RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Covenant Covenanters
that with Abraham (Gen. xvii.) as preceding and preparing for the rise and progress of Israel as the people of Yahweh. In still later times" this covenant with the fathers was most frequently in the minds of Biblical writers as the foundation-stone of the whole structure of Israel's religious history, attested as it was by the mark and sign of circumcision. So, for example, in the Psalms (e.g., cv. 6 sqq.; I Chr. xvi. 16 sqq.; Neh. ix. 8).
The New Testament writers in their few allusions to the ancient covenants refer in the same way to that made with Abraham. So Paul in Gal. iii. makes this fundamental and practically exclusive,
the Law of Sinai, and still more the 8. Covenant mediatorial work of Christ, being its in the New realization and fulfilment. In the Testament, realm of his practical theology the
most fruitful idea was that which saw in the propagation of the Gospel the ratification of the promise that in Abraham all the nations of the earth should be blessed. The Epistle to the Hebrews, a priestly work, while it uses the promise to Abraham incidentally as an illustration of God's covenant-faithfulness (vi. 13 sqq.), places in the foreground the shadowy figure of Melchizedek as a type of him who by his sacrifice " became the surety of a better covenant " (vii. 1-22). The author uses the word also in the later classical sense of " testament " (see § 1), combining the two meanings in the statement that Christ is " the mediator of a new covenant " according to the conditions of whose ' testament," made operative only by the death of the " testator," an " external inheritance " is made sure to the beneficiaries along with " redemption for the transgressions that were under the old covenant " (ix. 15, 16; compare Acts iii. 25, vii. 8; Eph. ii. 12).
J. F McCuRDY.
Bibliography: Excellent discussions are to be found in DB, i. 509-515; EB, i. 928-937; DCG, i. 373-380. Consult further; H. Guthe, De fcederis notione Jeremiana, Leipsic, 1877; Valeton, in ZATW, xii (1892), 1-22, 224-250, xiii (1893), 245-279; R. Kraetzschmar, Die Bundesvorstellung im A. T., Marburg, 1896; W. M. Ramsay, in Expositor, Nov., 1898, pp. 321-336; Smith, Rel. of Sem., pp. 269 sqq., 312 sqq., 479 sqq.; idem, Kinship, pp. 46 sqq.; and such works on the theology of the Old and the New Testament as H. Schultz, 0. T. Theology, ii. 1 sqq., Edinburgh, 1892; and W. Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1896. For the modern idea consult: C. Burrage, The Church Covenant Idea; its Origin and Development, Philadelphia, 1907.
COVENANTERS.
Early Agreements to 1572 (§ 1).
The King's Confession and Other Agreements to 1596 (§ 2)
Ihe National Covenant of 1638 (§3).
The Solemn League and Covenant, 1643 (§ 4).
Divisions Among the Covenanters (§5).
Persecution Under Charles II. and James II. (§ 6).
ine Later " Covenanters " (§ 7).
The name " Covenanters " was given to Scotch Presbyterians, or a portion of them, in the sixteenth century, because of the solemn agreements by which they bound themselves; since I- Early then it has been applied to a small Agreements party in Scotland who have held to* to 1572. sunOar views. In the confusion of the , Reformation time in Scotland, when
"18 central authority, with little power of its own, was liable to fall under the control of temporary HI.— 19
groups of the turbulent gentry or to be swayed by ecclesiastical dignitaries, anxious for their secular interests, the legal position of innovators and agitators was never clear. The Protestant parties therefore sought sanction and security in the various steps they took by entering into formal " covenants," which had a double character, religious and political. There is a suggestion of a " band " at a meeting of Forfarshire gentlemen in 1556; the first, however, of which there are definite details — an ancient copy is in the National Mu seum of Antiquities in Edinburgh — " the common band " (Knox) was drawn up in 1557 on the renewal of the Reformers' invitation to John Knox (q.v.) to return to Scotland. Three others in 1559 marked as many crises in the struggle with the queen regent, and a fourth signed in 1560 by the leading nobility was the prelude to the expulsion of the French and the triumph of the Reformation ratified in the Parliament of that year. In alarm at Mary's policy, Knox and the Ayrshire gentry signed a covenant in 1562. St. Bartholomew's massacre suggested the idea of another in 1572, but possibly this was not carried out.
More important than these early bands directed to special emergencies was the lengthy covenant of 1580 called the King's Confession, the Second Confession of Faith, or the
2. The Negative Confession. It was drawn King's Con- up by John Craig (q.v.) and subscribed fession and by all classes from the boy king James
Other VI. downward. The original is now Agreements in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.
to 1596. It is a strongly Profestant-aianiiesto in which the declaration of allegiance to the crown is carefully interwoven with the declaration of the duty of the crown to maintain the constitution of the Reformed Kirk and the Protestant settlement embodied in previous acts of Parliament. It was signed again in 1587. Once more the party of the Ruthven raid in 1582 had made a " band." The Spanish Armada inspired a national " band " in 1588. Another was signed in 1589. In 1590 the King's Confession and the band of 1588 were printed and circulated, multitudes subscribing throughout Scotland. The year 1592 saw anothe^ " band " in Aberdeen against suspected treason. In 1596 a more directly religious movement was initiated by the assembly and spread downward through presbyteries to parishes. There were, if not formal signatures, at least meetings for humiliation and confession at which vows of steadfastness were renewed.
Court diplomacy directed to the reintroduction of episcopacy was now busy; but James' success did not much affect the local groundwork of Presbyterian practise, and Charles I. and Laud found, when they were free to turn attention
3. The to Scotland, that conformity with Eng- National lish episcopacy was far from being a Covenant reality. The new service-book was of 1638. sent down to Edinburgh; Dean Han-
ney tried to read it in St. Giles' Cathedral and, according to tradition, Jenny Geddes (q.v.) threw her stool at him on July 23, 1637. The covenanting instinct of a previous generation
Covenanters Cowan