'O'er hill and dale the summons flew,
Nor rest nor pause the herald knew.
Each valley, each sequester'd glen,
Mustered its little horde of men,
That met, as torrents from the height,
In Highland dales, when streams unite,
Still gathering as they pour along,
A voice more loud, a tide more strong.'
On the 29th of November, 1643, the two countries entered into a treaty, by which the Scots promised to furnish an army for the war, the expenses to be refunded after the conclusion of peace. The Scots felt that they were playing the part of the good Samaritan towards the neighbor who had fallen among thieves. 'Surely,' says Baillie, 'it was a great act of faith in God, and huge courage and unheard-of compassion' on the part of the Scotch nation, 'to hazard their own peace and venture their lives and all, for to save a people so irrecoverably ruined, both in their own and in all the world's eyes.'
The united army fought under the banner of the Anglo-Scotch Covenant against royal and episcopal tyranny, and for the establishment of presbyterian uniformity. The negative end was gained, the positive failed. 'Trusting in God and keeping their powder dry,' the Puritans overthrew both monarchy and prelacy, but only to be overthrown in turn by the Nemesis of history. No human power could bring the two kingdoms under one creed and one form of government and worship. Presbyterian uniformity in England was as preposterous as Episcopal uniformity in Scotland.
The Solemn League and Covenant was weakened by the quarrel between the Presbyterians and Independents, and was virtually broken with the destruction of the monarchy and the execution of Charles I. (1648). [1340] The English army put down the Covenant which the Scotch army had set up. After the Restoration it became an object of intense hatred, and was publicly burned by the common hangman in Westminster Hall by order of Parliament (1661). Charles II., who had twice sworn both to the Solemn League and to the National Covenant as a part of his coronation oath in Scotland (June 23, 1650, and Jan. 1, 1651), broke his oath as soon as he ascended the English throne, and established the royal Supremacy and Episcopacy even in Presbyterian Scotland (1662). But the Covenanters fought for the institutions of their fathers with the heroic spirit of martyrdom through all those troubled times,
'Whose memory rings through Scotland to this hour.'
THE SCOTCH KIRK.
After severe struggles Prelacy was again overthrown and Presbyterianism permanently re-established in Scotland by Parliament in 1690, though with a degree of dependence on the state which kept up a constant irritation, and which led from time to time to new secessions.
These secessions from the Established Kirk, down to the great exodus of the Free Church in 1843, were no new departures, but, like the sects in Russia, returns to the old landmarks. The system of Calvinistic Presbyterianism which the great Reformer had established in Geneva found in Scotland a larger and more congenial field of action, and became there more free and independent of the civil power. It was wrought into the bone and sinew of the nation which seems to be predestinated for such a manly, sturdy, God-fearing, solid, persevering type of Christianity. Romanism in the Highlands is only an unsubdued remnant of the Middle Ages, lately reinforced by Irish emigrants to the large cities. Episcopacy is an English exotic for Scotchmen educated in England and associated with the English aristocracy. The body of the people are Presbyterian to the back-bone. The differences between the Established Kirk, the United Presbyterians, the Free Church, and the smaller secession bodies seem insignificant to an outside observer, and turn on questions of psalmody, patronage, and relation to the civil government. The vital doctrines and principles are held in common by all. Differences of opinion, which in other countries constitute merely theological schools or parties in one and the same denomination, give rise in Scotland to separate ecclesiastical organizations. The scrupulous conscientiousness and stubbornness which clothe minor questions with the dignity and grandeur of fundamental principles, and are made to justify separation and schism, are the shadow of a virtue. Scotland is an unconquerable fort of orthodox Protestantism. In no other country and Church do we find such fidelity and tenacity; such unswerving devotion to the genius of the Reformation; such union of metaphysical subtlety with religious fervor and impetuosity; such general interest in ecclesiastical councils and enterprizes; such jealousy for the rights and self-government of the Church; such loyalty to a particular denomination combined with a generous interest in Christ's kingdom at large; such reverence for God's holy Word and holy day, that after the hard and honest toil of the week lights up the poorest man's cottage on 'Saturday night.'
The history of Christianity, since the days of the apostles, furnishes no brighter chapter of heroic and successful sacrifices for the idea of the sole headship of Christ, and the honor and independence of his Church, than the Free-Church movement, whose leaders--Chalmers, Welsh, Candlish, Cunningham, Duncan, Fairbairn, Guthrie, Buchanan, Arnot--have now one by one taken their place among the great and good men of the past, but will continue to live in the memory of a grateful people. Dr. Norman Macleod, himself one of the noblest of Scotchmen, who was a member of the disruption Assembly of 1843, and found it harder to stay in the Established Church as 'a restorer of the breach' than to go out of it amid the huzzas of popular enthusiasm, honored himself as much as Dr. Chalmers, his teacher, when he spoke of him after his death as a man 'whose noble character, lofty enthusiasm, and patriotic views will rear themselves before the eyes of posterity like Alpine peaks, long after the narrow valleys which have for a brief period divided us are lost in the far distance of past history.' [1341] In securing liberty for itself, the Free Church conferred a blessing upon the mother Church by rousing it to greater activity, and setting in motion an agitation which resulted in the total abolition of the Law of Patronage by Act of Parliament (1875).
