by Rev. James Kerr, Greenock
(continued from page 299)
III.—Scotland’s Covenanted Martyrs were Patriots of Distinguished Loyalty. They were so because “Thou hadst a favour unto them”. Let us imitate their distinguished loyalty.
Long did they bear, perhaps too long, with their persecutors before adopting aggressive measures of resistance. After twenty years of endurance, the time came when a bold stroke must be made for the overthrow of tyranny and the restoration of liberty. On the 22nd of June, 1680, about this very time two hundred years ago, Richard Cameron, in company with a number of fellow patriots, rode into the burgh of Sanquhar and nailed up his famous Declaration to the Sanquhar Cross. James Stuart was declared to have forfeited the crown, and open war was proclaimed against him — “Men called it rash, perhaps it was a crime; His deed flashed out God’s will an hour before the time.” In a few years afterwards the bloody House of Stuart was hurled from the throne, and the sword of persecution was laid to rest in its scabbard. “The just shall be in everlasting remembrance; but the memory of the wicked shall rot.”
*Although the Revolution Settlement possessed several excellencies, it was matter of lamentation that it left unrestored much of the Covenanted work of Reformation. It fell far short of conceding and “settling” all that the martyrs so nobly contended for. The Act Rescissory was allowed to remain untouched in the Statute Book, and the nation’s Solemn Covenants were wholly ignored. That Revolution Settlement, moreover, proceeded upon the principle of political expediency — the will of the people, for it granted Presbytery to Scotland, as it was “agreeable to the inclinations of the people.” It proceeded upon religious equality to the extent of establishing one form of church government in this kingdom and a different form in the sister kingdoms — this latter a form which the martyrs constantly resisted. It was Erastian, for by it the Standards of the Revolution Church were appointed for her before a single Assembly was called, and the meetings of her Assemblies were subsequently, in the Erastian spirit of that Settlement, interfered with and controlled. It was, in fine, a Settlement that did not take for its guide the supreme authority of the Bible; that did not conserve the Headship of Christ over the Church and Nation; that did not defend Presbyterianism as of Divine origin; and that in various other respects fell far below the platform of the Scriptural attainments of the Church and State in their purest times. The faithful followers of Cargill, Cameron, and Renwick were overwhelmed with sorrow when they beheld the crushing of the bright hopes they had entertained. Bitter, indeed, was their disappointment. Their martyred sires and they had marched under the banner for that whole Covenanted work — braving the wrath of their keenest foes, and how could they desert it now that peace had returned to bless and liberty was so plentiful in the land? They could not, they dare not; and the whole history of the Revolution Church since, as well as of the nation, justifies the position of separation from Church and State our Covenanting fathers then felt compelled to assume. “The Lord our God will we serve,” said they, “and His voice will we obey.”
*On this paragraph see “Declaration anent Reformation Attainments,” FP Mag. Vol 15, pp 147-153.
A few years after the Revolution Settlement came the Act of Union between Scotland and England, one of the “fundamental and essential conditions” of which was that the Church of England should be left undisturbed, and that all the Acts for her establishment and for the preservation of her doctrine, worship, discipline, and government should “remain and be in full force for ever.” Ah! the testimony uttered by every Scottish martyr on the scaffold, and the testimony on every martyr’s monument now throughout the breadth of the land, cries out upon that Act as a surrender of a Reformation heritage and a dread act of apostacy from Scotland’s covenanted King.
To that Revolution Settlement and Act of Union we trace many of the evils with which Britain is at present afflicted — evils against which we lift our voice, not, we trust, because we love the nation less, but because we love Christ more. Our national constitution and national administration to a large extent ignore, and are in conflict with, the claims of the Lord’s Anointed. There is still in the Constitution that Act of Uniformity which occasioned the ever memorable exodus of the Puritans from the Church of England — an Act which remains in all its tyrannical force, but is restrained meanwhile by an Act of Toleration. In the British Constitution there is an Erastianism by which the Church of England is as helpless for reform, without the aid of the Sovereign and Privy Council and Parliament, as is the Church of Rome without the interference of infallibility. Prelacy is in the Constitution, and the nation is bound to maintain it “inviolable for ever” — that Prelacy in all its unscriptural elements which the three nations bound themselves to extirpate. The Liturgy of the Church of England is in the Constitution — a Liturgy which affords protection for the apostles of the Oxford heresy, and contains the dogmas of the Papacy in their germ. And it is this Liturgy and Prelacy and Erastianism that are included in the popular clamour for the maintenance of the “Protestant Reformed religion as by law established.” The Prelatic Church of England receives about six millions annually from the national exchequer, while it enjoys revenues and property, granted by the nation, which represent a capitalized sum of about two hundred millions. The Papacy is in the Constitution, warmly fostered and richly endowed. From the national funds it draws in various ways, in the course of a year, one million of pounds. To such an extent does the British nation support that system which God in His Word has doomed to destruction by the breath of His mouth and the brightness of His coming. “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded unto death, and his deadly wound was healed; and all the world wondered after the beast.” The British Constitution and the British nation admit to the high office of legislators those who are the avowed enemies of the Lord and His Anointed — Secularists, whose State theory is blank Atheism; Roman Catholics, who are idolaters and profane the sacrifice of Christ at Calvary; Unitarians, who deny the Deity of our Lord; and Jews, who hold that Jesus was an imposter — all are eligible to rule this Christian nation — do actually now sit in the House of Commons. Two centuries ago, the foundations of political liberties were laid by the exclusion from rule of the avowed enemies of God and the Christian religion. Now, it seems, these are as much entitled to rule, and as well qualified to rule aright, as the firmest believers in God and His Word; and this is cried up as an evidence of the growing charity and greater enlightenment of this century! “Grey hairs are here and there upon us, and we know it not.” In all these respects the British nation is doing dishonour to the King of nations. “They have set up kings, but not by Me; they made them princes, and I knew it not.”
