ireland again and again declared that they could not possibly enter into the proposed Parliament under Home Rule which would be set up in Dublin, and their declarations awakened universal sympathy. For reasons similar, should not all Christian electors refuse to identify themselves with a constitution and government which are based on principles subversive of independence and liberty? Protests against existing evils are not sufficient. Practical political dissent is imperatively demanded in the interests of patriotism and Christianity. If even one-tenth of the electors in the United Kingdom prepared a paper of grievances, setting forth the present dishonours done to Christ nationally, and calling for the abandonment of all that is unscriptural in the public policy, and the adoption of what is scriptural and honouring to Christ, and accompany this manifesto with a declaration that they cannot violate their convictions by identifying themselves with the government till reforms be conceded, would not such a movement touch the mind and heart of the nation as no question in party politics has done for generations? Their attitude of separation would carry extraordinary dignity and power. And they could plead too that the evils of which they complained were abjured by the nation universally, when the National Covenants were taken in Scotland, England, and Ireland, and when Sovereigns and Members of Parliament again subscribed them as a condition of the high offices to which they were called. How could they loyally support a Constitution now so opposite to the ancient Scriptural and Covenanted Constitution of the realm? The Reformed Presbyterian Churches of Scotland and Ireland are the only Churches within the British Dominions that take this position of political dissent. Their fathers took it at the Revolution settlement, and they have maintained it all through these centuries till now; and they have done so not because they love the nation less, but Christ more. If this position were assumed by larger numbers throughout the land, who knoweth whether they would "not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" "Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with Thee, that frameth mischief by a law?" "Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord."
"Hope thou not, then, earth's alliance,
Take thy stand behind the cross;
Fear, lest by unblest compliance,
Thou transmute thy gold to dross.
Stedfast in thy meek endurance,
Prophesy in sackcloth on;
Hast thou not the pledged assurance,
Kings one day shall kiss the Son."
The popular acceptance of these doctrines and principles by the State and the Churches at present, would imply a vast mental upheaval—a vast moral revolution. But the best hopes and wishes for the nation at large are that it will come and come soon, and the present evils, however great, must not be allowed to produce a pessimistic tone. Very hopeless seemed the prospects before the first Reformation, but that Reformation came. Very hopeless seemed the prospects before the second Reformation, but that Reformation came. And however dark the prospects now before a third Reformation, that Reformation shall come! The world is nearing the last stage of its history, as pointed out by Daniel in the dream of the monarch of Babylon, prior to the overwhelming and triumphant progress of the stone-kingdom, cut out of the mountain. That immense image of Nebuchadnezzar, in its gold and silver and brass and iron, represented those four vast monarchies which, in their successive periods, swayed the government of the world. But in the fact that the image was in the form of a man, the spirit that actuated these four empires of earth is strikingly emphasized—the spirit of the idolatry of humanity. They were all embodiments of the man-will: Babels for the incarnation of heaven-daring human aspirations, and so carried within even their colossal proportions the elements of confusion and death. A similar lust of humanity for supremacy characterises those Kingdoms, represented by the ten toes of the image, into which the fourth Roman monarchy parted. But soon now, therefore, must sound out the last blast of the seventh trumpet, when the idolatry of humanity in earth's kingdoms shall fall, and the spirit and will of Christ pervade and beautify all the institutions, ecclesiastical and imperial, of the world. Yes, the kingdom "not in hands" shall shatter yet all the usurped rights of the world-powers. There shall be a glorious reversal of the disaster in Eden. That old Adamic principle of a legislative sovereignty in man, which has convulsed the nations for six thousand years, shall be utterly renounced and crucified the world over. Ruin irreparable shall befall the entire empire of Satan, who shall be chained in his lake, as the pealing note of that trumpet of God shall swell over all the earth. The throne of God and the Lamb shall be erected by public consent as the unifying source and centre for people, churches, and empires. The whole world of humanity shall be redeemed from sin and its curse, be animated by one Spirit, and triumphant in one Lord.
May not the true Christian, then, as he thinks of the idolatrous form in the dream of the monarch of Babylon, and looks in the watches of the night for the dawn, when Christ Jesus his Lord shall be honoured throughout the world, behold rising before his eyes in his dream another colossal figure; and its head is gold, and its breasts and arms gold, and its belly and thighs gold, and its legs and feet and toes gold; yea all of it "is as the most fine gold;" and the head representing the powers of the great American Continents; the breast and arms, Asia; the belly and thighs, Africa; the legs and feet, Europe, and the toes the Isles of the Sea—the British Isles with the rest. And the form of the great earth-filling figure is that of Jesus of Nazareth, the Man of Jehovah's right hand. And lo! "I saw heaven opened, and I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth."
"Come, then, and, added to Thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth,
Thou who alone art worthy! It was Thine
By ancient covenant, ere nature's birth;
And Thou hast made it Thine by purchase since
And overpaid its value with Thy blood.
Thy saints proclaim Thee King! And in their hearts
Thy title is engraven with a pen
Dipp'd in the fountain of eternal love."
THE NATIONAL COVENANT
[Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh.]
THE NATIONAL COVENANT
OR,
THE CONFESSION OF FAITH.
Subscribed at first by the King's Majesty and his household, in the year of God 1580; thereafter by persons of all ranks in the year of God 1581, by Ordinance of the Lords of Secret Council, and Acts of the General Assembly; subscribed again by all sorts of persons in the year of God 1590. Secondly: And with Ordinance of the Lords of Secret Council, and Acts of General Assembly, subscribed again by all sorts of persons in the year of God 1590. Thirdly: And with Ordinance of Council, at the desire of the General Assembly; with their general bond for maintenance of the true religion, and of the Kings Majesty; and now subscribed in the year of God 1638, by us, Noblemen, Baronets, Gentlemen, Burgesses, Ministers, and Commons under subscribed; and, together with a resolution and promise, for the causes after expressed, to maintain the true, religion and King's Majesty, according to the Confession aforesaid, and the Acts of Parliament, the so much of which followeth:—
We all and every one of us under-written, protest, That, after long and due examination of our own consciences in matters of true and false religion, we are now thoroughly resolved in the truth by the Spirit and Word of God: and therefore we believe with our hearts, confess with our mouths, subscribe with our hands, and constantly affirm, before God and the whole world, that this only is the true Christian faith and religion, pleasing God, and bringing salvation to man, which now is, by the mercy of God, revealed to the world by the preaching of the blessed evangel; and is received, believed, and defended by many and sundry notable kirks and realms, but chiefly by the Kirk of Scotland, the King's Majesty, and three estates of this realm, as God's eternal truth, and only ground of our salvation; as more particularly is expressed in the Confession of our Faith, established and publicly confirmed by sundry Acts of Parliaments, and now of a long time hath been openly professed by the King's Majesty, and whole body of this realm both in burgh and land. To the which Confession and Form of Religion we willingly agree in our conscience in all points, as unto God's undoubted truth and verity, grounded only upon His written Word. And therefore we abhor and detest all contrary religion and doctrine; but chiefly all kind of Papistry in general and particular heads, even as they are now damned and confuted by the Word of God and Kirk of Scotland. But, in special, we detest and refuse the usurped authority of that Roman Antichrist upon the Scriptures of God, upon the Kirk, the civil magistrate, and consciences of men; all his tyrannous laws made upon indifferent things against our Christian liberty; his erroneous doctrine against the sufficiency of the written Word, the perfection of the law, the office of Christ, and His blessed evangel; his corrupted doctrine concerning original sin, our natural inability and rebellion to God's law, our justification by faith only, our imperfect sanctification and obedience to the law; the nature, number, and use of the holy sacraments; his five bastard sacraments, with all his rites, ceremonies, and false doctrine, added to the ministration of the true sacraments without the word of God; his cruel judgment against infants departing without the sacrament; his absolute necessity of baptism; his blasphemous opinion of transubstantiation, or real presence of Christ's body in the elements, and receiving of the same by the wicked, or bodies of men; his dispensations with solemn oaths, perjuries, and degrees of marriage forbidden in the Word; his cruelty against the innocent divorced; his devilish mass; his blasphemous priesthood; his profane sacrifice for sins of the dead and the quick; his canonization of men; calling upon angels or saints departed, worshipping of imagery, relics, and crosses; dedicating of kirks, altars, days; vows to creatures; his purgatory, prayers for the dead; praying or speaking in a strange language, with his processions, and blasphemous litany, and multitude of advocates or mediators; his manifold orders, auricular confession; his desperate and uncertain repentance; his general and doubtsome faith; his satisfactions of men for their sins; his justification by works, opus operatum, works of supererogation, merits, pardons, peregrinations, and stations; his holy water, baptizing of bells, conjuring of spirits, crossing, sayning, anointing, conjuring, hallowing of God's good creatures, with the superstitious opinion joined therewith; his worldly monarchy, and wicked hierarchy; his three solemn vows, with all his shavellings of sundry sorts; his erroneous and bloody decrees made at Trent, with all the subscribers or approvers of that cruel and bloody band, conjured against the Kirk of God. And finally, we detest all his vain allegories, rites, signs, and traditions brought in the Kirk, without or against the word of God, and doctrine of this true reformed Kirk; to the which we join ourselves willingly, in doctrine, faith, religion, discipline, and use of the holy sacraments, as lively members of the same in Christ our head: promising and swearing, by the great name of the LORD our GOD, that we shall continue in the obedience of the doctrine and discipline of this Kirk, and shall defend the same, according to our vocation and power, all the days of our lives; under the pains contained in the law, and danger both of body and soul in the day of God's fearful judgment.
And seeing that many are stirred up by Satan, and that Roman Antichrist, to promise, swear, subscribe, and for a time use the holy sacraments in the Kirk deceitfully, against their own conscience; minding hereby, first, under the external cloak of religion, to corrupt and subvert secretly God's true religion within the Kirk; and afterward, when time may serve, to become open enemies and persecutors of the same, under vain hope of the Pope's dispensation, devised against the Word of God, to his greater confusion, and their double condemnation in the day of the Lord Jesus: we therefore, willing to take away all suspicion of hypocrisy, and of such double dealing with God and His Kirk, protest, and call the Searcher of all hearts for witness, that our minds and hearts do fully agree with this our Confession, promise, oath, and subscription: so that we are not moved with any worldly respect, but are persuaded only in our conscience, through the knowledge and love of God's true religion imprinted in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, as we shall answer to Him in the day when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed.
And because we perceive that the quietness and stability of our religion and Kirk doth depend upon the safety and good behaviour of the King's Majesty, as upon a comfortable instrument of God's mercy granted to this country, for the maintaining of His Kirk and ministration of justice amongst us; we protest and promise with our hearts, under the same oath, hand-writ, and pains, that we shall defend His person and authority with our goods, bodies, and lives, in the defence of Christ His evangel, liberties of our country, ministration of justice, and punishment of iniquity, against all enemies within this realm or without, as we desire our God to be a strong and merciful defender to us in the day of our death, and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; to whom, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory eternally. Amen.
Likeas many Acts of Parliament, not only in general do abrogate, annul, and rescind all laws, statutes, acts, constitutions, canons civil or municipal, with all other ordinances, and practique penalties whatsoever, made in prejudice of the true religion, and professors thereof; or of the true Kirk, discipline, jurisdiction, and freedom thereof; or in favours of idolatry and superstition, or of the Papistical kirk: As Act 3, Act 31, Parl. 1; Act 23, Parl. 11; Act 114, Parl. 12, of King James VI. That Papistry and superstition may be utterly suppressed, according to the intention of the Acts of Parliament, repeated in the 5th Act, Parl. 20, King James VI. And to that end they ordain all Papists and Priests to be punished with manifold civil and ecclesiastical pains, as adversaries to God's true religion preached, and by law established, within this realm, Act 24, Parl. 11, King James VI.; as common enemies to all Christian government, Act 18, Parl. 16, King James VI.; as rebellers and gainstanders of our Sovereign Lord's authority, Act 47, Parl. 3, King James VI.; and as idolaters, Act 104, Parl. 7, King James VI. But also in particular, by and attour the Confession of Faith, do abolish and condemn the Pope's authority and jurisdiction out of this land, and ordains the maintainers thereof to be punished, Act 2, Parl. 1; Act 51, Parl. 3; Act 106, Parl. 7; Act 114, Parl. 12, King James VI.: do condemn the Pope's erroneous doctrine, or any other erroneous doctrine repugnant to any of the articles of the true and Christian religion, publicly preached, and by law established in this realm; and ordains the spreaders and makers of books or libels, or letters or writs of that nature to be punished, Act 46, Parl. 3; Act 106, Parl. 7; Act 24, Parl. 11, King James VI.: do condemn all baptism conform to the Pope's kirk, and the idolatry of the mass; and ordains all sayers, wilful hearers and concealers of the mass, the maintainers and resetters of the priests, Jesuits, trafficking Papists, to be punished without any exception or restriction, Act 5, Parl. 1; Act 120, Parl. 12; Act 164, Parl. 13; Act 193, Parl. 14; Act 1, Parl. 19; Act 5, Parl. 20, King James VI.: do condemn all erroneous books and writs containing erroneous doctrine against the religion presently professed, or containing superstitious rites and ceremonies Papistical, whereby the people are greatly abused, and ordains the home-bringers of them to be punished, Act 25, Parl. II, King James VI.: do condemn the monuments and dregs of bygone idolatry, as going to crosses, observing the festival days of saints, and such other superstitious and Papistical rites, to the dishonour of God, contempt of true religion, and fostering of great error among the people; and ordains the users of them to be punished for the second fault, as idolaters, Act 104, Parl. 7, King James VI.
Likeas many Acts of Parliament are conceived for maintenance of God's true and Christian religion, and the purity thereof, in doctrine and sacraments of the true Church of God, the liberty and freedom thereof, in her national, synodal assemblies, presbyteries, sessions, policy, discipline, and jurisdiction thereof; as that purity of religion, and liberty of the Church was used, professed, exercised, preached, and confessed, according to the reformation of religion in this realm: As for instance, the 99th Act, Parl. 7; Act 25, Parl. 11; Act 114, Parl. 12; Act 160, Parl. 13, of King James VI., ratified by the 4th Act of King Charles. So that the 6th Act, Parl. 1, and 68th Act, Parl. 6, of King James VI., in the year of God 1579, declare the ministers of the blessed evangel, whom God of His mercy had raised up, or hereafter should raise, agreeing with them that then lived, in doctrine and administration of the sacraments; and the people that professed Christ, as He was then offered in the evangel, and doth communicate with the holy sacraments (as in the reformed kirks of this realm they were presently administrate) according to the Confession of Faith, to be the true and holy kirk of Christ Jesus within this realm. And decerns and declares all and sundry, who either gainsay the Word of the evangel received and approved as the heads of the Confession of Faith, professed in Parliament in the year of God 1560, specified also in the first Parliament of King James VI., and ratified in this present Parliament, more particularly do express; or that refuse the administration of the holy sacraments as they were then ministrated—to be no members of the said Kirk within this realm, and true religion presently professed, so long as they keep themselves so divided from the society of Christ's body. And the subsequent Act 69, Parl. 6, of King James VI., declares, that there is no other face of kirk, nor other face of religion, than was presently at that time by the favour of God established within this realm: "Which therefore is ever styled God's true religion, Christ's true religion, the true and Christian religion, and a perfect religion;" which, by manifold Acts of Parliament, all within this realm are bound to profess, to subscribe the articles thereof, the Confession of Faith, to recant all doctrine and errors repugnant to any of the said articles, Acts 4 and 9, Parl. 1; Acts 45, 46, 47, Parl. 3; Act 71, Parl. 6; Act 106, Parl. 7; Act 24, Parl. 11; Act 123, Parl. 12; Acts 194 and 197, Parl. 14, of King James VI. And all magistrates, sheriffs, &c., on the one part, are ordained to search, apprehend, and punish all contraveners: For instance Act 5, Parl. 1; Act 104, Parl. 7; Act 25, Parl. 11, King James VI.; and that notwithstanding of the King's Majesty's licences on the contrary, which are discharged, and declared to be of no force, in so far as they tend in any wise to the prejudice and hinder of the execution of the Acts of Parliament against Papists and adversaries of true religion, Act 106, Parl. 7, King James VI. On the other part, in the 47th Act, Parl. 3, King James VI., it is declared and ordained, Seeing the cause of God's true religion and his Highness's authority are so joined, as the hurt of the one is common to both, that none shall be reputed as loyal and faithful subjects to our Sovereign Lord, or his authority, but be punishable as rebellers and gainstanders of the same, who shall not give their confession and make their profession of the said true religion: and that they who, after defection, shall give the confession of their faith of new, they shall promise to continue therein in time coming, to maintain our Sovereign Lord's authority, and at the uttermost of their power to fortify, assist, and maintain the true preachers and professors of Christ's religion, against whatsoever enemies and gainstanders of the same; and namely, against all such, of whatsoever nation, estate, or degree they be of, that have joined or bound themselves, or have assisted, or assist, to set forward and execute the cruel decrees of the Council of Trent, contrary to the true preachers and professors of the word of God; which is repeated, word by word, in the articles of pacification at Perth, the 23rd of February, 1572; approved by Parliament the last of April, 1573; ratified in Parliament 1587, and related Act 123, Parl. 12, of King James VI.; with this addition, "That they are bound to resist all treasonable uproars and hostilities raised against the true religion, the King's Majesty, and the true professors."
Likeas, all lieges are bound to maintain the King's Majesty's royal person and authority, the authority of Parliaments, without the which neither any laws or lawful judicatories can be established, Acts 130 and 131, Parl. 8, King James VI., and the subjects' liberties, who ought only to live and be governed by the King's laws, the common laws of this realm allenarly, Act 48, Parl. 3, King James I.; Act 79, Parl. 6, King James IV.; repeated in the Act 131, Parl. 8, King James VI.; which if they be innovated and prejudged, "the commission anent the union of the two kingdoms of Scotland and England, which is the sole act of the 17th Parl. of King James VI., declares," such confusion would ensue as this realm could be no more a free monarchy; because, by the fundamental laws, ancient privileges, offices, and liberties of this kingdom, not only the princely authority of his Majesty's royal descent hath been these many ages maintained, but also the people's security of their lands, livings, rights, offices, liberties, and dignities preserved. And therefore, for the preservation of the said true religion, laws, and liberties of this kingdom, it is statute by the 8th Act, Parl. 1, repeated in the 99th Act, Parl. 7, ratified in the 23rd Act, Parl. 11, and 114th Act, Parl. 12, of King James VI., and 4th Act, Parl. 1, of King Charles I.—"That all Kings and Princes at their coronation, and reception of their princely authority, shall make their faithful promise by their solemn oath, in the presence of the eternal God, that enduring the whole time of their lives, they shall serve the same eternal God to the uttermost of their power, according as He hath required in His most holy Word, contained in the Old and New Testament; and according to the same Word, shall maintain the true religion of Christ Jesus, the preaching of His holy Word, the due and right ministration of the sacraments now received and preached within this realm, (according to the Confession of Faith immediately preceding,) and shall abolish and gainstand all false religion contrary to the same; and shall rule the people committed to their charge, according to the will and command of God revealed in His foresaid Word, and according to the laudable laws and constitutions received in this realm, nowise repugnant to the said will of the eternal God; and shall procure, to the uttermost of their power, to the Kirk of God, and whole Christian people, true and perfect peace in all time coming: and that they shall be careful to root out of their empire all heretics and enemies to the true worship of God, who shall be convicted by the true Kirk of God of the foresaid crimes." Which was also observed by his Majesty, at his coronation in Edinburgh, 1633, as may be seen in the order of the coronation.