[1326] Josh. xxiv. 25: 'So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an ordinance at Shechem;' 2 Kings xi. 17: 'And Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord and the king and the people, that they should be the Lord's people;' also Isa. xliv. 5.
[1327] Dr. M'Crie says of the Scotch Covenants (p. 120): 'Although they have been condemned as unwarranted in a religious point of view, and dangerous in a political, yet are they completely defensible upon the principles both of conscience and policy. A mutual agreement, compact, or covenant, is virtually implied in the constitution of every society, civil or religious; and the dictates of natural law conspire with the declarations of revelation in sanctioning the warrantableness and propriety of explicit engagements, about any lawful and important matter, and of ratifying these, if circumstances shall require it, by formal subscription, and by a solemn appeal to the searcher of hearts. By strengthening the motives to fidelity and constancy, and thus producing mutual confidence among those who are embarked in the same cause, they have proved eminently beneficial in the reformation of churches and nations, and in securing the religious and political privileges of men. The misapplication of them, when employed in a bad cause and for mischievous ends, can be no argument against their use in a legitimate way, and for laudable purposes. And the reasoning employed to prove that such covenants should not be entered into without the permission of rulers would lead to the conclusion that subjects ought never to profess a religion to which their superiors are hostile, nor make any attempts to obtain the reform of abuses, or the redress of grievances, without the consent and approbation of those who are interested in their support.' From Scotland the custom of covenanting passed to the Puritans in England and New England, and remains to-day in the shape of solemn engagements assumed by individual Christians when they enter into full communion with a church. Such covenants take the place of confirmation vows customary in the Lutheran and Anglican Churches.
[1328] This is the first confessional declaration against the damnation, and, by implication, in favor of the salvation, of unbaptized infants; and agrees with the private opinion previously expressed by Zwingli and Bullinger.
[1329] 'They did not begin the year in Scotland, at that time, till the 25th of March.'--Dunlop's Collection, Vol. II. p. 101.
[1330] See the text in Vol. III. p. 480; and in Calderwood, Vol. III. p. 502. Calderwood thinks (p. 505) that this confession, under the name of 'wicked hierarchy,' condemns episcopal government; but it is evident from the context that the papal hierarchy is meant.
[1331] See the additions in Dunlop's Collection, Vol. II. pp. 125-137, also the Acts of the Assemblies of Glasgow, 1638, and Edinburgh, 1639, pp. 114 sqq.
[1332] 'Never,' says Dean Stanley (p. 82), 'except in the days of the French Revolution, did a popular tumult lead to such important results. The stool which was on that occasion flung at the head of the Dean of Edinburgh extinguished the English Liturgy entirely in Scotland for the seventeenth century, to a great extent even till the nineteenth, and gave to the civil war of England an impulse which only ended in the overthrow of the Church and monarchy.'
[1333] Hetherington, History of the Church of Scotland, p. 91 (3d ed.).
[1334] For fuller particulars, see Baillie's Letters, Vol. I., Rothes's Relation, Aiton's Life of Henderson, Burton (Vol. VI. p. 442). Accounts from the episcopal side, in Thomas Stephen's History of the Church of Scotland, Vol. I. pp. 552 sqq.; Stanley, 1.c. pp. 80 sqq.
[1335] It is surprising that these two Covenants should be confounded by such a scholar as Dean Stanley, in his eloquent description of it, in Lectures on the Church of Scotland, pp. 83-86 (Am. ed.). Dean Hook makes the same mistake--Life of Laud, p. 267.
[1336] From 'The [Westminster] Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, together with the Sum of Saving Knowledge, Covenants, National, and Solemn League,' etc. Edinburgh, 1788, pp. 501 sqq. Masson, in his Life of Milton, Vol. III. p. 13, gives the essential parts of the National Covenant. Fuller inserts it in full, Vol. VI. p. 255, and compares it (p. 259) to 'the superstitious and cruel Six Articles enacted by King Henry VIII.' Comp. Baillie's Letters, Vol. II. pp. 81-90; the Acts of the General Assembly for 1643; Stoughton, The Church of the Civil Wars, pp. 293 and 320; Masson, 1.c. Vol. III. pp. 6-15; Hetherington, l.c. pp. 110 sqq.
[1337] It is still used as a place of worship on special occasions by the Houses of Parliament.
[1338] Marsden (History of the Later Puritans, p. 77): 'Such is the weight of character: one country clergyman prevailed against the rulers of two kingdoms.'
[1339] Stoughton, Vol. I. p. 294; Masson, Vol. III. pp. 12, 13.
[1340] The Westminster Assembly, or what was left of it, sympathized with Presbyterian Scotland in loyalty to the monarchy, and unanimously signified its desire for the King's release. Forty-seven ministers, meeting at Sion College, signed a document addressed to Fairfax, in which they protested most earnestly in the name of religion and the Solemn League and Covenant against the military usurpation and the violence intended to the King's person. Masson, Vol. III. p. 716; Stoughton, Vol. I. p. 529.
[1341] Memoir of Norman Macleod, by his Brother, 1876, Vol. I. p. 263 (N. Y. ed.).