In obedience to the commandment of God, conform to the practice of the godly in former times, and according to the laudable example of our worthy and religious progenitors and of many yet living amongst us, which was warranted also by Act of Council, commanding a general band to be made and subscribed by his Majesty's subjects of all ranks; for two causes: one was, For defending the true religion, as it was then reformed, and is expressed in the Confession of Faith above written, and a former large Confession established by sundry acts of lawful General Assemblies and of Parliaments, unto which it hath relation, set down in public Catechisms; and which hath been for many years, with a blessing from Heaven, preached and professed in this Kirk and kingdom, as God's undoubted truth, grounded only upon His written Word. The other cause was, For maintaining the King's Majesty, his person and estate; the true worship of God and the King's authority being so straitly joined, as that they had the same friends, and common enemies, and did stand and fall together. And finally, being convinced in our minds, and confessing with our mouths, that the present and succeeding generations in this land are bound to keep the foresaid national oath and subscription inviolable,
We Noblemen, Barons, Gentlemen, Burgesses, Ministers, and Commons under-subscribing, considering divers times before, and especially at this time, the danger of the true reformed religion, of the King's honour, and of the public peace of the kingdom, by the manifold innovations and evils, generally contained, and particularly mentioned in our late supplications, complaints, and protestations; do hereby profess, and before God, His angels, and the world, solemnly declare, That with our whole hearts we agree, and resolve all the days of our life constantly to adhere unto and to defend the foresaid true religion, and (forbearing the practice of all novations already introduced in the matters of the worship of God, or approbation of the corruptions of the public government of the Kirk, or civil places and power of kirkmen, till they be tried and allowed in free Assemblies and in Parliament) to labour, by all means, to recover the purity and liberty of the Gospel, as it was established and professed before the foresaid novations. And because, after due examination, we plainly perceive, and undoubtedly believe, that the innovations and evils contained in our supplications, complaints, and protestations, have no warrant of the Word of God, are contrary to the articles of the foresaid Confession, to the intention and meaning of the blessed reformers of religion in this land, to the above-written Acts of Parliament; and do sensibly tend to the re-establishing of the Popish religion and tyranny, and to the subversion and ruin of the true reformed religion, and of our liberties, laws, and estates; we also declare, That the foresaid Confessions are to be interpreted, and ought to be understood of the foresaid novations and evils, no less than if every one of them had been expressed in the foresaid Confessions; and that we are obliged to detest and abhor them, amongst other particular heads of Papistry abjured therein. And therefore, from the knowledge and conscience of our duty to God, to our King and country, without any worldly respect or inducement, so far as human infirmity will suffer, wishing a further measure of the grace of God for this effect; we promise and swear, by the GREAT NAME OF THE LORD OUR GOD, to continue in the profession and obedience of the aforesaid religion; and that we shall defend the same, and resist all these contrary errors and corruptions, according to our vocation, and to the uttermost of that power that God hath put in our hands, all the days of our life.
And in like manner, with the same heart, we declare before God and men, That we have no intention nor desire to attempt any thing that may turn to the dishonour of God, or to the diminution of the King's greatness and authority; but, on the contrary, we promise and swear, That we shall, to the uttermost of our power, with our means and lives, stand to the defence of our dread Sovereign the King's Majesty, his person and authority, in the defence and preservation of the foresaid true religion, liberties, and laws of the kingdom; as also to the mutual defence and assistance every one of us of another, in the same cause of maintaining the true religion, and his Majesty's authority, with our best counsel, our bodies, means, and whole power, against all sorts of persons whatsoever; so that whatsoever shall be done to the least of us for that cause, shall be taken as done to us all in general, and to every one of us in particular. And that we shall neither directly nor indirectly suffer ourselves to be divided or withdrawn, by whatsoever suggestion, combination, allurement, or terror, from this blessed and loyal conjunction; nor shall cast in any let or impediment that may stay or hinder any such resolution as by common consent shall be found to conduce for so good ends; but, on the contrary, shall by all lawful means labour to further and promote the same: and if any such dangerous and divisive motion be made to us by word or writ, we, and every one of us, shall either suppress it, or, if need be, shall incontinent make the same known, that it may be timeously obviated. Neither do we fear the foul aspersions of rebellion, combination, or what else our adversaries, from their craft and malice, would put upon us; seeing what we do is well warranted, and ariseth from an unfeigned desire to maintain the true worship of God, the majesty of our King, and the peace of the kingdom, for the common happiness of ourselves and our posterity.
And because we cannot look for a blessing from God upon our proceedings, except with our profession and subscription we join such a life and conversation as beseemeth Christians who have renewed their covenant with God; we therefore faithfully promise for ourselves, our followers, and all others under us, both in public, and in our particular families, and personal carriage, to endeavour to keep ourselves within the bounds of Christian liberty, and to be good examples to others of all godliness, soberness, and righteousness, and of every duty we owe to God and man.
And, that this our union and conjunction may be observed without violation, we call the LIVING GOD, THE SEARCHER OF OUR HEARTS, to witness, who knoweth this to be our sincere desire and unfeigned resolution, as we shall answer to JESUS CHRIST in the great day, and under the pain of God's everlasting wrath, and of infamy and loss of all honour and respect in this world: most humbly beseeching the LORD to strengthen us by His HOLY SPIRIT for this end, and to bless our desires and proceedings with a happy success; that religion and righteousness may flourish in the land, to the glory of GOD, the honour of our King, and peace and comfort of us all. In witness whereof, we have subscribed with our hands all the premises.
The article of this Covenant within written and within subscribed, which was at the first subscription referred to the determination of the General Assembly, being now determined, on the fifth of December, 1638, and hereby the five articles of Perth, the government of the Kirk by bishops, being declared to be abjured and removed, and the civil places and power of kirkmen declared unlawful, we subscribe according to the determination of the said lawful and free General Assembly, holden at Glasgow.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT: EXHORTATION TO THE LORDS OF COUNCIL.[1]
May it please your Lordship,
We, the ministers of the Gospel, conveened at this so necessary a time do find ourselves bound to represent, as unto all, so in special unto your lordship what comfortable experience we have of the wonderful favour of God, upon the renewing of the Confession of Faith and Covenant; what peace and comfort hath filled the hearts of all God's people; what resolutions and beginnings of reformation of manners are sensibly perceived in all parts of the kingdom, above any measure that ever we did find, or could have expected; how great glory the Lord hath received hereby, and what confidence we have (if this sunshine be not eclipsed by some sinful division or defection) that God shall make this a blessed kingdom, to the contentment of the king's majesty, and joy of all his good subjects, according as God hath promised in His good Word, and performed to His people in former times: and therefore we are forced, from our hearts, both to wish and entreat your lordship to be partaker and promover of this joy and happiness by your subscription, when your lordship shall think it convenient; and in the mean time, that your lordship would not be sparing to give a free testimony to the truth, as a timely and necessary expression of your tender affection to the cause of Christ, now calling for help at your hands. Your lordship's profession of the true religion, as it was reformed in this land; the national oath of this kingdom, sundry times sworn and subscribed, obliging us who live at this time; the duty of a good patriot, the office and trust of a privy councillor, the present employment, to have place amongst those that are first acquainted with his majesty's pleasure; the consideration that this is the time of trial of your lordship's affection to religion, the respect which your lordship hath unto your fame, both now and hereafter, when things shall be recorded to posterity; and the remembrance, that not only the eyes of men and angels are upon your lordship's carriage, but also that the Lord Jesus is a secret witness now to observe, and shall be an open judge hereafter, to reward and confess every man before His Father, that confesseth Him before men: all of these, and each of them, beside your lordship's personal and particular obligations to God, do call for no less at your lordship's hands, in the case of so great and singular necessity: and we also do expect so much at this time, according as your lordship at the hour of death would be free of the terror of God, and be refreshed with the comfortable remembrance of a word spoken in season for Christ Jesus, King of kings, and Lord of lords.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT.
SERMON AT ST. ANDREWS.
BY ALEXANDER HENDERSON.[2]
"Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power, in the
beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning; Thou hast the
dew of thy youth."—Psalm cx. 3.
It is, beloved in the Lord, very expedient, and sometimes most necessar, that we turn away our eyes from kings and their greatness, from kirkmen and men of state, and that we turn them towards another object, and look only to Jesus Christ, who is the great king, priest, and prophet of His kirk. The godly in former times, who were kings, priests, and prophets themselves, used to do this, and that before Christ; and mickle more is it required of us now in thir days, seeing we live in troublesome times; for there is a comfort that comes to the children of God that way. The first part of this psalm expresses to us the threefold office of Christ, and the second part of it expresses the valiant acts our Lord Jesus does by these His three offices, but especially by His Princely office; whilk indeed is His worst studied office by many men in the world. We would, many of us, willingly take Him for our prophet to teach us, and for our priest to intercede for us, and be a sacrifice for our sins, but when it comes to His Princely office, to direct us what we should do, then we would be at that whilk seems best in our own eyes.
His Princely office is described unto us here three ways. 1. In relation to God Himself; "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at My right hand." 2. In respect of His enemies; "The Lord sall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thy enemies." Were His enemies never so many, and never so despiteful against Him, yet He sall rule in the midst of them. And indeed this is a very admirable part of His kingly office, that even in the midst of His enemies He sall have a kingdom for Himself, in despite of them, and all that they can do or say against it. 3. The third, wherein the glory of His kingly office consists, is in thir words that I have read to you: and that is in relation to, and in respect of the subjects of the kingdom of Christ. And they are described here to be a people belonging to Jesus Christ; to be a people on whom God manifests His power; and they are a most willing people, a people who count holiness to be their chiefest beauty. And they are so marvellously multiplied, that it is a wonder to consider of it: there is no more drops of dew will fall, nor they will not fall any faster in a morning than the Lord will multiply them, when He is pleased to do so. And although the Lord sometimes multiply them in a secret manner, yet still the multitude stands to be true.
That the purposes may be the better tane up by you who will take heed to them, consider of these parts in the words. 1. The persons of whom the Psalmist speaks here. "Thy people." 2. The properties of these people in this day: They sall be a willing people; a holy people; a people who sall be miraculously multiplied. And so their properties is willingness, holiness, and multiplication.
Many proofs has been of the truth of this prophecy since the beginning—that the Lord's people sall be willing in the day of His power, in the beauties of holiness; from the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth. There were many evident proofs of the truth of this since the beginning of the plantation of the gospel into the world. And surely we know not a more evident and notable proof of it than this same that is presently into this land, nor think I that there be any who can show the parallel of it. The Lord has made them willingly to offer up themselves, and all that they have, for Him. And they are a people of holiness; albeit it is true, indeed, many has been brought to it from this quarter and that quarter of the land, since the beginning, to be more holy than they used to be. And if the multiplication of them be not wonderful, I cannot tell what ye will tell me of that is more wonderful; so that indeed it is a miracle to all who hear of it. In the time while Christ was upon the earth there were two sorts of miracles to be seen;—first, Christ made the dumb to speak, the blind to see, the lame to walk, &c.: this indeed was a great miracle. The second sort of miracles was of him who did see these things wrought by Christ, and yet for all that, did not believe in Him who did work them. Even so there are two sorts of wonders in this same time wherein we live;—first, how the Lord has multiplied His people, and made them to be so many, whereas, at the first, we thought them to be but very few; secondly, we cannot but wonder at these who observes not God's hand into it: and indeed we cannot but wonder that any can be so blind that they observe not the very hand and finger of God in the work. Ay, we who have been witnesses to it, for the most part, we cannot but wonder at the work of God in it. It has not been man's wit has done the work, and multiply so, but only God has done it; and we cannot tell how; but only we see that there are numbers continually multiplied.
I. "Thy people." Here is a note of property, and a note of distinction. First, it is a note of property. They are God's people—God has absolute right over a people, and there is none who has any right over them but He alone. It's true all people are under Him, but He calls not all His people after this manner. All things are for God, and subordinate to Him; the absolute power to rule and to command these people is in God's hand, and He will not give that power to any other over them: and He has good reason so to do. 1. Because He was thinking upon His people from all eternity; and there was none who did that but only He. 2. He made us and fashioned us in time; and neither any authority or magistrate did that. 3. Who is it that provides means for their sustenance daily, and makes these means effectual, but only the Lord? A man cannot make one pyle (blade) of grass, or one ear of corn, to grow for thy entertainment, but only the Lord: and when thou hast gotten these things, it is the blessing of God that makes them effectual. For when ye say the grace to your meat, say ye it to man? No, ye say it only to God. So that every way ye are God's people. And then, whilk is more, and therefore we are bound to be His people, no man can redeem the life of his brother, nor give a price sufficient for his life, let be (let alone) for his soul, and yet the Lord, He has redeemed us from hell, and from the grave; and therefore we belong to Him. Then is it not the Lord who enters in covenant with thee, and says, I will remember thy sins no more? Then albeit all the world should remember thy ill deeds, yet if the Lord remember them not, then thou art blessed. It is He who says, I will write My laws in your hearts, to lead you here: it is He who puts us in the estate of grace while we are here, and so puts us in hope of glory after this life. It is He who sall be our judge at that great day. And so ye are the Lord's people, by way of property.
And this was it that made the apostles so bold, when it was alleged that they had done that whilk was not right: they made the enemies themselves judges, and says, "Whether it be right in your sight to obey God rather than man, judge ye." As if they had said, It's true indeed we are mickle obliged to man, but we are more obliged to God than to all men; for what is it that man can do to us, either good or ill, but God can do that als (also) and more? And upon this ground, in the next chapter, they draw this conclusion,—It behoveth us rather to obey God than man. And so, first, they reason with the adversars themselves upon it; and seeing that they could not deny it, upon that they draw up their conclusion. I mark this for this end, that whenever ye are enjoined to do anything by any man, that then ye would not forget this dignity and power that God has over you, and that ye are the people of Jesus Christ; and therefore no man ought to enjoin anything to be done by you, but that for the whilk he has a warrant from God. There is a great controversy now about disobedience to superiors, and the contempt of those who are in authority; but there is not a word of that, whether God be obeyed or not, or if He be disobeyed by any. Fy, that people should sell themselves over to the slavery of man, when the Lord has only sovereign power over them! I would not have you to think that a whole country of people are appointed only to uphold the grandeur of five or six men. No, they are ordained to be magistrates for your good. And sall we think that a ministry shines into a land for the upholding of the grandeur of some few persons. No, all these things are ordained for the good of God's people; and, seeing that it is so, sall ye then make yourselves like to asses and slaves, to be subject to all that men pleases to impose upon you? No, no; try anything that they impose upon you, before ye obey it, if it is warranted by God or not; because God is the only superior over you.
2. Secondly. "Thy people." This also is a note of distinction; for every people are God's people, but there is a distinction among them. All people, it's true, are God's people by right of creation: why therefore says he, Thy people, and not all people? Because all people belong not to Christ. God has authority over all indeed, but in a special manner He enters into covenant with some. All people who are subject to Him in His providence are not His peculiar people, His royal nation, His holy priesthood, His chosen generation, but only those of them who belong to Christ; those are properly termed to be His people. And we should remember of this, that those who are the people of God, they have notable privileges; they have all things that any people should have, and, whatever we should be, they have that. Where any are the people of God, there there is blessedness indeed, for they have His truth for their security, they have His love for their comfort, His power for their defence. The Lord God, He takes His people into His bosom, and with every soul He does so, and says, "I the Lord thy God enters in covenant with thee, and renews the covenant that before I made with thee." And then He lays a necessity upon thee, by His providence, that thou must enter into covenant with Him; and then He says to thee, "I will not remember thy sins any more; I know they are heinous, great, and many, but because thou desires that they should not be remembered, therefore I will not remember them. And because when ye have renewed your covenant with Me, ye will be aye in a fear to break it again, therefore I will write My law in your hearts. And so whatever I promise to you, I will perform it freely when ye are in covenant with Me; and whatever ye promise to Me, being in covenant with Me, I sall perform it for you also, at least I sall give you strength to perform it." And therefore to the end that ye may be perfectly blessed, enter into a covenant with God; and without ye be in covenant with Him, ye sall be in nothing but perpetual misery. I would have all of you to think this to be your only health, wealth, and peace, and your only glory in the world, to be in covenant with God; and so that ye are the people of God, I would not have you to count men to be rich and glorious men by their estates in the world—that he can spend so many chalders of victual yearly, or so many thousand merks. O, a silly, beggarly glory is this! Naked thou came into the world, and naked thou must go out of it again. But see how mickle thou has of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, how far thou art forward in the work of repentance, faith, &c., and such good actions. Learn to set your affections on things that are above, and testify it by your actions.
II. "In the day of Thy power." This is the time when the people of God sall be willing, even in the day of His power; that is, in the day of the power of Jesus Christ. The day of His own resurrection from the dead was one day of His power: He says, "I have power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again;" "Destroy this temple, and I will build it up again in three days;" He meant of the temple of His body: and indeed there was none who could raise His dead body out of the grave, but only Himself. A second day of His power sall be the day of the resurrection of our bodies out of the dust. But there is another day that is meant of here than any of these, and that is the day of our first resurrection out of the grave of sin, by the preaching of the gospel. And there is good reason for it, why this should be called a day of His power. First, because it is the power of Jesus Christ that brings the purity of the gospel into a land; and we may indeed say that it was only His power that brought the gospel into this land. It had not authority then to countenance it, for all those that were in authority were against it; and counsel and policy, and all the clergy, and the multitude, all of them, were against it; and yet, for all that, the Lord brought in the purity of the gospel into this land, and established it here against all these. Secondly, when the purity of the gospel is into a land, it is only the power of God that makes it effectual for turning of souls unto Himself, and raising them out of the grave of sin, wherein they are so fast buried. So when the Lord first sends the gospel, we are lying into the grave of sin; and the devil, and the world, and all these enemies they are watching the grave, to see that we rise not out of it; and when we are beginning to rise they are busy to hold us down. And think not that we can rise, and lift up ourselves from so base to so high ane estate, without the power of God. No, no. Third. When the gospel is into a land, it is only the power of Jesus Christ that makes it to continue, for if the Lord make not the gospel to continue into a land, it will not stay there. And there is no less power required either to bring the gospel into a land, or to make it effectual, or to make it to continue, than was required to raise the dead body of Christ out of the grave, or will be required to raise ours.
I would have you consider here, that all times are not alike, but there is a time of the Lord's power; that all days are not alike, but there is a day of the Lord's power; a time when the saints of God sall be weak, a time when they sall be strong; a time when some sall rise up to persecute the saints, a time when others sall rise up to help them; a time when the Lord withholds His power, and a time when He kythes (shews it); a time when the people draws back from the Lord, and a time when they turn to Him again. There has been a day of defection in this land this time past, and now there is a time of the Lord's power in bringing back this defection again: and indeed this very instant time that now is is ane hour of that day of the Lord's power, and I will shew you two or three reasons for it. 1. The Lord did arise and manifested His power when the enemies were become insolent, and when they had determined that they would set up such a mode of worship as they thought meet, and noways according to the pattern shown upon the mount. And indeed the Lord, He uses ordinarily to do this, that even when the enemies of His people are become insolent, and they have determined that they will do such a thing instantly, then He takes them in their own snare. 2. To show that it is the Lord's power only that works a work, He uses to begin at very small beginnings; and so the Lord did in this same work;—He began at first with some few, and these not honourable, and yet now He has made it to cover the whole land through all the quarters thereof. 3. This is also a note of the power of God, that He has touched the hearts of people, that there was never such a howling and a weeping heard amongst them this long time as there is now; and yet it is not a weeping for sorrow, but a weeping for joy. How oft has there been preachings in the most part of the congregations of this land this long time past, and yet people have never found the power of it in working upon their hearts; and yet within this short space, when the Lord has renewed His covenant with them, and they with Him, He has displayed His banner, and made His power known in working upon the hearts of people. 4. In this the power of God is manifestly to be seen in this work, that the Lord has made all the devices and plots of the adversars, that they have devised to further their own ends, to work contrair to these ends, and to work for the good of His own work. And, indeed, we may say that it has not been so mickle the courage and wisdom of these, that has been for this cause, that has brought it so far on, but the very plots and devices of the adversars that they have devised for their own good. This also is ane evident token of the Lord's power.
And now since the Lord did arise when the enemies were become insolent, since He began at so small beginnings and has brought it so far, since the Lord has wrought so on the hearts of people now, and since He has made all the plots of the enemies to work against themselves, and for His people, let us give this glory to God, and reverence Him, and say that it is only by His power that the work is done, and that He has been pleased to manifest Himself into the work. Beloved, we may comfort ourselves in this, if all this has been done by the power of God, then we need not to fear the power of men; men can do nothing against God. The Lord may indeed put His kirk to a trial, but He will not suffer her to be overthrown by any. And indeed, any who hears and knows what the enemies are doing here may see that they are not fighting against men, but against God, and that they are kicking against the pricks.
III. Now, for the properties of thir people. The first of them is willing. The Lord's people are a people of willingness in the day of His power: and indeed thir three go very well together, the people of God, the power of God, and a willing people. When the power of God works upon His people then He makes them to be a willing people. And indeed, it is no small matter to see a people willing in a good cause, for by nature we are unwilling, and naturally we are not set to affect anything that is right, except it be through hypocrisy. Our hearts they are contrary to God; they are proud, disobedient, rebellious, and he who sees and knows his own heart sees all this to be in it; and he knows that it is the Lord who cries upon him, in the day of His own power, and frames his heart in a new mould, and makes it to be so nimble and cheerful in any good work,—that albeit they had been before running with all their speed to the devil, yet He makes them to stand still in the way and look about them, and consider what they have been doing, and then to turn about again. Albeit thou were like to Paul, persecuting the Church, yet He can then make a preacher of thee, and so affright thee that thou sall not know where thou art, but say, "Here am I, Lord:" and albeit thou were as unwilling to go as the prophet Moses, yet He will make thee to say, "Here am I, Lord, send me," and be as Elisha, when Elias cuist (cast) his mantle about him, then he could not stay any longer. And when Christ comes to Peter, and calls upon them, they cannot stay any longer, but incontinent they leave all and follows Him. I will not now begin to make any large discourse of the invincible power of God; I say no more of it now but only this for your use. If ye kent this power of God, it would make you ready and willing to give a confession to Him this day, and even to confess Him before men, and to forsake all and follow Him. Ye who are ignorant of the power of God, take heed to this,—it is the Lord who commanded light to come out of darkness, who must make you to see Christ; He who takes His rod in His hand to beat down the hard and humble the haughty heart, He must do this also. O if ye felt this power of God, ye would think nothing to forsake all and to follow Him. He has suffered more for us nor we can suffer for Him; and if we suffered anything for Him, He would not suffer any of us yet to be a loser at His hand: but we cannot put Him to a trial.
Now for this unwillingness of these people, it is well expressed here. They are called a people of willingness. And yet He thinks not this satisfactory, to call them a willing people, but He calls them a people of willingness, a noble, generous, high-minded people. And all this is to shew that when the people of God is wakened up in the day of His power, there is none who is able to express their willingness. They are so willing that if they had a thousand minds they would employ them all for Him, and if they had a thousand faces, they would not let one of them look down, but they would hold them all up for the Lord; if every hair in their head were a man, they would employ them all in His service. Their willingness, indeed, it cannot be expressed. They cry to the Lord, because they think they cannot run fast enough, "Draw me and I sail run after Thee:" they are flying together, as the dowes does to the holes of the rocks before a tempest come. In the Canticles, Christ says, "My soul made Me as the chariots of My noble people;" and, indeed, to see a people running through the land, to meet together to keep communion with the Lord, this is the best chariot that can be. And this willingness has been so great at some times in the children of God that they have fallen in a paroxysm, or like the fit of a fever, with it: as it is Acts xvii. Paul's spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the City of Athens given to so much base idolatry as to worship the UNKNOWN GOD. And Lot, also, he had such a fit as this; he vexed his righteous soul with the iniquities of Sodom, that is, he tortured his soul with their sins, he never saw them committing sin but it was a grief to him. And, indeed, the children of God this while past have been grieved and vexed to behold the sins that has been committed into this same land. I insist upon this the rather because I would wish from my heart that ye would be thus willing, and that ye would be as forward for the glory and honour of God as ever any was. And then, indeed, it should do good to others also, when they should hear tell that the people of St. Andrews were such a willing people. And, indeed, ye have just reason to be willing now.
1. Because it is God's cause ye have in hand, and it is no new cause to us. It is almost sixty years old; it is no less since this same Confession of Faith was first subscribed and sworn to. And it has been still in use yearly to be subscribed and sworn to in some parts, among some in this land, to this day. And I think it would have been so in all the parts of the land if men had dreamed of what was coming upon us. Whatever is added to it at this time, it is nothing but ane interpretation of the former part; and if men will be willing to see the right, they may see that there is nothing in the latter part but that whilk may be deduced from the first. And in the making of a Covenant we are not bound to keep only these same words that were before, but we must renew it; and in the renewing thereof we must apply it to the present time when it is renewed, as we have done, renewed it against the present ills. For it is not necessar for us to abjure Turkism or Paganism, because we are not in fear to be troubled with that; but the thing that we are in danger of is Papistry, and therefore we must abjure that.
2. A second reason to make you willing is, because this matter concerns you in all things,—in your bodies, in your estates, in your lives, your liberties, in your souls. I may say, if in the Lord's providence this course had not been taken, ye would have found the thraldom whereinto that course, wherein ye were anes (once) going, would have brought you to or (ere) now, even ye who are most averse from it.
3. A third reason to make you willing is, ye have the precedency and testimony of the nobility in the land to it, and of all sorts of persons, noblemen, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers, and commons; and wherefore, then, should not ye be willing to follow their example? And then, I may say, ye have the prayers of all the reformed kirks in Europe for you, who have ever heard of the perturbations that has been, and yet are, into this land. And, moreover, beloved, whom have ye against you in this course? All the atheists, all the papists, and all the profane rogues in the country; they draw to that side, and it is only they who hate this cause. And should not all these make you willing to swear to it, and to hazard for it? And I may say, if ye be but willing to hazard all that ye have, that may be the heaviest distress that ever ye sall be put to. And if so be that ye had been willing at first, the Lord would have touched the king's heart, and made him willing also; but because he is informed by some that the most part are not willing, that is a great part of the cause why he is not willing.
The second property of God's people is holiness. "In the beauties of holiness;" a speech that is borrowed from the priest's garments under the law. Sometimes they were broidered with gold, sometimes they were all white, especially in the day of expiation. Not that ministers under the New Testament should have such garments as these, for these were representations to them, both of their inward holiness and of their outward holiness, by (beyond) others; but now all believers are priests as well as ministers are, and therefore such garments as these are not necessar. Indeed, if such garments as these had been necessar, then Christ and His apostles had done great wrong to themselves, who never used the like; and they had done great wrong to the kirk also in not appointing such garments to be worn by ministers. There be garments of glory in heaven, and garments of grace in the earth; that party-coloured garment spoken of in the Colossians, and this holiness whilk is spoken of here. Concerning whilk we will mark two things:—First, as people are a people of willingness in a good cause, so they must also be a people of holiness, or otherwise their willingness is only but for some worldly respects: therefore, I would have you with willingness to put on holiness. And, indeed, if we saw what holiness were, we needed not to be persuaded to put it on, we would do it willingly. For it has three parts in it—1. A purgation from former filthiness. 2. A separation from the world. If thou will be holy, then thou must be separate from the world; thou must strive to keep thyself from those whose garments are spotted with the flesh. 3. Holiness requires devotion or dedication to the Lord. When there is purgation from filthiness, separation from the world, and dedication to the Lord, there there is holiness and nowhere else.
Now, is there any of you but ye are obleist (obliged) to be holy? Ye say that ye are the people of the Lord. If so be, then ye must have your inward man purged of sin, and ye must stand at the stave's end against the corruptions of the time, and ye must devote yourselves only to serve and honour God. And your Covenant, that ye are to swear to this day, oblishes you to this; and it requires nothing of you but that whilk ye are bound to perform. And, therefore, seeing this is required of you, purge yourselves within, flee the corruptions of the time, eschew the society of those whom ye see to be corrupt, and devote yourselves only to the Lord. Yet this is not that we would obleish you to perform everything punctually that the Lord requires of you; there is none who can do that, but promise to the Lord to do so, tell Him that ye have a desire to do so, and join a resolution and a purpose, and say to Him, Lord, I sall prease (earnestly endeavour) to do als far as I can. And, indeed, there is no more in our covenant but this, that we sall endeavour to keep ourselves within the bounds of our Christian liberty; and, albeit, none of you would swear to this, ye are bound to it by your baptism. And, therefore, think not that we are precisians, (or these who has set down this covenant), seeing all of you are bound to do it.
Secondly, "The beauties of holiness." Consider here that as holiness is necessar for the saints of God, so all God's courtiers they are full of beauty. God Himself is full of beauty, and we have no power, beauty nor holiness but in His power, beauty, and holiness. Holiness, it is the beauty of the Son of God, Jesus Christ; and to Him it is said in Esay, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty": and the Holy Ghost has this style to be called Holy. And the angels in heaven, they are clothed with holiness; and the saints who are in heaven, this is the long white robes wherewith they are clothed. And they who are begun to be sanctified here, they strive to be more and more clad with holiness. Beloved, I would have you to count this to be your beauty, even holiness; for if ye have not this beauty, then all your other beauty will degenerate in a bastard beauty.
Now follows the marvellous multiplication of thir people. "From the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth." The words are somewhat obscure even to the learned ear, but look to the 133d Psalm, and there ye will see a place to help to clear them. Always (however) observe here, "from the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth," that as in a May morning, when there is no extremity of heat, the dew falls so thick that all the fields are covered with it, and it falls in such a secret manner that none sees it fall, so the Lord, in the day of His power, He sall multiply His people, and He sall multiply them in a secret manner; so that it is marvellous to the world, that once there should seem to be so few or none of them, and then incontinent He should make them to be through all estates.
We have first to learn here, that the Kirk of God, she has a morning; and in the morning the dew falls, and not in the night, nor in the heat of the day. So it is not in the night of defection, nor in the heat of the day of persecution, when the Lord's people are multiplied, but it is in the morning of the day. Beloved, I wish you may be a discerning people, to know the Lord's seasons. Sall we be as those, of whom our Saviour complains, who can discern the face of the sky, but cannot discern the day of the Lord's merciful and gracious visitation towards them? Men indeed may be very learned and know things very well, and yet in the meantime be but ignorant of this; for there are sundry gifts bestowed upon men, and ilk are has not this gift, to discern the Lord's merciful visitation. And therefore happy are ye, albeit ye be not great in other gifts, if so be that ye know this; for the Lord, He has some gifts of His own bestowing allanerly (only), whilk He will bestow upon the meanest, and yet He will deny them to the proudest; even as the tops of the mountains, they will be dry and have no dew, while as the valleys will be wet with it. So those who exalts themselves high, and boasts themselves of their other gifts, of their knowledge, learning, experience, &c., the Lord will, for all that, ofttimes leave them void of saving and sanctifying grace.
"From the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth." That is, as the dew is multiplied upon the earth, so sall thy people be. This is are ordinar phrase in Scripture. Hushai says to Absalom, "Convene the people from Dan to Beersheba, and then we sall light upon David as the dew lighteth upon the ground; and then there sall not be left of him and of all the men that are with him so much as one." And this phrase is well set down, Is. liv., "Rejoice, O barren, and thou that didst not bear, break forth into singing and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child; for more are the children of the desolate than the married wife." And therefore He uses this form of speech, v. 2, "Enlarge thy tents, and let them stretch the curtains of thy habitations; lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes." And all these things are requisite to be done when the people of God are multiplied thus.
Let us observe here, if the Word of God continue in this land, in the purity thereof, and the sacraments be rightly administrate, the people of God will then multiply exceedingly here. The chiefest city in this land, they are forced to marvel where the people has been in former times that are in it now, so that they cannot get kirks to contain them. And they think, if the gospel continue in the purity thereof, all the kirks that they are building, with the rest, sall have enough ado to contain them. And it is a marvel to consider how the Lord has multiplied His people, at this time. This is not that we are to glory in multitudes, but to let you see the great work of God, Who has multiplied His people thus. And as it was at the beginning of the plantation of the Christian religion, there was three thousand converted at one preaching of the apostle, I will not say that there has been three thousand converted at a preaching here, but I may say this, that at one preaching there has been some thousands wakened up, who had not been so for a long time before. And will it not be a hard matter, seeing that it is so, that Saint Andrews sall be as Gideon's fleece; that all the kingdom about it sall be wet with the dew of heaven, and it sall only be dry? Even so, will it not be a shame, that all others sall be stirred up, and ye not a whit stirred up in this day more than if there were not such a thing? And, therefore, beloved, I would have you to join yourselves with the rest of the people of God in this cause.
"Thy youth." That is, thy young men. Those that are renewed by grace they are called young, albeit they were never so old, because their age is not reckoned by their first, but by their second birth. Ay, moreover, still the older that the children of God grow in years, and the weaker in the world, they grow younger and stronger in grace. Secondly, they are called young, because of the strength that they have to resist temptations. Before they be renewed by grace and born again that way, they are like bairns, that every temptation prevails with them; but then they are as young men, who are able to resist temptations to sin, so that sin gets not liberty to exercise dominion over them. Thirdly, they are called young, because they will contend with all their power and might for the faith. I would have all of you to be young in these respects, and labour to get ane evidence of your new birth by these, that ye are growing in grace, gaining still more strength to resist temptations, and by contending earnestly for the faith; even be bold in this, especially in contending for the truth. Strive for the truth, for, if ye anes lose it, ye will not get it so easily again. And this same is the covenant of truth whilk ye are to swear to; for as our Covenant is renewed, so also it is exponed (explained) according as the exigencies of the time requires, and it is applied to the present purpose.
Beloved, I told you already that ye have no cause of fear, for I avow and attest here before God, that what ye do is not against authority, but for authority, let some men who are wickedly disposed say what they will; but what ye do is for authority. And I told you of the obligations whereby authority are bound to this. And for the words of it, because they are conceived in a terrible manner, ye need not to stand in awe for this; and it were good that ye should read them over again, and think upon this wrath of God whilk we pray for to come upon us, if we do intend anything against authority.
Objection. We have oblished ourselves by our subscription already; what then needs us to obleish ourselves over again by our oath? Ans. It's true, I grant, many of you has subscribed it already, and so ye are bound; but now ye are to swear also, that so through abundance of bands to God ye may know yourselves to be the more bound to Him. David says, I have purposed, I have promised, I have sworn, and I sall perform Thy righteous statutes. There be also here sundry Acts of Parliament, that are all of them made within this same kingdom for the maintainance of the true religion; and for thir, they speak for themselves. And I would have these who say we do anything against law and against our superiors, to see and try if there be anything against them, and not all directly for them.
Beloved, I hope that it will not be necessar for us to spend mickle time with you in removing of scruples. Good things I know has over many objections against them from the devil, the world, and our own ill hearts. And I know some of them who are accounted the learnedst in the land, have assayed their wits and used their pens to object against this. But truly these who are judicious, they have confessed that they have been greatly confirmed by that whilk they have objected; and the reason of it was, because they who were the most learned assayed themselves to see what they could say, and yet when all was done, they had nothing to say that was worth the hearing.
For the first part of this Confession of faith, there is not a word changed in it; and if so be that men had keeped that part of it free of sinistrous glosses, and had applied it according to the meaning of those who were the penners thereof, there needed not to have such a thing ado as there is now; but because they have put sinistrous glosses upon it now and misapplied it, therefore it behoved to be explained and applied to the present time.
The first thing that ye swear to is, That with your whole hearts ye agree and resolve, all the days of your life, constantly to adhere unto and defend the true religion. There is no scruple here. 2. That ye suspend and forbear the practice of all novations already introduced in the matters of the worship of God, or approbation of the corruptions of the public government of the kirk, or civil places and power of kirkmen, till they be tried and allowed in free assemblies and in parliaments. Now, I know there be some who make scruples here. How can we, say they, bind ourselves to forbear the practice of that whilk Acts of Assembly allows, and Acts of Parliament commands? Ans. We do not herein condemn the Act as altogether unlawful, whatever our judgment be of it, but this is all what we do. Because such ills has followed upon these novations, therefore we think it meet now to forbear the practice of them till they be tried by Assembly and Parliament.
And this is not a breach of the Act, when all is done. Because the Act is not set down in the manner of a command, but only as a counsel; for so the Act of the pretended Assembly bears. The words is, "The Assemblie thinks good," &c., "because all memory of superstition is now past, therefore we may kneel at the communion." Then, if there be any danger of superstition, by the very words of the Act we may gather this, that we should not kneel: and so they who practice now keep the letter of the Act, but they who forbear keep the meaning thereof more nearly than the practisers. 3. We promise and swear against the Service-book, Book of Canons, and High Commission, with all other innovations and ills contained in our Supplications, Complaints, and Protestations. Now for the Service-book, I find every one almost to be so inclined willingly to quite (be done with) it. But let me attest your own consciences, if it had gone on for a while, and been read among you, as it was begun to be, if it had not been as hard for you to have quat it as to quit the Articles of Perth; and therefore, do not deceive yourselves, to let such things be practised any more. It is a pitiful thing, that those who are wise otherways should deceive themselves in the matters of God's service and worship, and suffer others to deceive them also. 4. Ye promise and swear, to the uttermost of your power to stand to the defence of the king's majesty, in the defence and preservation of true religion: as also, every one of you to the mutual defence of another in the same cause. Now there be a number who says, that in this we come under rebellion against the king, and we join in a combination against him, when we join ourselves thus, every one for the defence of another. I say no more of it but this. It is not disputed here, ye see, whether it be lawful for subjects to take up arms against their prince or not, whether in offence or defence; but that we will maintain the true religion, and resist all contrary corruptions, according to our vocation. And every one of us oblishes ourselves for the defence of another, only in maintaining the cause of true religion, according to the laws and liberties of this kingdom. And indeed, this is very reasonable to be done, albeit not asked of; for when your neighbour's house is burning, ye will not run to the king to speir (ask) if ye should help him or not, before it come to your own; but ye will incontinent put to your hand, both to help him, and to save your own house. Ye may not say, neither, that because we may not oppose against authority, that we may not oppose against Papists or against Prelates; for that were to make ourselves slaves to men. And the very law of nature binds every one of us to help another, in a lawful manner, for a good cause. 5. Ye swear, because ye cannot look for a blessing from God upon your proceedings, except that with your confession and subscription ye join such a life as becomes Christians who has renewed their covenant with God,—therefore ye promise to endeavour at least, for yourselves and all that are under you, to keep yourselves within the bounds of your Christian liberty, and to be good ensamples to others in all godliness, soberness, and righteousness, and of every duty we owe both to God and man. And there is none who needs to skarre (be frightened) at this; for we are not hereby to tie any to the obedience of the law, but to the obedience of the Gospel: and I am sure all are bound at least to please to (strive after) this. And therefore I would have you to labour to it; and when ye find that ye cannot get it done, then run to Christ, and beseech Him to teach you to do it; and to give you strength, according to His promise made in His new covenant; and so ye sail give glory to God and get good to your own souls. And, indeed, all of you are obleist to amend your lives, and to live otherwise than ye have done. And last of all, there is the Attestation.
Now, I hope all these things be so clear to you, that there is not any scruple in any of your minds. And therefore, that this work may be done aright, and may be accompanied by the power of God, I would have all of you to bow your knees before that great and dreadful Lord, and beseech Him that He would send down the Holy Ghost, and the power of His Spirit, to accompany the work, that so ye may do it with all your hearts, to His glory and honour, and to your comfort in Jesus Christ.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT:
EXHORTATION AT INVERNESS.
BY ANDREW CANT.[3]
Long ago our gracious God was pleased to visit this nation with the light of His glorious Gospel, by planting a vineyard in, and making His glory to arise upon Scotland. A wonder! that so great a God should shine on so base a soil! Nature hath been a stepmother to us in comparison of those who live under a hotter climate, as in a land like Goshen, or a garden like Eden. But the Lord looks not as man: His grace is most free, whereby it often pleaseth Him to compense what is wanting in nature: whence upon Scotland (a dark obscure island, inferior to many) the Lord did arise, and discovered the tops of the mountains with such a clear light, that in God's gracious dispensation, it is inferior to none. How far other nations outstripped her in naturals, as far did she out-go them in spirituals. Her pomp less, her purity more: they had more of antichrist than she, she more of Christ than they: in their reformation something of the beast was reserved; in ours, not so much as a hoof. When the Lord's ark was set up among them, Dagon fell, and his neck brake, yet his stump was left; but with us, stump and all was cast into the brook Kidron. Hence king James his doxology in face of parliament, thanking God who made him king in such a kirk that was far beyond England (they having but an ill-said mass in English) yea, beyond Geneva itself; for holy-days (one of the beast's marks) are in part there retained, which (said he) to day are with us quite abolished. Thus to a people sitting in darkness, and in the shadow of death, light is sprung up. Thus, in a manner, the stone that the builders refused is become the head of the corner. The Lord's Anointed (to whom the ends of the earth were given for a possession and inheritance) came and took up house amongst us, strongly established on two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, and well ordered with the staves of beauty and bands, and borrowing nothing from the border of Rome. Her foundation, walls, doors, and windows were all adorned with carbuncles, sapphires, emeralds, chrysolites, and precious stones out of the Lord's own treasure. God Himself sat with His beauty and ornaments therein, so that it was the praise and admiration of the whole earth. Strangers and home-bred persons wondered. Such was the glory, perfection, order, and unity of this house, that the altar of Damascus could have no peace, the Canaanite no rest, heresy no hatching, schism no footing, Diotrephes no incoming, the papists no couching, and Jezebel no fairding. Our church looked forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners. Then God's tabernacle was amiable, His glory filled the sanctuary, the clear fresh streams watered the city of our God; the stoutest humbled themselves, and were afraid. If an idiot entered the Lord's courts, so great power sounded from Barnabas and Boanerges, the sons of consolation and thunder, that they were forced to fall down on their face, and cry, "This is Bethel, God is here."
But alas! Satan envied our happiness, brake our ranks, poisoned our fountains, mudded and defiled our streams; and while the watchmen slept, the wicked one sowed his tares: whence these divers years bygone, for ministerial authority, we had lordly supremacy and pomp; for beauty, fairding; for simplicity, whorish buskings; for sincerity, mixtures; for zeal, a Laodicean temper; for doctrines, men's precepts; for wholesome fruits, a medley of rites; for feeders we had fleecers; for pastors, wolves and impostors; for builders of Jerusalem, rebuilders of Jericho; for unity, rents; for progress, defection. Truth is fallen in the streets, our dignity is gone, our credit lost, our crown is fallen from our heads; our reputation is turned to imputation: before God and man we justly deserve the censure of the degenerate vine; a backsliding people, an apostate perjured nation, by our breaking a blessed covenant so solemnly sworn.
Yet, behold! when this should have been our doom, when all was almost gone, when we were down the hill, when the pit's mouth was opened, and we were at the falling in, and at the very shaking hands with Rome; the Lord, strong and gracious, pitied us, looked on us, and cried, saying, "Return, return, ye backsliding people; come, and I will heal your backslidings." The Lord hath been so saving, and the cry so quickening, that almost all of all ranks, from all quarters and corners, are awakened and on foot, meeting and answering the Lord, saying, "Behold we come unto Thee, for Thou art the Lord our God, other lords besides Thee have had dominion over us, but by Thee only will we make mention of Thy name." All are wondering at the turn, and looking like them that dream, and are singing and saying, "Blessed be the Lord who hath not given us for a prey to their teeth; our souls are escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler, the snare is broken, and we are escaped: our help is in the name of the Lord who made the heaven and the earth." Who thought to have seen such a sudden change in Scotland, when all second causes were posting a contrary course? when proud men were boasting and saying, "Bow down that we may go over;" and we laid our "bodies as the ground, and as the streets to them that went over." But now, behold one of God's wonders! So many of all ranks taking the honour and cause of Christ to heart; all unanimously, harmoniously and legally conjoined as one man in supplications, protestations and declarations against innovations and innovators, corruptions and corrupters. Behold and wonder! That old covenant (once and again solemnly sworn and perfidiously violated) is now again happily renewed, with such solemnity, harmony, oaths and subscriptions, that I dare say, this hath been more real and true in thee, O Scotland, these few weeks bygone, than for the space of thirty years before. I know Pashurs that went to smite Jeremiahs, are become at this work Magor-missabib, terror round about; Zedekiahs that went to smite Micaiahs, seek now an inner chamber to hide themselves. Tobiah and Sanballat gnaw their tongues, laugh and despise us, saying, "What is this ye do? Will ye rebel against the king? Will ye fortify yourselves? Will ye make an end in a day? Will ye remove the stones out of the heaps of rubbish that is burnt?" Rehum the chancellor, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their companions, cease not to fill the ears of a gracious prince with prejudice, saying, "Be it known to thee, O king, if this city be built, and the walls thereof set up again, that they will not pay toll, tribute or custom." But to these we answer, "Let the king live, and let all his enemies be confounded, let all that seek his damnation be put to shame here and henceforth: but as for you, ye are strangers, meddle not with the joy of God's people; ye have no portion, right, nor memorial in God's Jerusalem." If the begun work vex them, it is no wonder; it does prognosticate the ruin of their kingdom, and that Haman, who hath begun to fall before the seed of the Jews, shall fall totally: the Lord is about to prune His vineyard, and to drive out the foxes that eat the tender grapes; to pluck up bastard plants, and to whip buyers and sellers out of the temple. The Lord is about to strike the Gehazis with leprosy, and to bring low the Simon Maguses who were so high lifted up by Satan's ministry. The Lord is calling the great ones to put too their shoulder, and help His work; He hath been in the south, saying, "Keep not back," and blessed be God, they have not. He hath now sent to the north, saying, "Give up, bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth:" contend for the faith once delivered to Scotland.
There is one Lord, one faith, one cause that concerns all. Though this north climate be cold, I hope your hearts are not, at least they should not be. The earth is the Lord's and its fulness, the world and they that dwell therein; the uttermost parts of the earth are given to Christ for a possession; His dominion is from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. Come then, and kiss the Son; count it your greatest honour to honour Christ, and to lend His fallen truths a lift; come and help to build the old wastes, that ye may be called the repairers of the breach; and then shall all generations call you blessed; then shall God build up your houses, as He did to the Egyptian midwives, for their fearing God, and for their friendship to His people Israel. Be not like the nobles of Tekoa, of whom Nehemiah complained, that they would not put their necks to the work of the Lord. Be not like Meroz, whom the angel of the Lord cursed bitterly, for not coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Neither be ye like these mockers and scorners, at the renewing of the Lord's covenant in Hezekiah's days, but rather like those whose hearts the Lord humbled and moved. Be not like those invited to the king's supper, who refused to come, and had miserable excuses, and therefore should not taste of it. We hope better things of you; God hath reserved and advanced you for a better time and use: but if ye draw back, keep silence, and hold your peace, God shall bring deliverance and enlargement to His church another way; but God save you from the sequel. Nothing is craved of you but what is for God and the king; for Christ's honour, and the kirk's good, and the kingdom's peace. God give to your hearts courage, wisdom and resolution for God and the king, and for Christ and His truths. Amen.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT
SERMON AT GLASGOW.[4]
By ANDREW CANT.
"The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, who
made a marriage for his son: and he sent forth his servants
to call them that were bidden to the wedding; and they
would not come," etc.—Matt. xxii. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
I purpose not to handle this parable punctually, because it stands not with the nature of a parable, neither will the time suffer me so to do.
The parable runs upon an evident declaration and clear manifestation of God's sweetest mercies, in offering the marriage of His Son, His own Son, His well-beloved Son, the Son of His love, the Son of His bosom, the Son as good as the Father, the Son as great and as glorious as the Father, the Son whose generation none can declare. The Father offers this His Son in marriage: 1. To the Jews, as you have in the first seven verses of the parable. 2. To the Gentiles, in the rest of the parable.
1. To the Jews, not because of their worthiness; "But even so, O Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight." This offer was the effect of no merit, neither of congruity nor of condignity in the Jews; for they were like that wretched and menstruous infant, Ezek. xvi. 3, 4, unswaddled, unwashen, uncleansed, "lying in its blood, its navel not cut, nor salted at all, nor swaddled at all, cast out in the open field, having no eye to pity it."
2. As for the Gentiles, ye may see what case they were in, if ye read this same parable, Luke xiv. 20. "Go ye out into the streets and lanes of the city, and call the poor, the lame, blind and maimed," etc. Some were cripple, some poor and blind, and withered, and miserable, and naked, and leper, unworthy to come to our Lord's gates, let be to have them opened wide to us; unworthy to be set down at His table, let be to be admitted to His royal marriage feast, and to get Christ our Lord to be our match, and to be the food and cheer of our souls: and therefore let all souls, let all pulpits, let all schools, let all universities, let all men, let all women, let all Christians cry, grace, grace, grace, praise, praise, praise, blessing, blessing, for evermore to the Lord's free grace. Fy, fy, upon the man; fy, fy, upon the woman, that is an enemy to the Lord's free grace. The fullest, and the fairest, and the freest thing in heaven or earth is the free grace of God, to our poor souls: "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name be the glory."
At another occasion I handled the parable after a more general manner, and propounded these points unto you: 1. Who was this great king? 2. Who was the Son of this great king?
1. This great King is God Himself, "the King of kings, and Lord of lords." Then for the Lord's sake, stand in awe of Him, love Him and fear Him. And I charge you all here before that great and dreadful Lord, that ye humble yourselves under His mighty hand, and that ye prostrate and submit yourselves under His almighty hand, and come away as ye promised. Kiss the Son, and embrace Him, and then shall wrath be holden off you; and a shower of God's mercy shall come down upon you. Then the King is God.
2. The King's Son is Christ. Then there follows a dinner, "I have prepared my dinner." Yea, I have a supper also, for Luke says, He "prepared a great supper." I told you in what respects it is great. 1. I told you it was great in respect of the author of it, God. 2. I told you it was great in respect of the matter of it. Ye know the matter of it, as holy Scripture tells. Whiles it gets base, silly, simple names, and is delineated and expressed under common terms: but the most common term it gets is so considerable that our case would not be good if it were wanting. Whiles 'tis called "a feast of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined." Whiles it is called "gold." Whiles it is called "fatlings, and a fatted and fed calf." Whiles 'tis "honey and milk." Whiles it is called "oil and wine." Whiles it is called the "bread of life." In a word, to tell you what this feast is, it is this Christ and all His saving graces freely given to thy soul. Then, 3. It is great in respect of the manner of its preparation: I confess, this feast, though prepared in silver, is often administered in earthen vessels, and clay dishes: and, though it be mingled with butter and honey, yet this makes the natural man, when he looks upon it, not to think much of it, because he looks on the outside of it only. But would to God your eyes were opened to see the inside of it, and not to be like proud Naaman, who said, "What better is this water of Jordan than the water of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus?" As some say, What better is this feast than the feast we have at home? As the man of God prayed for his servant, "Lord, open his eyes that he may see;" and the Lord opened his eyes, and he saw another sight, even the mountain full of horses and flaming chariots of fire; so, I pray the Lord open all your eyes, that ye may see the many differences between this feast and all other feasts; for other feasts are but feasts for the body, and they are but feasts for the belly; an Esau may have them, a reprobate may feed upon them. These are nothing else but the swine's husks, whereon the prodigal fed for a time, and scarce could get them; but when he came back again to his father's house, then he fed upon the fatted calf; and then he got a feast, and then was there plenty, then did his well run over, then was his cup to the brim, and overflowing. O that ye knew your Father's house, and the fatness, the fulness, the feast, and the plenty that are there, ye would all hunger after it, and would then say, alas! I have been feeding on husks too long, "now will I arise and go to my father's house, where there is bread enough." All the Lord's steps drop plenty and fatness. 4. I told you that this supper is a great feast in respect of the great number that are called unto it. The poorest thing in all the land is called unto it: the Jews are called, the Gentiles are called, yea the poorest thing that is hearing me is called; such as a great man would not look on, but he would close the gates on such an one; a great man would not deign himself to look on them in his kitchen; yet come ye away to this feast, the King of kings has His house open, and His gates patent, He has a ready feast, and a room house, and fair open gates, and every body shall be welcome that will come. "Whosoever thirsts; let him come, and take of the water of life freely." And now through all the nooks and corners of this kingdom of Scotland, Christ is sending out His servants, and I am sent out unto you this day, crying unto you, "Come away, His oxen and fatlings are killed, His wine is drawn, and His table furnished, and all things ready." 5. I told you it was a great feast, in respect of the place where it is kept. There are two dining-rooms:—(1) A dining-room above. (2) A dining-room below. A dining-room above, that is a high dining-room, that is a fair house, that is a trim place. O the rivers of the Lord's consolations that run there: I confess, in this lower dining-room of the church, the waters come first to the ankles, then to the mid-leg, then to the knees, then to the thigh, and then past wading; but then shall ye get fulness, when ye come up to that dining-room. And when ye come there, there shall be no more hunger, no more thirst, there shall be no more scant nor want, nor any more sour sauce in your feasts, neither any more sadness, nor sorrowful days; but eat your fill, and drink your fill. And many shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down at the royal and rare covered table, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and get their fill to their hungered—"When I awake (says David) I shall be filled with Thy likeness." Poor soul, thou canst never get thy fill; I wish to God thou got a sop and a drop to set thee by till then. Indeed, if thou hadst a vessel, thou shouldst get thy fair fill even in this life. And I dare say, if thou wouldst seek, and seek on, and seek instantly, the Lord would one day or other make thee drink of the new wine of the gospel; He would give thee a draught, a fair draught, a fill, a fair fill of the wine of His consolation, He would make you suck the milk at the breasts of His consolation; but He will aye keep the best wine hindmost, as He did at the marriage of Cana. Therefore, poor thing, lift up thy head, and gather thy heart; ere it be long thou shalt get a draught of the best wine in thy Father's house, where there are many mansions, and many dwelling-places. "I go (says Christ) to prepare a place for you:" and He will come again, and receive you to Himself, where ye shall drink abundantly of the new wine of the gospel. Lastly, This supper is a great one in respect of the continuance of it; it lasts not for one day, but for ever; it lasts not for a hundred and four-score days, but for ever, and evermore. Poor thing, who possibly gets some blyth morning blinks in upon thy soul, and possibly gets a taste of this cup in the morning, and long ere even thou art hungering and thirsting again, and thou wots not where to meet thy Lord, and all the thing thou hast gotten is forgotten; in the day that He shall come, then thou shalt feast constantly and continually in thy Father's house, where thou shalt never want thy arms full, thou shalt never want thy Lord out of thy sight, neither shall thy Lord ever want thee, but He shall ever be with thee, and thou with Him; thou shalt follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes.
"Behold I have prepared my dinner." All this feast was for a marriage; and here is a wonder, a world's wonder, a behold, which notes divers things: 1. Behold it for an admiration. 2. Behold it for an excitation. 3. Behold it for consolation. 4. Behold it for instruction. Behold, and be awakened; behold, and be excited; behold, and be comforted; behold, and admire; behold, and wonder, that the King of heaven's Son will marry your soul! Then behold, and come away to your own marriage; behold, lost man shall get a Saviour, behold, the King's Son will be a Saviour to a slave; behold, the King's Son will drink the potion, and the sick shall get health; behold, the King's Son will marry Himself upon thee! "I will marry thee unto Me in faith and in righteousness." "Thou that was a widow and reproached," like a poor widow that has many foes, but few friends; yet, says the Lord, "Thou shalt not remember the reproach of thy widow-hood any more." Then behold, and come away to the marriage. Now, "Who are these that are invited to the marriage?" I told you, 1. The Jews are invited. 2. The Gentiles are invited; yea, you are invited; I thank the bridegroom you are invited; I shall bear witness of it, when I am gone from you, you are invited. And I thank the Lord, I have more to bear witness of; yea, that which comforts my soul, by all appearance the greatest part of you are come in, and by all good appearance ye have the wedding garment. I hope God has a people among you; this I shall bear witness of, when I am gone from among you; the greatest part has lent an ear; the Lord bear it in upon your hearts with His own blessed preference.
1. "He sent His servants forth." He gives many a cry Himself, and many a shout Himself. Is not that one of God's cries, "Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and laden, and I will ease you." O but that is a sweet word, thou art a weary thing, with a sore load of sin upon the neck of thy soul, and thou art like to sink under it, and art crying, what will come of thee? He is bidding thee come away, and get a drink of the marriage-wine to cheer thy fainting spirit; and if thou be weary, He shall ease thee.
Object. Alas! Sin hinders me, that I cannot come; sin is so black and ugly upon me, and so heavy, that I cannot come. Ans. "Come (says the Lord) I will reason with you," that is, I will have your faults discovered, and I will have you convicted of your faults; but when I have reasoned with you, will I cast you away? Nay, but though your sins were red as "crimson, they shall be made white as snow or wool."
Object. 2. Alas! but my sins are many, how can the Lord look upon me or pardon me? Ans. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, for He will abundantly pardon; for My ways are not your ways, neither My thoughts your thoughts; but as the heaven is high above the earth, so are My thoughts, (in pardoning) higher nor yours" (in sinning). Come away, poor thing, then, and get thy heart full of mercy; and because such a fair offer is hard to be laid hold on, therefore He goes to the market-cross, like an herald with a great O yes, that all men there may be awakened. It is not little that will awaken sleeping sinners, therefore He puts too an O yes. "Ho, come every one that thirsteth, buy wine and milk without money, and without price. Why do ye spend your money for nought?" Ye have spent your strength too long in vain; ye have been feeding on husks too long; ye have forsaken mercy and embraced vanity too long. Come away, and He "will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David."
2. "He sent forth His servants." This is a great wonder, that He calls on His servants, and sends them to them; this is wonderful! He stood not on compliments, who should be first in the play: ye would never have sought Him, if He had not sought you; ye would never have loved Him, if He had not loved you with the love of Christ. I would say a comfortable word to a poor soul; is there any soul in this house this day, that has chosen the Lord for the love and delight of his soul? Thou wouldst never have chosen Him, if that loving and gracious God had not chosen thee. Is there any soul in this house this day, that is filled with the love of Christ? Thou wouldst never have loved Him if He had not loved thee first. Is there any soul that is seeking unto Him in earnest? Be comforted, He is seeking thee, and hast found thee, and gart thee seek Him. I might produce scripture for all these, but the points are plain.
3. Lo, a greater wonder! "He sent forth His servants." Ye would think, if any had wronged you, it were their part to seek you, and not yours to seek them; or if any baser than another had done a wrong, it beseemed him to be the most careful to take pains, and seek to him whom he had wronged. But behold here a wonder! The great God seeking base man! the offended God seeking offending man! And is this because He has need of you? Nay, canst thou be a party for Him? Canst thou hold the field against Him? Nay, "Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus?" Shall the crawling worm and the pickle of small dust fight against the King of kings? Art thou able to stand out against Him, or pitch any field against Him? Nay, I tell thee, O man, there is not a pickle of hair in thy head, but if God arise in anger, He can cause it seem a devil unto thee, and every nail of thy fingers, to be a torment of hell against thee. O Lord of hosts, and King of kings, who can stand out against Thee? And yet thou hast offended Him, and run away from Him, and miskent Him, and transgressed all His commandments, and hell, and wrath, and judgment is thy portion which thou deservest, and yet the Lord is sending out His servants, to see if they can make an agreement. Then, for God's sake, think on this wonder: for all this text is full of wonders, all God's works are indeed full of wonders, but this is the wonder of wonders. We then are God's ambassadors, I beseech you to be reconciled to God. Should not ye have sought unto Him first, with ropes about your necks, with sackcloth upon your loins, and with tears in your eyes? Should not ye have lain at His door, and scraped, if ye could not knock? And yet the Lord hath sent me to you, and our faithful men about here, crying, Come away to the marriage: Come away, I will renew My contract with you; I will not give you a bill of divorcement, but I will give My Son to you; and your souls that are black and blae, I will make them beautiful. Behold yet another wonder! When He has sent out other servants, and they got a nay-say; yet He will not take a nay-say. Ye know a good neighbour, when he has prepared a dinner for another of his neighbours, sends out his servants, intimating that all things are ready, the table is covered, and dishes set on; if once warned, he refuses, he might well send once or twice to him, but at last he would take a displeasure, and not send again: but behold a wonder! He sends out His servants, in the plural number. But behold a great wonder! After one servant is abused, He sends out others, and when they are slain, and spitefully used by these who should have followed their call, and come in; what does the Lord? Read the chapter before, and ye shall see a great wonder; "He sent out His own SON:" when Moses cannot do it, when the prophets cannot do it, when John the Baptist cannot do it; well, says the Lord, I will see if My Son can do it; I have not a Son but one, and that is the Son of My love, and I will make Him a man, and send Him down among them, and see how they will treat Him: and when He comes, they cry out, "There is the heir, let us kill him." But behold a greater wonder! That after these servants are abused, and spitefully handled; and after the Son Himself is come, and has drunken of the same cup, after He has died a shameful death, and after they had put their hands on the heir; yet, when all is done, the Lord sends servants upon servants, preachers upon preachers, apostles upon apostles to call in the people of the Jews, to see if they will marry His Son. Then behold and wonder at all these wonders! and let all knees bow down before God. Lord stamp your hearts with this word of God: God grant you could be kind to Him, as He has been kind to you, and testified the same, by putting salve to your soul, and bringing it into the wedding.
"He sent forth His servants." We may learn from this, that we who are the brethren in the ministry must be servants, and not lords. I wish at my heart, that we knew what we are, and that we knew our calling, and what we have gotten in trust; for we serve the best Master in the world; but I'll tell you He is the strictest Master that can be. I'll tell thee, O minister, and I speak it to thee with reverence, and I speak it to myself, There is a day coming, when thou must answer to God for what thou has got in charge, thou must answer to God for all the talents thou hast got, whether ten or two; for all have not got alike. But, dear brethren, happy is the man, if he had but one talent, that puts it out for his Lord's use; and Lord be thanked, that He will seek no more of me than He has given me. There are many things to discourage a faithful minister; but yet this may encourage us, that we serve the best Master, and that is a sure recompence of reward that is abiding us. Indeed He has not sent us out to seek ourselves, or to get gain to ourselves, He has not sent us out to woo a bride to ourselves, or to woo home the lord to our own bosom only: but He has sent us to woo a bride, and to deck and trim a spouse for our Lord and Master. And ye that are ministers of Glasgow ye shall all be challenged upon this; whether or not ye have laboured to woo and trim a bride for your Lord: but I know that you will be careful to present your flocks as a chaste spouse to Him. And we also that are ministers in landwart, we are sent out for this errand, it matters not what part of the world we be in, if we do our Master's service; and the day is coming when thou must answer to God for thy parish, whether thou hast laboured to present it as a chaste spouse to Christ. It may gar the soul of the faithful minister leap for joy, when he remembers the day of His Majesty's faithful meeting and his, when he shall give up his accounts, and then it shall be seen who has employed his talent well: then shall He say, "Well done, good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into thy Master's joy." Or rather "Let thy Master's joy enter into thee, and take and fill thy soul with it." Many a sad heart has a faithful watchman; but there is a day coming when he shall get a joyful heart. But for whom especially is this joy reserved? It is even for those "who convert many to righteousness; they shall shine like the stars in the firmament, in the kingdom of their Father." It is plain this belongs not to thee, O faithless watchman. What hast thou been doing? Busking a bride for thyself? Busking a bride for the Pope of Rome, the bishop of Rome, even for antichrist? becking and bingeing to this table and that altar, bringing in the tapistry of antichristian hangings, and endeavouring to set the crown on another man's head, nor Christ's? But thou that wilt not set on the crown on His head, and labour to hold it on, thou O preacher, the vengeance of God shall come upon thee, the blood of souls shall be upon thee. Many a kirk-man eats blood, and drinks blood; Lord deliver our souls from blood-guiltiness. Dear brethren, let us repent, let us repent: I trow we have been all in the wrong to the Bridegroom; shame shall be upon thee that thinks shame to repent. I charge you all, before the timber and stones of this house, and before that same day-light that ye behold, and that under no less pain nor the loss of the salvation of your souls, that ye wrong not the Bridegroom nor his bride any more. But we come to our point:
We are servants and not lords. I see never a word in this text, nay, nor in all the scripture that the Master of the feast sent out lords to woo home his bride; He "sent out His servants," but not His lords. Read all the Bible from the beginning to the ending, you shall not find it. Daft men may dispute, and by respect may carry it away; but read all the Old and New Testament both, and let me see if ever this lord prelate, or that lord bishop, was sent to woo home his bride.
Object. 1. We have our prerogative from Aaron, from Moses, from the apostles, from Timothy. Ans. I trow ye be like bastard bairns that can find no father. So they shall never be able to get a father, for man has set them up, and man is their father.
Object. 2. Find we not the name of bishop under the New Testament? Ans. Yes; but not the bishop of a diocese, such as my Lord Glasgow, and my Lord St. Andrew's; but we find a pastor or a bishop over a flock. It is a wonderful matter to me, that men should think to reason this way; for in the Old Testament there is not an office, nor an office-bearer, but is distinctly determined in the making of the tabernacle; there is not a tackle, nor the quantity of it, not a curtain, nor the colour thereof, not a snuffer, nor a candlestick, nor a besom that sweeps away the filth, nor an ash-pan that keepeth the ashes, but all are particularly set down; yet, ye will not get a bishop, nor an archbishop, nor this metropolitan, nor that great and cathedral man, no not within all the Bible. The Lord pity them; for indeed I think them objects of pity, rather than of malice. Christ is a perfect king, and a perfect prophet. Thou canst never own Him to be a perfect priest and king, that denies Him to be perfect prophet; and a perfect prophet He can never be, except He has set down all the offices and office-bearers requisite for the government of His house; but so has He done, therefore is He perfect.
Obj. 3. But they will call themselves servants. Ans. 1. The fox may catch a while the sheep, and the Pope may call himself servus servorum, the servant of servants: and they will call themselves brethren, when they write to us; but they will take it very highly and hardly, if we call them brethren, when we write back to them again: but men shall be known by their fruits, and by their works, to be what they are, and not what they call themselves. But if they will be called servants and yet remain lords, let them take heed that they be not such servants, as cursed Canaan was, "a servant of servants shall he be." Take heed that they be not serving men's wrath and vengeance, and not servants "by the grace of God, and by the mercy of God," as they style themselves. 2. Let them take heed that they be not such servants as Gehazi was; he was a false servant, he ran away after the courtier Naaman, seeking gifts, and said his master sent him, when (God knows) his master sent him not; at the time he should have been praying to the Lord, to help his poor kirk and comfort her; the curse and vengeance of God came upon him, and he was stricken with leprosy for his pains; such servants are these men who now sit down on their cathedral nests, labouring to make themselves great like Gehazi: let them take heed that their hinder end be not like his. 3. Let them take heed that they be not such servants as Ziba was to Mephibosheth, who not only took away what was his by right, but also went to the king with ill tales of poor cripple Mephibosheth: such servants are these who not only rob the church of her privileges and liberties, but also run up to the king with lies and ill tales of poor Mephibosheth, the cripple kirk of Scotland. 4. Let them take heed that they be not such servants as Judas was, an evil servant indeed; he sold his Master for gain, as ill servants do. Or like these that strike the bairns when they are not doing any fault: and they are ill servants who busk their master's spouse with antichrist's busking. Wo unto them, and the man who is the head of their kirk, whose cross and trumpery they would put on the Lord's chaste spouse. But if they will call themselves servants, and yet remain lords, let them take heed that they be not of this category that I have reckoned up. The Lord make us faithful servants, and the Lord rid His house of them.
Time will not suffer me to go through the rest of the text, only I will take a glance of some things which make for your use at this time.
Quest. How are their servants treated? Ans. Some of them get nolumus upon the back of their bill: some of them are beaten, and spitefully used and slain. Dear hearts, know ye not how Moses was used? how Aaron and Jeremiah, &c., were used? how Zechariah was slain between the porch and the altar? how Jeremiah was smitten; and he that did it, got his name changed into Magor Missabib, terror round about? Know ye not that Zedekiah struck Micaiah; and how his threatenings against him came to pass? Always we may learn from this, that the Lord's best servants have been, and will be abused, and spitefully used? This is a great sin lying upon Scotland, England and Ireland. Many faithful servants in the three kingdoms have been spitefully used; their cheeks burnt, their noses ript up, their faces marked; some of them put into a stinking prison, where they had not an hour's health, and many of them rugged from their flocks, and their flocks from them. Look over to the kingdom of Ireland, the many desolate congregations that are there; many a dear one there, that would have had a blyth soul, to have had your last Sunday, or seen it, or to have assurance of such a day before they come into Heaven. Pray for the peace of Zion, and pity those poor things who would be content to go from one sea-bank to the other, to be in your place to-day. And truly the blood of these poor things is crying for vengeance to light where it should light; for the blame lies upon none but the proud prelates. If I would pose you with this question, as you will answer to God, Who have been the instruments of all this mischief? I am sure the most ignorant among you can answer, None but the proud beasts the prelates. The Lord give them repentance.
I know not how you have handled your pastors in this town, because I am but a stranger; but trow ye that two silly men that came among you can do any thing, if your own pastors had not laid the foundations: but, for God's sake, honour and respect your pastors, I mean those of them that keep the covenant of Levi. And ye that have broken it, and will not come to renew it again, shame and dishonour will be upon you for evermore. I have my message from the 2nd of Malachi, "I will pour contempt upon them who have broken the covenant of Levi." Therefore let pastors and people enter both within this covenant; for it is the sweetest thing in the world, to see pastors and a people going one way. Therefore come away all of you unto the wedding, come and subscribe the contract, put your heart and hand to it. Blessed be God for what already ye have done.
Some of the servants got a nay-say, and some of them were beaten; hence we learn, that every minister will not be beaten, nor will get the stroke to keep; but if a minister get a nay-say, it will make him as sad as if he had gotten sore strokes. If a minister get a nay-say that has been travailing these many years in the ministry, and yet cannot get one soul brought unto the Lord, that will make him as sad as sore strokes will do. When an honest minister has laboured many years painfully in the sweat of his brows, and has never had another tune, but, Come away, come away unto the marriage; and when he walks among them, and sees never one coming in, nor never one that has on the wedding garment, what will be the complaint of the poor man? O then he will cry out with Isaiah, "Lord, who believes my report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been made naked? Lord, I have laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nought." What will come of me, after so many years' travail in the ministry? I have not brought forth one child. The Lord forbid that ye our people break your ministers' hearts. And as for you, brethren, be more watchful over your flocks, be more busy in catechising and exhorting them. And urge the duty of the covenant upon them, and when they are on foot, hold them going; lead them to the fountain and cock-eye. Lead them to the well-spring; and make meikle of them; feed the Lord's lambs, as Christ said to Peter, "If thou lovest Me, feed My sheep; lovest thou Me? I say, feed My sheep." Minister, lovest thou me? feed my bais'd sheep: lovest thou me? feed my lambs. You must be feeders, and not fleecers; pastors, but not wolves; builders, but not destroyers; and come away, and help up the broken-down wall of Jerusalem. For if one of you can bring timber here, another bring mortar, a third bring stones, and make up a slap in Zion; and I hope we that came here shall go home with blyth news to our congregations, that we cannot say we have got a cold welcome; so I hope ye will think it your greatest comfort, and your greatest credit also. Venture in covenant with God, and whosoever thou be, that wilt not enter in covenant, we will have thy name, and we will pour out our complaints before God for thee; for we that are ministers must be faithful to our Master; and I take you all to witness, that we have discharged our commission faithfully; and I hope the blessing of the Lord shall be upon them that have given us an invitation of this kind: and it may be your greatest comfort, that now ye may go homely unto the Lord, being formerly in covenant with Him; and your greatest credit also, for ye never got such a credit, as to lend your Master's honour a lift. We come to the excuses.
"But they went their way, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise." Luke is more large in this, and saith, "I have bought a piece of ground, and must needs go see it;" another said, "I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them;" and the third said, "I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come." 1. We learn here, that never a man refuses Christ but from some by-respects, such as a farm, oxen, and marriage. I never saw a man staying back from the covenant, but from some by-respects; either some respect to the world, or to men, or to the court, or such bastard by-respects to some statesmen, or to a prelate, or to the King himself, who, we trust, ere it be long, shall think them the honestest men that came in soonest; therefore cast away all by-respects. The apostle John includes their excuses under three different expressions, "The pride of life," including the farm; "The lust of the heart," including the merchandise; and "The lust of the flesh," including the marriage. Therefore let every soul that would love and follow Christ, deny himself, and lay aside excuses. Deny thy own wit, will, and vanities, and lay aside all by-respects, and I shall warrand thou shalt come running, and get Christ in thy arms. 2. Is it a respect to prelacy that hinders thee, O Scotland? cursed be the day that ever they were born. 3. Is it a respect to the novations already come into Scotland? I may say cursed be these brats of Babel. It had been best to have rent them at the beginning, for many woful days have they brought on, and woful divisions have they brought in, and woful backslidings have they occasioned. Therefore away with these by-respects. 4. Is it a respect to the king? The Lord bless our king. Says not the covenant enough for the maintenance of the king? As for the word which they call combinations, it reserves always the honour of God, and the honour of the king; protesting, that we mind nothing that may tend to the diminution of the king's greatness and authority. Yea, I know no other means under heaven to make many loyal subjects, but by renewing our covenant.
I would have had the men that made these excuses framing them another way; I would have had him that married the wife, saying, My wife has married me; and he that bought his oxen, saying, My oxen have bought me; and he that went to his farm, saying, My farm has bought me. And if ye will mark the words, ye will find them run this way. 1. Marriage is lawful; but when a man beasts himself in his carnal pleasures, then the wife marries the man; "therefore let them that have wives, be as though they had them not, and them that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not." 2. Buying of farms is lawful, but when a man becomes a slave to his own gain, it takes away the soul of him, the farm buys the man; likewise husbandry is lawful, but when a man yokes his neck under the world, it trails and turmoils him so, that he cannot take on the yoke of Jesus. 3. Thus also the merchandise buys the man. Then, for Jesus Christ's sake, cast away all excuses, and come away now, and marry Christ. 1. Away with thy bastard pleasures. 2. Away with thy bastard cares, and come away to Christ, and He shall season all thy cares. 3. Away with thy falsehood, thy pride, vanity, &c. Away with thy corn, wine and oil, and come to Christ, and He shall lift up His countenance upon thee. The Lord give thee a blink of that, and then thou wilt come hopping with all thy speed, like unto old Jacob, when he saw the angels ascending and descending, then he ran fast, albeit he was tired, and had got a hard bed, and a far harder bolster the night before, yet he got a glorious sight, and his legs were soupled with consolation, which made him run. Lord blink upon thy lazy soul with His amiable countenance, and then thou shalt rise and run, and thy fainting heart will receive strength, when the Lord puts in His hand by the key-hole of the door, and leaves drops of myrrh behind Him, then a sleepy bride will rise and seek her Beloved. But to our point.
Marriage is lawful, merchandise is lawful, husbandry is lawful, but never one of these is lawful when they hinder thee from the Lord. Neither credit, pleasure, preferment, houses nor lands are lawful, when they hinder thee from the Lord's sweet presence. Jerome said well, "Though my old father were hanging about my neck, and my sweet mother had me in her arms, and all my dear children were sticking about me, yet when my Lord Jesus called upon me, I would cast off my old father, and throw my sweet mother under foot, and throw away all my dear children, and run away to my Lord Jesus." Lord grant, my beloved, that what ye have heard of Christ may sink in your souls: and when ye have seen poor things running here and there, to get a prayer here, and a prayer there, and ye wonder what they are seeking, they are seeking their Beloved; and if ye ask, "What is their Beloved more than another?" They will answer, my Beloved is the fairest and trimmest, and the highest and honourablest in the world; He has the sweetest eyes, the sweetest cheeks, the sweetest lips, and trimmest legs and arms, "yea He is altogether lovely;" and then they will be made to cry out, "O thou fairest among women, tell us whither is thy Beloved gone, that we may seek Him with thee?" O if we knew Him! Lord work upon you the knowledge of Him. O what a business would you make to be at Him! Lord grant that our ministry may leave a stamp upon your hearts. Then had we gotten a rich purchase. Would to God ye were like that marquis in Italy, who fled from thence to Geneva, being persecuted by the Jesuits; and when they followed him, and offered him sums of gold, he answered, "Let those perish forever who part with an hour's fellowship with Christ, for all the gold under heaven." And sundry of the martyrs being at the stake, having this and that offered to them, they had still this word, None but Christ, none but Christ: and when they were bidden, Have mind of your well favoured wife, and your poor children; they answered, "If I had all the money and gold in the world, I would give it to stay with my wife and poor children, if it were but in a stinking prison; but sweet Christ is dearer unto me than all." Then cast away all excuse. Would to God we were like that woman, when going to the stake; "I have borne many children, (says she) and yet notwithstanding of all these pains, I would suffer them all over again, for one hour's fellowship with my Lord." Then come away, come away, cast away all excuses, come away; as the Saviour says, "The storm is past and over, the winter is away, the time of singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; arise, my fair one, and come away." God be thanked, there is a sad winter over Scotland's head, and our figs are blossoming, and our trees are budding, and bringing forth fruit, now is the turtle singing, and his voice is heard in our land: now is Christ's voice heard, now is our Bridegroom standing waiting on our way-coming; and here am I in His name, crying unto you, Come away: here am I to honour my Master: all honour be to Him for ever and ever. Come away then, for the winter is going, the summer is approaching, our vines are blossoming, in token of a fair summer: arise, arise, and come away.
Ver. 9. "Go ye, therefore, out to the highways:" as if He would say, Well, I see the Jews will not come in; "therefore go your ways and fetch in the Gentiles." Yet I hope in God, there shall many of the Jews come in shortly. They spake for you, when ye could not speak for yourselves; they said, "We have a little sister, and she has no breasts; what shall we do for her in the day she shall be spoken for?" Now pray ye for them. Always they refused to come in, as ye heard; and not being worthy, they would not come to Him, to make them worthy.—Always, says the Lord, go out, and call in the Gentiles to My table, My Son may not want a wife: He is too great a king to want a spouse, and My supper is too good cheer to be lost; therefore go and fetch in the Gentiles. I thank the Lord that ye are come in. I know not a town in the kingdom of Scotland that is not come in, except one, and I am afraid for the wrath of God to light on that shortly. Always God hath His own time. But trow ye, that God will give that honour to every one? Nay. I protest in my own silly judgment (howbeit I cannot scance upon kings crowns) that it were the greatest honour that ever king Charles got, to subscribe the covenant. But trow ye that every minister and every burgh will come in? Nay: if you will read the history, 2 Chron. xxx. 10, you will see the contrary; when Hezekiah was going to renew the covenant, and to keep the passover, the holy text says, that numbers mocked, and thought themselves over jelly to come in; but those whose hearts the Lord had touched, they came in and kept the blyth day. Indeed I was afraid once, that Christ would have left old Scotland, and gone to new Scotland, and that He would have left old England, and gone to new England: and think ye not but He can easily do this? Has He not a famous church in America, where He may go? Indeed I know not a kingdom in all the world, but if their plots had gone on, they had been at antichrist's shore ere now; but all his limbs and liths, I hope shall be broken, and then shall our Lord be great: therefore come away in with your wedding garment, and ye that have not put it on, now put it on, and come away to the marriage: and I thank the Lord, that ye are prevailed with, by God's assisting of our faithful brethren to bring you in; the Lord grant that ye may come in with your wedding garment. It is but a small matter for you to hold up your hand; and yet, I suspect, some of you when it was in doing took a back-side. I tell you that it is no matter of sport, to board with God: therefore come away with your wedding garment; for the Master of the feast sees you, and knows all that are come to the marriage feast. I know you not, but my Master knows you every one: He knows who came in on Sabbath and who came in yesterday, and who will come in to-day, and who are going to put on their wedding garment, and cast away their duds. Away with your duds of pride, your duds of greed and of malice; away with all these duds, and be like the poor blind man in the gospel, who when he knew that Christ called him, he cast his old cloak from him, and came away; so do ye, cast aside all excuses, and come to the wedding. And now with a word of the wedding garment I will end.
This wedding garment consists of three pieces: 1. There is one piece of it looks to God, and that is holiness. 2. There is another piece of it looks to ourselves, and that is sobriety. 3. Another piece of it looks to our neighbour, and that is righteousness.
The first is holiness; I charge you to put it on: ye that are the provost and bailies, I love you dearly, and all the members of the town; gentlemen, and all gentlewomen, and all of you I love you dearly; and therefore I charge you all before God, in my last farewell unto you, to be holy, according as ye have sworn in your covenant.
2. Be sober. Howbeit I be a stranger, yet I like brotherly love and Christian fellowship well; but drunkenness and gluttony, feasting and carousing I hate, especially now when the kirk of Scotland is going in dool-weed: therefore be sober. 1. Be sober in your apparel; I think there is too much of gaudy apparel among you. 2. Be sober in your conceits. 3. Be sober in your judgments. 4. Be sober in your self-conceiting. 5. Be sober in your speaking. 6. Be sober in your sleeping. 7. Be sober in your lawful recreations. 8. Be sober in your lawful pleasures: and finally be sober in all respects; that it may be seen ye are the people that have renewed your covenant.
3. Be righteous. I know not if ye have false weights and balances among you; but whether there be or not, I give you all charge, who have sworn the covenant, to be righteous.
In a word, this wedding garment is Jesus Christ; "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ." I cannot give you a better counsel nor Christ gave to Martha; forget the many things, and choose that one thing which is needful; and with David, still desire that one thing, "To behold the beauty of the Lord in His temple;" and with Paul, "Forget the things that are behind, and press forward to the prize of the high-calling thro' Jesus Christ." The Lord fill your hearts with the love of Christ.
If thou askest, What will this garment do to thee? I answer, This garment serves, 1. For necessity. 2. For ornament. 3. For distinction.
1. For necessity. And this is threefold. 1. To cover thy nakedness, and hide thy shame. 2. To defend thy body from the cold of winter, and heat of summer. 3. For necessity, to hold in the life of the body. So put on Jesus Christ this wedding garment; and, 1. He shall cover the shame of thy nakedness with the white linen of His righteousness. 2. He shall defend thee when the wind of trial begins to blow rough and hard, and when the blast of the terrible One is arising, to rain fire and brimstone upon the world; "Then He shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day time from the heat, and a place of refuge for a covert from storm and from rain." "A refuge from the storm, and shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall." When men are pursuing, He shall be a brazen wall about thee; and when they pursue thee, He shall keep thee in His bosom.
2. A garment is for an ornament. Who is the best favoured body; and the trimmest soul? Even the poor soul that has put on the bridegroom Jesus: that soul is fair and white, and altogether lovely, "There is no spot in it," because the Lord hath put upon it, "Broidered work, bracelets and ornaments."
3. A garment is for distinction. There must be a distinction among you, between you and the wicked world, because ye have renewed your covenant with God: and this distinction must not only be outwardly (for an hypocrite may seem indeed very fair) but it must be by inward application. I desire you all that are hearing me, not only to put it on, but to hold it on: put it on, and hold it on; for it is not like another garment, neither in matter, nor shape, nor in use, nor in durance. I may not insist to handle it, but it is not like other garments, especially it is not like a bridegroom's garment, which he has on to-day, and off to-morrow. Therefore I charge you all your days, to hold it on. Ay, that which ye had on upon Sabbath last, and yesterday, and which you have on this day, see that ye cast it not off to-morrow. What heard you cried on Sabbath last, and yesterday, and this day? Hosanna, hosanna. And wherefore cried ye yesterday and this day, Hosanna, hosanna? Look that when we are away, and your ministers not preaching to you, that ye cry not, "Crucify Him, crucify Him." I fear that many who last Sabbath, yesterday and this day, have been crying Hosanna, hosanna, shall, long ere the next Sabbath, cry, "Crucify Him, and hang Him up." But I charge you, O sons of Zion, and ye daughters of Jerusalem, that your tongues never cease in crying, Hosanna, till Christ come and dwell in your soul.
Ye that are masters of this college, if ye count me worthy to speak to you, I would have you keep your garments clean, and take heed that ye be not spotted with uncovenanted spots. Ye that are scholars, take heed what sort of learning and traditions ye drink in, and hold your garments clean. We hear of too many colleges in the land, that are spotted; but we hope in God that ye are yet clean: and young and old of you, take all heed to your garments, that they be white, and clean, and beautiful.
For the Lord's sake, all ye that are hearing me, take heed to your garments, but especially ye that have subscribed your covenant, take heed to your garments; for blyth will your adversaries be, to see any spot on them. And therefore, for the Lord's sake, study to be holy; otherwise papists will rejoice at it, and the weak will stumble at it: and so ye will wound and bore the sweet side of Christ. And therefore put on your wedding garment, hold it on, and hold it clean; walk wisely and before the world.
Now I commend you to Him Who is able to strengthen, stablish and settle you: to Him be glory, honour and dominion, for ever and ever. Amen.
[Fac-simile of old Title page of following Sermon]
THE NATIONAL COVENANT:
SERMON AT EDINBURGH.[5]
BY ANDREW CANT.
"Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou
shalt become a plain, and he shall bring forth the head-stone
thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it." —Zech. iv. 7.
I perceive that God will have His temple built, which had been long neglected; partly by the worldliness of the people, who had greater care of their own houses, than of the house of God; as appears by the prophet Haggai, chap. i. 3,4. He reproves them for this fault, that they cared more for their own houses than for the house of God; partly, because of the great impediments and difficulties they apprehended in the work. Yet God, having a purpose to have it builded, sends His prophets to stir them up to the building of it. As for impediments He promises to remove them all, and assures them of this by Haggai and Zechariah; yea, He shews to Zerubbabel and the people, that although impediments were as mountains, yet they should be removed.
I need not stand upon introductions and connections: this verse I have read, shows the scope of the prophet; viz. God will have His work going on, and all impediments removed. These times require that I should rather insist upon application to the present work of reformation in hand, than to stand upon the temple of Jerusalem, which we know well enough was a type of Christ's kirk, which in this land was once built, but now hath been defaced by the enemies of Christ: we have long neglected the re-edifying of it; partly, men being given more to build their own houses, nor the house of Christ; and partly, because of the great impediments that have discouraged God's people to meddle with it. Now, it hath pleased God to stir up prophets, noblemen, and people of the land, to put their hands to this work. And I think God saith to you in this text, "Who art thou, O great mountain? thou shalt become a plain."
There are two parts in this text; 1. An impediment removed, under the name of a mountain, "Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel, thou shalt become a plain." 2. In the second part of the text, the work goeth up, and is finished, the impediment being removed, "He shall bring forth the head-stone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace be unto it."
But that ye may take up all that is to be said in order and method; there are six steps in the text, three in the mountain, impeding the work, and three in the work itself. The three in the mountain are these; 1. It is a mountain seen, "O great mountain!" 2. A mountain reproved, "Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel." 3. A mountain removed, "Thou shalt become a plain." The three in the work are; 1. A work growing and going up. 2. A work finished, "He shall bring forth the head-stone thereof." 3. A work praised, "He shall bring forth the head-stone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace be unto it." I shall speak of all these, God willing, and apply them to the time.
As for the three in the mountain. 1. It is a mountain seen; it is called a great mountain; under this are comprehended all impediments and difficulties impeding the building; all being taken together make up a great mountain, which is unpassable; the enemies who impede this work were this mountain: look and ye will see the adversaries of Judah become a great mountain in the way of that work.
That ye may take up this mountain the better, I find that kings are called mountains in Scripture; and good kings are so called, for these three, 1. For their sublimity; as mountains are high above the valleys, so are kings lifted up in majesty above their subjects: some apply that place to kings, "Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth." 2. They are called mountains for their strength to guard their people. David saith, "God hath made my mountain strong." 3. Good kings are called mountains, by reason of their influence for peace to the people: "The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness." I find also, that the strong enemies of the church are called mountains, because of the great impediments to the kirk's building that are made by them, as ye may see in Psalm cxliv.
This mountain (that I may speak more plainly) is Prelacy, which hath ever been the mountain in the way of our reformation. It may be, some of you that hear me, are not of my judgment concerning episcopacy; for my judgment, I ever condemned it, as having no warrant for it to be in Christ's house; yet I am sure, that all of you that are here this day, will agree with me in this, that prelacy being antichristian, is intolerable: but such is the prelacy of this kirk, it is antichristian. I may easily prove, that amongst many marks of antichrist, these two are most evident, false doctrine and tyranny in government: where antichrist is, there is tyrannical government, imposing laws upon the consciences of God's people; where antichrist is, there is idolatry, superstition and error; these two are clearly in our prelacy: their idolatry, superstition, and error may be seen in their service-book, their tyranny may be seen in their book of canons. I think there are none here, but they may see this mountain: no greater tyranny hath ever been used by antichrist, than hath been used by our prelates, and exercised upon this kirk.
This mountain being seen by you all; I would have you take a view of the quality of it. I find in Scripture, that the enemies of the kirk being called mountains, are so called, because of these three qualities: the first is in Psalm lxxvi. 4. they are called "mountains of prey;" so called, because from them the robbers rush down to the vallies, and prey upon the passengers. The second is in Jer. li. 25, Babylon, a great enemy to God's kirk, is called a "destroying mountain;" the word in its own language, is called a pestiferous mountain, (so called) because the pest destroys. The third is in Isa. ii. 14, they are called "mountains of pride;" compared with the twelfth verse, you will find these mountains called "mountains of pride."
Our mountain of prelacy hath all these three bad qualities: 1. It is a mountain from which they have, like robbers, made a prey of the kirk of Christ. Tell me, I pray you, and I appeal to your own consciences, who are my brethren, if there be any privilege or liberty that ever Christ gave us, but they have taken it from us, and made a prey of it. 2. This mountain is a pestiferous mountain; it hath been the mountain that hath been as a pest, to infect the kirk of Christ with superstition, heresy and error; and withal, it hath been a destroying mountain; for they have destroyed the fair carved work of our first reformation. 3. They are mountains of pride; for greater pride cannot be, than there is upon this mountain; they rule as tyrants over their brethren, and as lords over God's inheritance.
Ye that are noblemen are the natural mountains of this kingdom, descended of noble predecessors who have been as mountains indeed, defending both kirk and commonwealth. These men were but low vallies, and now are artificial mountains, made up by the art of man; at first, as low as their brethren sitting there; but piece and piece, they have mounted up; at first, commissioners for the kirk, and then obtained vote in parliament, and then they usurped all the liberties of the kirk benefices, and then constant moderators to make up this mountain; and at last, the high commission is given to make the mountain strong; it is like to Daniel's tree. "The tree grew, and was strong;" and from it, we that are ministers of Christ have our wreck.
And let me speak to you noblemen, these artificial and stooted mountains have over-topped you who are the natural mountains; and if they have not done so, What means the great seal then? and if way could have made for it, they should have carried the white wand and privy-seal also: and this is just with God, that they have over-topped you; for every one of you came with your own shovel-ful, to make up this mountain. It was thought expedient to rear up this mountain, to command and bear down poor ministers. Albeit, it is true, we have been borne down by them; yet ye that are the high mountains, have not been free from their hurt: it is very like to Jotham's parable, "The trees of the forest will have a king over them; they come to the olive-tree, and say, Be thou king over us: the olive saith, I will not leave my fatness to be king: they came to the fig-tree, and said, Be thou our king; the fig-tree saith, I will not leave my sweetness to be king: they come likewise to the vine, and say, Be thou our king; the vine saith, I will not leave my strength to be king: they come to the bramble and said, Be thou our king; then said the bramble to the trees, If indeed ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust under my shadow; and if not, let fire come forth of the bramble, and devour the tall cedars of Lebanon." The olive-trees of the ministry would not leave the fatness of God's grace, wherewith they were endued, to rule over the kirk: the fig-trees of the ministry would not leave the sweet fruits of their ministry, to bear rule in the kirk: the vines of the ministry would not leave the strong consolations of God, whereby many souls were comforted, to bear rule in the kirk: yet the brambles have taken this, and ye helped to exalt them, upon condition to trust under their shadow; and if fire hath not come forth from these brambles upon the tall cedars of this land, I leave to your own thoughts to judge. Always this is the mountain which ye see all reared up this day, and standing in the way of our reformation.
2. The second thing in this great mountain is this, It is a mountain reproved: "Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel." When he saith of Zerubbabel, it is not only meant of Zerubbabel, but of the rest of God's people. There, Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the rest of God's people obeyed the voice of the Lord; and in the 14th verse, all these are said to work in the house of the Lord: so under Zerubbabel, all the rest of the people are comprehended; even so in this work of ours, all that are joined to this work, for the building of this work, are to be accounted workers; and for them also is this mountain reproved, "Who art thou, O great mountain?" Who art thou, who will impede this work, or shall be able to impede it, seeing God will have it forward. It is impossible for thee to impede it, in these three respects: 1. In respect of the work itself. 2. In respect of the workers. 3. In respect of the impeders.
1. In respect of the work itself. It is God's work; for the house is His, and He is in it. The Lord saith, "Be thou strong, Zerubbabel, and Joshua, and the remnant of the people and work, for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts." If God be with a work, who is he that will let or impede it? God is with this work of reformation, as ye yourselves can witness; and by all our expectations this mountain is shaken, and (God be praised) the difficulties are not so unpassable as they were.
2. No man is able to impede this work, in respect of the workers. It is said, "that God stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, and of Joshua, and of the people, and they came and wrought in the house of the Lord." When God stirs up men to do a good work, nothing on earth can stay it: I am sure if ever God stirred up men to a good work, He hath stirred us up to this, both noblemen, ministers and people. Wherefore, "Who art thou, O great mountain" before God's people, that thinks to impede such a work?
3. In respect of the impeders: what are they but men, and wicked men, as ye may see in the adversaries of the Jews. Who are they that impede our work? Even men that seek honour and preferment of this world, enemies to religion, fighting against God; to whom, I may say that word in Job, "Who hath hardened himself against God, and prospered?" With one word more I will reprove this mountain, and go forward.
"Who art thou, O great mountain?" Wilt thou search thyself who thou art: art thou of God's building or not? I trow you are not juris divini, but humani; God nor Christ hath never built thee: thou art only a hill of man's erecting; knowest thou not that Zion, against which thou art, is a hill of God's building. I will say to you then that word, "The hill of God is a high hill, as the hill of Bashan: why leap ye, ye hills? This is the hill that God desireth to dwell in; yea, and will dwell in it forever." And think ye to prevail against the people of Zion? She hath stronger mountains to guard her than ye have, "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people, from henceforth and forever."
3. The third thing in this mountain, is, It is a mountain removed, "Thou shalt become a plain;" that is, God shall remove all impediments before Zerubbabel, and his people; God is able to remove all that impedes His work; even the mightiest enemies that oppose themselves to the work of God. Ye may observe a fourfold power of God against these mountains.
1. A determining power, whereby He sets such bounds to the greatest mountains, that ye see they fall not upon the vallies, albeit they overtop them. The Lord hath set bounds to the great kings in the world which they could not pass, when they have set themselves against the Lord's people. We may see an example of this in Sennacherib. "Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come up to this city, nor shoot an arrow against it, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it." Ye are afraid of the king, that he come against you: fear not, the Lord by His restraining power is able to keep him back, that he shall not shoot so much as a bullet against this city.
2. God removes impediments by His assisting power, as He promised to do before Cyrus. "I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the iron bars." Albeit for any thing we see, there be brazen gates, and iron bars, closing out a reformation: yet let not this discourage you; God is with you by His assisting power to go before you, to make all crooked places straight, and to break the brazen gates, and to cut in sunder the iron bars.
3. God hath a changing power, whereby He makes mountains plain: how easy is it with God, to make the highest mountain that impedes His work a plain? "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of waters, to turn it whithersoever He will." Lord make our mountains thus plain.
The 4th way how God removes mountains, is by an overthrowing power: If there be no change yet, God will bring it down. "Every one that is lifted up shall be brought low."
By this which hath been said, ye may understand how a mountain may be made plain. God makes mountains plains, either in mercy or in wrath. 1. In mercy, when He takes a grip of the heart, and of a proud haughty heart, makes it toward and plain: we have seen such a change by experience. This work had many enemies at the beginning, that impeded it, whom God hath taken by the heart, and made plain; yea, He hath made them furtherers of the work.
2. There is another way of making mountains plain, to wit, making plain in wrath; when God overthrows the mountains that stand up impeding His work. Assure yourselves, if God bring not down this mountain we have to do with, in mercy, He shall overthrow it in wrath, and make it waste. That I may make this mountain more plain, ye shall consider how it shall become a plain, and how easily it may be made a plain.
1. I see you looking up to the height of it, and ye are saying within yourselves, How shall it come down? Ye must not think that it will come down of its own accord; God useth instruments to pull down. I find that God hath made His own people instruments to pull down such mountains: "Fear not, worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel, I will help thee, saith the holy One and thy Redeemer, behold I will make thee a new threshing instrument having teeth; thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff; thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them." Mark these words, although Jacob be a worm, despised by the great ones of the world, yet God will make him a threshing instrument, to beat these mountains in pieces. The professors of this land are despised by the mountains; yet fear not, for the sharp threshing instrument is made, I hope it shall beat the mountains in pieces. We think them very high, but if we had faith, that word would be verified. "Ye shall say to this mountain, remove to yonder place, and it shall be removed, and nothing shall be impossible unto you."
But one is saying, I have not faith, that all that are joined this day against the mountain shall continue. I hope they shall continue, I hope they shall; but if they do not, we trust not in men, that they shall bring down this mountain, but in God, who hath said, "Behold I am against thee, O destroying mountain, I will stretch out My hand upon thee, I will roll thee down from the rocks, and make thee a burnt mountain; they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a foundation; thou shalt be desolate for ever." This mountain ye see so exalted, although men would hold it up, yet God will bring it down, and make it a burnt mountain: even so, O Lord, do.
2. In the second place consider how this mountain may be made a plain: I told you it was but an artificial mountain, a stooted mountain, standing upon weak pillars; if ye would take a look of the whole frame of the mountain, it stands upon two main pillars; and upon the top of the mountain stands the house of Dagon, an house of false worship, and take me the pillars from episcopacy, and it shall fall; take episcopacy away, and the house of Dagon shall fall. The two main pillars that prelacy stands on are a civil and secular arm, and an ecclesiastical tongue, so to speak.
1. The secular arm is the authority of princes, which have ever upholden that mountain: ye know secular princes uphold antichrist, and prelacy in this land is upholden by the secular power. 2. The second pillar I call ecclesiastical, that is, prelacy in this land hath been upholden by the tongues of kirkmen, preaching up this mountain, or, by their pens, writing up this mountain: and these are the two pillars whereupon our mountain of prelacy is stooted, the secular power, and the tongues of kirkmen. Let the king withdraw his power and authority from the prelates, and they shall fall suddenly in dross; let kirkmen and ministers withdraw their tongues and pens from them, and our mountain (ere ye look about you) shall become a plain. As these two stoot up this mountain, so upon this mountain all false worship in the kirk is built, even Dagon's house. "Lead me," says Samson, "to the pillars that Dagon's house stands on, that I may be avenged for my two eyes." The Philistines were never more cruel to Samson in pulling out his eyes, than our prelates would have been to us: they pressed to put out our eyes, and ere ever we were aware, they thought to lead us to Dagon's house, even to the tents of popery and idolatry. Let us come to this main pillar of Dagon's house, and apply all our strength to pull it down; that we may not only be avenged for our eyes, which they have thought to pull out, but also that the house of false worship, which is erected upon this mountain, may fall to the ground.
I hear some say, Minister, for all you are saying, the mountain will not come down at this time; ye think nothing but it will come down. I assure you, I would have it down, but ye must not think us that silly, as to think it will come down, because we have many for us; we trust not in men, but in God; and if this be the time that God will have it down, although ye should lay all your hands about their head, they shall come down: it appears they will come down, if there were no more but their pride, avarice, cruelty, and loose living to pull them down, especially when all these are come to height, as they are come to in them. And so much for the mountain; ye see we have reproved it, God remove it.
I come now to the three in the work, the mountain being removed, 1. It is a work growing and going up; "He shall bring forth." 2. It is a work finished; "He shall bring forth the head-stone thereof." 3. It is a work praised; "He shall bring forth the head-stone thereof with shouting, crying, grace, grace, be unto it." We shall speak of all these three shortly.
1. It is a work going up; it was impeded, but now it is going up. There is something here very considerable; the work goes not up until the mountain be made a plain. The mountain must not be pared or topped, but it must altogether become plain, otherwise the work cannot go up, the mountain of prelacy must not be pared nor topped, something taken away, but it must be brought down wholly, otherwise the work of Reformation cannot go on, neither Christ's house go up.
It will be said, What ails you? You shall have your desires, but the estate of bishops must stand; it is impossible to bring it down altogether; the king may not want an estate, (truly a good one both to kirk and commonwealth) ye shall have them brought within the old bounds and caveats set down to them; they shall not hurt the kirk any more. The Lord knows how loath I was to speak from this place; but seeing God hath thrust me out, I must speak the truth.
I say to you these quarters are not to be taken, because the mountain is not of God's making, but of man's; therefore make it what ye will, God will be displeased with it; yea it is impossible to set caveats to keep them. I appeal to all your consciences, Is it possible to set caveats to their pride and avarice? Their pride and avarice will break through ten thousand caveats. I will clear this impossibility by similitudes. Tell me, if a fountain in the town of Edinburgh were poisoned, whether were it more safe to stop up the fountain, than to set a guard to keep it, that none draw out of it, for there is hope the poison would do no harm? There is no man of a sound judgment, but he will think it more safe to stop up the fountain, than to guard it: this prelacy is the poisoned fountain, wherefrom the kirk of Christ hath been poisoned with the poison of error and superstition. Now the question is, Whether it be safer to stop it up than to guard it? Surely it is safer to stop it up; for all the caveats in the world will not keep the kirk unpoisoned, so long as it remains. I will give you another similitude: If the town of Edinburgh were (as many towns have been, and are) taken and possest by cruel and obstinate enemies, who would take all your liberties from you, would not suffer your magistrates to judge, and would spoil you of your goods, and use all the cruelty that could be devised against the inhabitants, if God give you occasion to be free of such a cruel and obstinate enemy: what would you do if this were proponed to you? Why may not you suffer the enemy to abide within the town? We shall take all their weapons from them, they shall never hurt you any more. Would ye not think it far better to put them out of the town altogether; both because the inhabitants would be in fear, so long as they were in the town, and because the town would never be sure: for there might be traitors among yourselves, who would steal in weapons for their hands; and so they would bring you under the former tyranny, yea under a greater. Even so it is in this case; the crudest and greatest enemies that ever the kirk of Scotland saw are those prelates; they have spoiled us of all our liberties, and exercised intolerable tyranny over us. Now the Lord is shewing a way how to be quit of them: consider the condition offered. What ails you? May ye not let them abide within the kirk: we shall take all their weapons from them; as admission of ministers, excommunication, and that terrible high commission; they shall never hurt you again. This is but the counsel of man; the counsel of God is, to put them out of the kirk altogether, otherwise the kirk can never be secure; yea, I assure you, there are as many traitors among ourselves, as would steal in the weapons again in their hands; then shall our latter estate be worse than our first: if our yoke be heavy under them now, it shall be heavier then; if they chastise us now with whips, they shall chastise us then with scorpions. I think I hear men speak like that word, "Hew down the tree, cut down his branches, shake off his leaves, scatter his fruits; nevertheless leave the stump of his roots with a band of iron and brass." The interpretation of that part of the vision is set down in the 26th verse; "Thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou hast known that the heavens bear rule." I hear men say, Hew down the tree, cut off his branches, shake off his leaves, scatter his fruits; ye shall be quit of all that; but the stump must be left banded with iron. (If it were till they knew God, it were something, but there is no appearance of that.) Consider, O man, who saith that. "No man, but the watcher, and the holy One, even He that made Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom sure to him." If God had made this estate sure to them, it would and should stand; and if God would bind down the stump of it with iron bands, we would never fear the growth of it, nor the fruit of it; but seeing they are only bands to be laid on by men, albeit the tree were hewed down, it would grow again in all the branches of it, with all the leaves of its dignity, and we should taste of the bitter fruit of it: ye that are covenanters, be not deceived, if ye leave so much as a hillock of this mountain in despite of your hearts it shall grow to a high mountain, which shall fill both kirk and commonwealth. If the kirk would be quit of the troubles of it, and if ye would have this work of reformation going up, this mountain must be made a plain altogether, otherwise the Spirit of God saith, Ye shall never prosper.
The second thing in this is a work finished; "He shall bring forth the head-stone thereof." When a head-stone is put on a house, the house is finished: ye who are reverend fathers in the kirk, who have seen the work of our first reformation, ye saw it going up, and brought to such a perfection, that the cope-stone was put on; purity of doctrine, and administration of sacraments, and sweetness of government, whereby the kirk was ruled; but woe's us all, we see with you now the roof taken off, the glorious work pulled down, and lying desolate. Now, it hath pleased God to turn again, and offer a re-edifying of this work, as He did here to the people of this temple: seeing therefore the Lord hath stirred up our spirits, to crave a re-edifying of Christ's kirk, let us never take our hands from it, till Christ have put the cope-stone on it.
I hear some say, There is more ado ere that be done; ye sing the triumph before the victory; ye will not see it go up at leisure. Ye are deceived; we sing not the triumph before the victory; some of us are afraid that it go not up so suddenly. I must say to you, if it be God's work, (as it is indeed) all the powers of the world shall never be able to hinder the putting on of the cope-stone. Ay, but say ye, It will be hindered; ere ye get the work forward, ye will find the dint of the fire and sword. Let it be so, if God will have it so, that will not impede the work: if our blood be spilt in this cause, the cope-stone shall be put on with our blood; for the kirk of God hath never prospered better nor by the blood of saints. Fear not, beloved, this work, whether it be done peaceably or with persecution, the cope-stone shall be put on it. Ye know in the beginning of the reformation, there was small likelihood that the work should go up, and be finished, because of the great power that was against it; yet the Lord brought it forward against all impediments; and put the cope-stone on it: that same God lives yet, and is as able to put the cope-stone on this work, as He was then, if ye believe.
The third thing in this work is a work praised; "He shall bring forth the head-stone thereof with shoutings, crying, grace, grace unto it." All ye that build and behold the work, will love the work, and will all wish it well. He alludes by appearance, who, when the foundation of a common work is laid, rejoices, and when it is finished, rejoices. Ye may see this clear in Ezra iii. 11: at the laying of the foundation of this temple, the people shouted with a great shout: if they did that at the laying of the foundation, much more shall they do it at the bringing forth of the head-stone thereof; as is said here, the words they cry, grace, grace. The phrase comprehends under it these three things:
1. A wish of the people of God, whereby they wish prosperity to the work. Ye may see it was a common wish. "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, As ye shall use this speech in the land of Judah, and cities thereof, when I shall bring again their captivity: the Lord bless thee, O habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness."
2. It comprehends under it a thanksgiving; the workers give all praise to the work. When the builders laid the foundation of the temple, they set the priests with their trumpets, and the Levites with their cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David: "They sang by course, praising God, and giving thanks unto the Lord, because He is good, and His mercy endureth forever."
3. The third thing it comprehends under it, is a faithful acknowledgment that the work is built and finished, by no power and strength of men, but by the grace of God. Look the verse preceding the text, and ye will find it thus, "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts:" ye may easily apply this. Our work that God is bringing up, and will finish, should be a praised work, our wishes should be to it: "The Lord bless thee, O habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness." Our song of thanksgiving should be in our mouths, "God is good, and His mercy endureth forever."—Albeit it go up, let us not ascribe any thing to ourselves, but let us ascribe all to the grace of God; and this will stop all the mouths of disdainers, who say, "Who are ye, who think to finish such a work?" We answer, "It will be finished, not by might, nor by strength of man, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts."
There are three sorts looking to this work, and to the going up of it: 1. Evil-willers. 2. Well-wishers. 3. Neutrals. 1. The evil-willers are Edom; and he was Jacob's brother; yet in Psalm cxxxvii. he cries, "raze, raze this work to the foundation." There is a number that is crying, raze, raze this work to the foundation. 2. There is a second sort that are well-wishers, crying, grace, grace be unto it. In those former years, the shout of raze, raze, hath been louder than grace, grace; but now, God be praised, the shout of grace, grace, is louder than raze, raze. 3. There is a third sort gazing upon this work, who dare not cry, raze, raze, because they are borne down with grace, grace; they dare not cry grace, grace, for fear of authority. What shall I say to these neutrals? They are so incapable of admonition, that it will be a spending of time to crave their concurrence to the work. To whom shall I speak then? My text is an apostrophe, if I may use one; that which I shall use first is God's own words from Isaiah, "Hear, O heavens, hearken, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me."
I will next turn me to strangers and foreigners. All ye of reformed kirks (What! have I said strangers? These men who are brought up in the kirk, are strangers from the womb; but) ye are joined with us in a corporation; come therefore with your fellow-feeling, let us hear your shouts and cries of, grace, grace, be unto the Kirk of Scotland; and let your wishes condemn these ungrateful neutrals, who profess themselves children of this kirk, and yet will not rejoice with us for the good of our mother.
Now, ye have heard this text in all these six steps. 1. A mountain seen. 2. A mountain reproved and disdained. 3. A mountain to be removed. 4. A growing work. 5. To be finished. 6. With great applause of all well-willers, wishing grace unto the work. And seeing I have ado with this great mountain; both with mountains that impede this work, and all ranks of persons, removers of the work, I will direct my speech to these with the apostrophe in the text.
And first, To the mountains lying in the way of this reformation: I rank them in two sorts, viz., prelates, and upholders of prelates. O prelates, if I had hope to come speed with you, I would exhort you in the name of Christ, to lay down your worldly dignity, and help us to exalt the kirk of Christ: but I fear ye have hardened yourselves so against the truth, that nothing will prevail with you, except ye keep your worldly monarchy; yet ye shall be forced to take up my apostrophe, "O mountains of Gilboa, on whom the anointed of the Lord is fallen, neither come dew nor rain upon you." Ye are these mountains, upon whom Christ and His Anointed have been slain; the dew and rain of God's grace are not on you: ye may well receive fatness from beneath, to make you great in this world; but from above, ye are not bedewed with the grace of God, without which, whatever your bodies be, ye have clean souls. Under this curse I leave you, and turn to you, O great mountains; great men, who are putting your shoulders to hold up this mountain of prelacy; I beseech you, if ye have any love to Christ, to take your shoulders, and help from this pestiferous mountain the wreck of Christ's kirk. And if exhortance will not prevail with you, I charge you in the name of the great God, and His Son Jesus Christ, to whom one day ye must give your account, that ye in nowise underprop this mountain; the which if ye obey, I am sure the Lord will bless you, and your posterity; but if ye will not, though ye were never so high a mountain in this kingdom, ye shall become a plain.
In particular, I speak to all ranks of persons. O noblemen, who are the high mountains of this kingdom, bow your tops, and look on the kirk of Christ, lying in the vallies, sighing, groaning, swooning and looking towards you with pitiful looks: if the Sun of Righteousness hath shined on you, let her have a shadow, as ye would have God to be a shadow to you in the day of your distress.
Barons and gentlemen, who are as the pleasant hills coming from the mountains (I speak to you for the relation that is betwixt you and the mountains, for by your descent ye are hewn out of the mountains) my heart is glad to see you lift your tops, as the palms of your hands reached to the mountains, that they and ye may be as a shelter for the kirk of Christ. I pray you separate not your hands from theirs, till our work be brought forth with shouting.
Burrows (Burghs), who are as the vallies God hath blessed with the fatness of the earth, and the merchandise of the sea; the mountains and hills are looking to you, and ye to them: join yourselves in an inseparable union, and compass the vineyard of Christ; be to her a wall of defence, lest the wild beasts of the wood waste it, and the wild beasts of the forest devour it.
Ministers, and my faithful brethren in Christ, whose feet are beautiful upon the mountains, say unto Zion, "Behold thy God reigneth." I tell you, within these two years, an honest man's feet were not beautiful upon the streets of Edinburgh. We might have gone home to our houses again, and shaken the dust off our feet for a conviction against this unthankful generation; but now (God be praised) they are beautiful, and we are comely in their eyes, not for any thing in us, for we lay all down at the feet of Christ; but because we are gone up upon mount Zion, and as the Lord's messengers, have cried, "Behold thy God reigneth." I pray you, if ye have any love to the kirk of Christ, withdraw both your tongues and pens from this mountain, and apply them against it; apply your wits, engines, spirits, and all your strength to beat down this mountain; yea, tread upon it, and use the sharp threshing instruments which God hath put into your hands, and thresh upon that mountain, till it be beaten small as the chaff.
Shall I pass you that are commons? Truly my delight hath not been so great upon this mountain, as to make me overlook you. My good people, beloved in Christ, have ye nothing to contribute for this work? Have ye not so much power as the mountains and hills have? Or, have ye not such substance as the vallies? Yet something ye have, give it, and it will be acceptable, something against the mountain, and something for the work. If ye have no more against the mountain, let me have your tears, prayers, and strong cries; I am sure there is as great value in them, as in the rams' horns that blew down Jericho: send up your prayers, and cry with the Psalmist, "Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down, touch the mountains, and they shall smoke; cast forth lightning, and scatter them; shoot out thine arrows, and destroy them; send thine hand from above, and deliver me out of the great waters, from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, their right hand is a right hand of falsehood." As ye have your tears and prayers against this mountain, lend me also what ye have for the going up of this work: if ye have no more, let us have your shouts and hearty crying, "grace, grace be unto it." Time will not suffer me to speak any more, yet time shall never bereave you or me of this. Let us all resolve so long as our life is in, even to the last gasp, as God will help us, that this shall be our last cry, Grace, grace be unto this work of reformation in the kirk of Scotland.
To this grace I recommend you, and close with that wish of the Apostles in the New Testament. The grace of God be with you all. Amen.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.
[St. Margarets and The Abbey, Westminster]
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT:
For Reformation and Defence of Religion, the Honour and Happiness of the King, and the Peace and Safety of the Three Kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland; agreed upon by Commissioners from the Parliament and Assembly of Divines in England, with Commissioners of the Convention of Estates, and General Assembly in Scotland; approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and by both Houses of Parliament and Assembly of Divines in England, and taken and subscribed by them, Anno 1643; and thereafter, by the said authority, taken and subscribed by all Ranks in Scotland and England the same year; and ratified by the Act of Parliament of Scotland, Anno 1644: And again renewed in Scotland, with an Acknowledgment of Sins, and Engagement to Duties, by all Ranks, Anno 1648, and by Parliament 1649; and taken and subscribed by King Charles II. at Spey, June 23, 1650; and at Scoon, January 1, 1651.
We Noblemen, Barons, Knights, Gentlemen, Citizens, Burgesses, Ministers of the Gospel, and Commons of all sorts in the kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland, by the providence of GOD, living under one King, and being of one reformed religion, having before our eyes the glory of God, and the advancement of the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the honour and happiness of the King's Majesty and his posterity, and the true publick liberty, safety, and peace of the kingdoms, wherein every one's private condition is included: And calling to mind the treacherous and bloody plots, conspiracies, attempts, and practices of the enemies of GOD, against the true religion and professors thereof in all places, especially in these three kingdoms, ever since the reformation of religion; and how much their rage, power, and presumption are of late, and at this time, increased and exercised, whereof the deplorable state of the church and kingdom of Ireland, the distressed estate of the church and kingdom of England, and the dangerous estate of the church and kingdom of Scotland, are present and public testimonies; we have now at last, (after other means of supplication, remonstrance, protestation, and sufferings,) for the preservation of ourselves and our religion from utter ruin and destruction, according to the commendable practice of these kingdoms in former times, and the example of GOD'S people in other nations, after mature deliberation, resolved and determined to enter into a mutual and solemn League and Covenant, wherein we all subscribe, and each one of us for himself, with our hands lifted up to the most High GOD, do swear,
I. That we shall sincerely, really, and constantly, through the grace of GOD, endeavour, in our several places and callings, the preservation of the reformed religion in the Church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government against our common enemies; the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, according to the Word of GOD, and the example of the best reformed Churches: and shall endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of church-government, directory for worship and catechising; that we, and our posterity after us, may, as brethren, live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us.
II. That we shall, in like manner, without respect of persons endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, (that is, church-government by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors, and Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical Officers depending on hierarchy,) superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness, lest we partake in other men's sins, and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues; and that the Lord may be one, and His name one, in the three Kingdoms.
III. We shall, with the same sincerity, reality, and constancy, in our several vocations, endeavour, with our estates and lives, mutually to preserve the rights and privileges of the Parliaments, and the liberties of the kingdoms; and to preserve and defend the King's Majesty's person and authority, in the preservation and defence of the true religion, and liberties of the kingdoms; that the world may bear witness with our consciences of our loyalty, and that we have no thoughts or intentions to diminish his Majesty's just power and greatness.
IV. We shall also, with all faithfulness, endeavour the discovery of all such as have been or shall be incendiaries, malignants, or evil instruments, by hindering the reformation of religion, dividing the king from his people, or one of the kingdoms from another, or making any faction or parties amongst the people, contrary to this League and Covenant; that they may be brought to public trial, and receive condign punishment, as the degree of their offences shall require or deserve, or the supreme judicatories of both kingdoms respectively, or others having power from them for that effect, shall judge convenient.
V. And whereas the happiness of a blessed peace between these kingdoms, denied in former times to our progenitors, is, by the good providence of GOD, granted unto us, and hath been lately concluded and settled by both Parliaments; we shall each one of us, according to our place and interest, endeavour that they may remain conjoined in a firm peace and union to all posterity; and that justice may be done upon the wilful opposers thereof, in manner expressed in the precedent article.
VI. We shall also, according to our places and callings, in this common cause of religion, liberty, and peace of the kingdoms, assist and defend all those that enter into this League and Covenant, in the maintaining and pursuing thereof; and shall not suffer ourselves, directly or indirectly, by whatsoever combination, persuasion, or terror, to be divided and withdrawn from this blessed union and conjunction, whether to make defection to the contrary part, or to give ourselves to a detestable indifferency or neutrality in this cause which so much concerneth the glory of GOD, the good of the kingdom, and honour of the King; but shall, all the days of our lives, zealously and constantly continue therein against all opposition, and promote the same, according to our power, against all lets and impediments whatsoever; and, what we are not able ourselves to suppress or overcome, we shall reveal and make known, that it may be timely prevented or removed: All which we shall do as in the sight of God.
And, because these kingdoms are guilty of many sins and provocations against GOD, and His Son JESUS CHRIST, as is too manifest by our present distresses and dangers, the fruits thereof; we profess and declare, before GOD and the world, our unfeigned desire to be humbled for our own sins, and for the sins of these kingdoms; especially, that we have not as we ought valued the inestimable benefit of the Gospel; that we have not laboured for the purity and power thereof; and that we have not endeavoured to receive CHRIST in our hearts, nor to walk worthy of Him in our lives; which are the causes of other sins and transgressions so much abounding amongst us: and our true and unfeigned purpose, desire, and endeavour for ourselves, and all others under our power and charge, both in public and in private, in all duties we owe to GOD and man, to amend our lives, and each one to go before another in the example of a real reformation; that the Lord may turn away His wrath and heavy indignation, and establish these churches and kingdoms in truth and peace. And this Covenant we make in the presence of ALMIGHTY GOD, the Searcher of all hearts, with a true intention to perform the same, as we shall answer at that great day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed; most humbly beseeching the LORD to strengthen us by His HOLY SPIRIT for this end, and to bless our desires and proceedings with such success, as may be deliverance and safety to His people, and encouragement to other Christian churches, groaning under, or in danger of, the yoke of antichristian tyranny, to join in the same or like association and covenant, to the glory of GOD, the enlargement of the kingdom of JESUS CHRIST, and the peace and tranquility of Christian kingdoms and commonwealths.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.
ACT OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.
At Edinburgh, August 17th, 1643, Sess. 14.
The Assembly having recommended unto a committee, appointed by them to join with the committee of the honourable Convention of Estates, and the commissioners of the Honourable Houses of the Parliament of England, for bringing the kingdoms to a more near conjunction and union, received from the aforesaid committees the covenant after-mentioned, as the result of their consultations: and having taken the same, as a matter of so public concernment and of so deep importance doth require, unto their gravest consideration, did with all their hearts, and with the beginnings of the feelings of that joy, which they did find in so great measure upon the renovation of the National Covenant of this kirk and kingdom, all with one voice approve and embrace the same, as the most powerful mean, by the blessing of GOD, for the settling and preserving the true protestant religion, with perfect peace in his majesty's dominions, and propagating the same to other nations, and for establishing his majesty's throne to all ages and generations. And therefore, with their best affections, recommended the same to the Hon. Convention of Estates, that being examined and approved by them, it may be sent with all diligence to the kingdom of England, that being received and approven there, the same may be, with public humiliation, and all religious and answerable solemnity, sworn and subscribed by all true professors of the reformed religion, and all his majesty's good subjects in both kingdoms.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.
EXHORTATION AT WESTMINSTER.
BY PHILIP NYE.[6]
A great and solemn work (Honourable and Reverend) this day is put into our hands; let us stir up and awaken our hearts unto it. We deal with God as well as with men, and with God in His greatness and excellency, for by Him we swear; and at the same time we have to do with God and His goodness, Who now reacheth out unto us a strong and seasonable arm of assistance. The goodness of God procuring succour and help to a sinful and afflicted people (such are we) ought to be matter of fear and trembling, even to all that hear of it. We are to exalt and acknowledge Him this day, Who is fearful in praises, swear by that name which is holy and reverend, enter into a covenant and league that is never to be forgotten by us nor our posterity, and the fruit I hope of it shall be so great, as both we and they shall have cause to remember it with joy; and such an oath as for matter, persons, and other circumstances, the like hath not been in any age or oath we read of in sacred or human history, yet sufficiently warranted in both.
The parties engaging in this league, are three kingdoms, famous for the knowledge and acknowledgment of Christ above all the kingdoms in the world; to swear before such a presence should mould the spirit of man into a great deal of reverence. What then to be engaged, to be incorporated, and that by sacred oath, with such an high and honourable fraternity? An oath is to be esteemed so much the more solemn, by how much greater the persons are that swear each to other; so in this business, where kingdoms swear mutually.
And as the solemnity of an oath is to be measured by the persons swearing, so by the matter also that is to be sworn to. God would not swear to the covenant of Works, He intended not to honour it so much, it was not to continue, it was not worthy of an oath of His; but to the Covenant of Grace, which is the Gospel, He swears, and repents not of it. God swears for the salvation of men, and of kingdoms: and if kingdoms swear, what subject of an oath becometh them better than the preservation and salvation of kingdoms, by establishing the kingdom of a Saviour amongst them, even our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who is a Mediator and Saviour for nations as well as particular persons?
The end also is great and honourable, as either of the former. "Two are better than one," saith He, Who knoweth what is best, and from Whom alone every thing hath the goodness it hath. Association is of divine offspring; not only the being of creatures, but the putting of them together. The cluster as well as the grape is the work of God. Consort and harmony amongst men, especially amongst saints, is very pleasing unto the Lord. If, when but two or three agree and assent upon any thing on earth, it shall be confirmed in heaven, and for this, because they gather together in His name; much more when two or three kingdoms shall meet, and consent together in His name, and for His name, that God "may be one, and His name one amongst them," and His presence amidst them. That prayer of Christ seemeth to proceed from a feeling sense of His own blessedness, "Father, that they may be one, as Thou in Me." Unity among His churches and children must needs therefore be very acceptable unto Him: for out of the more deep sense desires are fetcht from within us, the more pleasing will be the answer of them unto us. Churches and kingdoms are near to God, His patience towards them, His compassions over them more than particular persons sheweth it plainly. But kingdoms willingly engaging themselves for His kingdom, His Christ, His saints, the purity of religion, His worship and government, in all particulars, and in all humility sitting down at His feet to receive the law, and the rule from His mouth: what a price doth He set upon such? Especially, when (as we this day) sensible of our infirmity, and of an unfaithful heart not steady with our God, but apt to start from the cause, if we feel the knife or the fire; who bind ourselves with cords, as a sacrifice to the horns of the altar; we invocate the name of the great God, that His vows, yea, His curse may be upon us, if we do not this; yea, though we suffer for so doing, that is, if we endeavour not so far as the Lord shall assist us by His grace, to advance the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ here upon earth, and make Jerusalem once more the praise of the whole world, notwithstanding all the contradictions of men.
What is this but the contents and matter of our oath? What do we covenant? What do we vow? Is it not the preservation of religion, where it is reformed, and the reformation of religion, where it needs? Is it not the reformation of three kingdoms, and a reformation universal, in doctrine, discipline, and worship, in whatsoever the word shall discover unto us? To practise is a fruit of love; to reform, a fruit of zeal; but so to reform, will be a token of great prudence and circumspection in each of these churches: and all this to be done according to God's word, the best rule, and according to the best reformed churches, and best interpreters of this rule. If England hath obtained to any greater perfection in so handling the word of righteousness, and truths that are according to godliness, as to make men more godly, more righteous: and, if in the churches of Scotland any more light and beauty in matters of order and discipline, by which their assemblies are more orderly: or, if to any other church or person, it hath been given better to have learned Christ in any of His ways, than any of us, we shall humbly bow, and kiss their lips that can speak right words unto us, in this matter, and help us into the nearest uniformity with the word and mind of Christ in this great work of Reformation.
Honourable and reverend brethren, there cannot be a more direct and effectual way to exhort and persuade the wise, and men of sad and serious spirits (and such are you to whom I am commanded to speak this day) than to let into their understandings the weight, and worth, and great importance of the work, they are persuaded unto. This oath is such, and, in the matter and consequence of it, of such concernment, as I can truly say, It is worthy of us; yea, of all these kingdoms; yea, of all the kingdoms of the world; for it is swearing fealty and allegiance unto Christ, the King of kings; and giving up of all these kingdoms which are in His inheritance, to be subdued more to His throne, and ruled more by His sceptre, upon whose shoulders the government is laid, and "of the increase of whose government and peace there shall be no end." Yea, we find this very thing in the utmost accomplishment of it, to have been the oath of the greatest angel that ever was, who setting his feet upon two of God's kingdoms, the one upon the sea, the other upon the earth, lifting up his hand to heaven, as you are to do this day, and so swearing. The effect of that oath you shall find to be this, "That the kingdoms of the world become the kingdoms of the Lord and His Christ, and He shall reign forever." His oath was for the full and final accomplishment, this of yours for a gradual, yet a great performance towards it.
That which the apostles and primitive times did so much and so long pray for, tho' never long with much quietness enjoyed; that which our fathers in these latter times have fasted, prayed and mourned after, yet attained not; even the cause which many dear saints now with God, have furthered by extremest sufferings, poverty, imprisonment, banishment, death, even ever since the first dawning of reformation: that and the very same is the very cause and work that we are come now, through the mercy of Jesus Christ, not only to pray for, but swear to. And surely it can be no other, but the result and answer of such prayers and tears, of such sincerity and sufferings, that three kingdoms should be thus born, or rather new-born in a day; that these kingdoms should be wrought about to so great an engagement, than which nothing is higher. For this end kings reign, kingdoms stand, and states are upheld.
It is a special grace and favour of God unto you, brethren, (Reverend and Honourable) to vouchsafe you the opportunity, and to put into your hearts, as this day, to engage your lives and estates in matters so much concerning Him and His glory. And if you should do no more, but lay a foundation stone in this great work, and by so doing engage posterity after you to finish it, it were honour enough: but there may yet further use be made of you, who now are to take this oath. You are designed as chief master-builders, and choice instruments for the effecting of this settled peace and reformation; which, if the Lord shall please to finish in your hands, a greater happiness on earth, nor a greater means to augment your glory and crown in heaven, you are not capable of. And this, let me further add for your encouragement, of what extensive good, and fruit in the success of it, this very oath may prove to be, we know not. God hath set His covenant like the heavens, not only for duration, but like also for extension. The heavens move and roll about, and so communicate their light, and heat, and virtue, to all places and parts of the earth; so doth the covenant of God; so may this gift be given to other covenants, that are framed to this pattern. How much this solemn league and oath may provoke other reformed churches to a further reformation of themselves; what light and heat it may communicate abroad to other parts of the world, it is only in Him to define, to whom is given the utmost ends of the earth for His inheritance, and worketh by His exceeding great power great things out of small beginnings.
But however, this I am sure of, it is a way in all probability most likely to enable us to preserve and defend our religion against our common enemies; and possibly a more sure foundation this day will be laid for ruining popery and prelacy, the chief of them, than yet hath been led unto in any age. For popery hath been a religion ever dexterous in fencing and mounting itself by association and joint strength. All sorts of professors amongst them are cast into fraternities and brotherhoods; and these orders carefully united by vow one with another, and under some more general notion of common dependence. Such states also and kingdoms, as they have thus made theirs, they endeavour to improve and secure by strict combinations and leagues each to other; witness of late years that la sainte ligue, the holy league. It will not be unworthy your consideration, whether, seeing the preservation of popery hath been by leagues and covenant, God may not make a league or covenant to be the destruction of it. Nay, the very rise of popery seemeth to be after such a manner, by kings, that is kingdoms assenting and agreeing perhaps by some joint covenant (the text saith, "with one mind," why not then with one mouth) to give their power and strength unto the beast, and make war against the Lamb. For you read, "the Lamb shall overcome the beast," and possibly with the same weapons. He is the Lord of lords, and King of kings, He can unite kings and kingdoms, and give them one mind also to destroy the whore, and be her utter ruin. And may not this day's work be a happy beginning of such a blessed expedition?
Prelacy, another common enemy, that we covenant and swear against. What hath been, or what hath the strength of it been, but a subtile combination of clergymen, formed into a policy or body of their own invention, framing themselves into subordination and dependence one upon another; so that the interest of each is improved by all, and a great power by this means acquired to themselves, as by sad experience we have lately found. The joints and members of this body, you know, were knit together by the sacred engagement of an oath, the Oath of Canonical Obedience, as they called it. You remember also, with what cunning industry they endeavoured lately, to make this oath and covenant more sure for themselves and their posterity, and intended a more public, solemn and universal engagement; than since Popery, this cause of theirs, was ever maintained or supported by: and questionless, Ireland and Scotland also must at last have been brought into this holy league with England. But blessed be the Lord, and blessed be His good hand, the parliament that, from the indignation of their spirits against so horrid a yoke, have dashed out the very brains of this project, and are now this day present before the Lord, to take and give possession of this blessed ordinance, even an oath and covenant, as solemn, and of as large extent, as they intended theirs; uniting these three kingdoms into such a league and happy combination, as will doubtless preserve us and our reformation against them, though their iniquity, in the mysteries of it, should still be working amongst us. Come, therefore (I speak in the words of the prophet) "let us join ourselves to the Lord," and one to another, and each to all, "in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten."
We are now entering upon a work of the greatest moment and concernment to us, and to our posterity after us, that ever was undertaken by any of us, or any of our forefathers before us, or neighbouring nations about us; if the Lord shall bless this our beginning, it will be a happy day, and we shall be a happy people. An oath is a duty of the first commandment, and therefore of the highest and noblest order and rank of duties, therefore must come forth attended with choicest graces, especially with these two, humility and fear.
Fear, not only of God, which ought to be in an eminent measure. Jacob sware by the fear of his father Isaac, as if he coveted to inherit his father's grace, as well as his father's God: but also, fear of an oath, it being a dreadful duty, and hath this peculiar, it is established by the oath of God, "I have sworn, that unto Me every tongue shall swear." It is made the very character of a saint, he fears an oath.
Humility is another grace requisite. Set your hearts before God in an humble obedient frame. "Thou shall fear the Lord thy God, and serve Him, and swear by His name." The apostle Paul was sensible of this engagement, even in the very act of this duty. "I call God to witness, whom I serve in my spirit:" although it be a work of the lips, yet the heart, and the whole man must be interested, if we expect this worship to be acceptable. "Accept the free-will offering of my mouth, and teach me Thy judgments."
Also it must be done in the greatest simplicity and plainness of spirit, in respect of those with whom we covenant; we call God as a witness betwixt us, who searcheth the heart: "With Him is wisdom and strength, the deceived and deceiver are His." He hath wisdom to discover, and strength to punish, if our hearts be not upright to our brethren in this matter. Let us be contented with this, that the words of our covenant be bands; it may not be, so much as in the desire of our hearts, that they should become snares, no not to the weakest and simplest person that joineth with us. On the whole work make your address unto God, as Jacob did to his father Isaac, and let there be the like fear and jealousy over your spirits. "My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to Him as a deceiver, and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing."
I take liberty with more earnestness to press this care upon you, because I have observed oaths and covenants have been undertaken by us formerly, and by the command of authority, the fruit whereof, though great, yet answered not our expectation; the Lord surely hath been displeased with the slightness of our hearts in the work. I beseech you be more watchful, and stir up your hearts with more industry this day than ever before. As it is the last oath you are likely to take in this kind, so it is our last refuge, Tabula post naufragium. If this help us not, we are likely to remain to our dying day an unhappy people; but if otherwise, "You will indeed swear with all your hearts, and seek the Lord with your whole desire, God will be found, and give you rest round about."
And having sworn, and entered into this solemn engagement to God and man, make conscience to do accordingly; otherwise it is better thou shouldst not vow. As is said of fasting, "It is not the bowing down of the head for a day;" so of this solemn swearing, It is not the lifting up of the hand for a day, but an honest and faithful endeavouring after the contents of this covenant, all our days. A truce-breaker is reckoned up amongst the vilest of Christians, so a covenant-breaker is listed amongst the worst of heathens, but he that sweareth and changeth not, tho' he swear to his hurt, that is, he that will keep his covenant and oath, tho' the contents of it prove not for him, nay possibly against him, yet he will keep it for his oath's sake, such an one "shall have his habitation with the most High, and dwell in His tabernacle." And as for you, reverend brethren, that are ministers of the gospel, there is yet another obligation will lie upon you: let us look to ourselves, and make provision to walk answerable to this our covenant, for the gospel's sake: it will reflect a great aspersion upon the truth of the gospel, if we should be false or inconstant in any word or purpose, tho' in a matter of less consequence, as you can easily collect from that apology of Paul. How much more in such a case as this is, if we should be found to purpose, nay more, to vow, and covenant, and swear, and all this according unto the flesh, and with us there should be, notwithstanding all these obligations, yea, yea, and nay, nay.