And, worse than all, an Ecclesiastical Supremacy is vested in the British Crown. Over the Church of England, the Sovereign is Supreme Governor and Head; the royal prerogative of Christ is invaded; the Church’s independent jurisdiction is blotted out. Queen Victoria is perhaps the noblest queen, and is certainly one of the noblest sovereigns that has ever swayed the British sceptre; but still, never can we palliate the dishonour done the Church’s exclusive Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, by this assumption of an ecclesiastical supremacy. The guilt of this dishonour rests not so much upon the sovereign, who by solemn oath assumes this headship, as upon the nation which requires that coronation oath to be taken. This claim of ecclesiastical supremacy is in all respects, except in the matter of persecution to enforce it, the same as it was in the time of the Stuarts, two centuries ago. The headship of the present sovereign is in no essential respect different from what it was when Henry the Eighth, quarrelling with Rome, took it from the head of the Supreme Pontiff, and placed it upon his own. Our fathers could not suffer any sovereign to bear the title, Head of the Church. Whether written on the mitre of the priest or on the diadem of the sovereign, they denounced it as one of the names of blasphemy. “This is the magistracy I have rejected,” said Donald Cargill at his execution, “that which was invested with Christ’s power. And seeing this power taken from Christ, which is His glory, made the essential of the crown, it was as if I had seen one wearing my husband’s garments after he had killed him; and seeing it is made the essential of the crown, there is no distinction we can make that can free the conscience of the acknowledger from being a partaker of this sacrilegious robbing of God.” “Own you the King,” said his accusers to John Nisbet, “in all matters civil and ecclesiastical, and to be Head of the Church?” “I will acknowledge none,” was the reply, “to be the Head of the Church but Christ.” “I leave my testimony,” said James Renwick, the last of the martyr throng, as he stood on the scaffold, “against all usurpations made on Christ’s right, who is the Prince of the kings of the earth, who alone must bear the glory of ruling His own Kingdom, the Church.” Were these martyrs with us to-day, they would exert every effort to have this dishonour to Christ removed, or at least their beloved Covenanted Scotland delivered from being “partaker in this sacrilegious robbing of God.” This headship over the Church is, in the words of Blackstone, “an inherent prerogative of the crown.” To the maintenance of this “inherent prerogative,” every member of Parliament swears when he takes the oath of allegiance; and the oath of allegiance is, in the words of Macaulay, “the safe guard of the crown.” Thus it is that this usurpation on the rights of Christ is protected and maintained by all the power of the British Crown and nation. And scarce a voice lifted up throughout all Scotland in condemnation of the flagrant iniquity! While this iniquity, and the others already particularized, are not simply administrative but fundamental, not incidental but essential, not temporary but permanent! The millions quarrel about the respective policies of parties, while they forget these great moral questions that lie deeper far; and the parties devise and discuss methods for the removing of the eruptions on the surface, while they seem utterly oblivious of the fact that a powerful leprosy is doing its work at the core. “Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”
Why speak ye not a word about bringing the King back? If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise from another place, but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed. The liberties of the land are in danger, and it is time we should awake from our slumbers. Difficult is it to rid the many of their fancied security. They say, “Their mountain stands strong. Britain shall never be moved.” And they fold their hands and laugh at those who seek to arouse them to repel the increasing assaults. True, no kingdom on earth enjoys greater advantages; in none are the rights of man more faithfully guarded, while the powers of sovereign and subject are limited and established by laws that have been settled into their place through the lapse and experiences of generations. But still, never was there a time within the last two hundred years when a more determined assault upon these rights and privileges was made than at present. And that which creates most alarm is the indifference to these assaults of the Christian subjects who ought to be most zealous and valiant defenders of the precious heritage that has been entrusted them, procured at the expense of their fathers’ blood. “The Gospel of the grace of God,” said Martin Luther, “is like a flying summer shower, it drops here and there and then passes on.” Let us beware lest these lands are receiving the latter drops of this shower of blessing, and lest already the shower is passing away. Other nations, as highly evangelized and as well established as we, have gone back in the roll of nations; ashes and dust hide their perished glories. Throughout lands once full of Bibles and privilege there now rises the minaret by the side of the mosque, from which goes forth ever the doleful proclamation, “There is no God but God, and Mohomet is His prophet.”
In this hour of our peril, our whole efforts should be directed to the restoration of the work of the Covenanted Reformation; this is the hope and safety of the nation. It was by the grand Scriptural principles in the maintenance and application of which the Covenanting struggle was waged that the foundations of our civil and religious liberties were laid. If those liberties are to be conserved and transmitted in their entirety to coming generations those great principles must be believed in and applied. Who could persuade themselves that the superstructure will stand when the foundations are being removed? The superstructure of our liberties will crumble to the ground if we tamper with the doctrinal foundations on which those liberties rest. Therefore let us gird ourselves to keep in their place what of the foundations are still secure, and let us gird ourselves for the work of restoring those foundation stones that have been vilely cast away. Bringing these nations to the feet of their anointed and everlasting King; bringing them back to their covenanted allegiance to their sovereign Lord — this is the great and honourable work which the God we serve imperatively demands at our hands. If now an extensive movement should commence for the accomplishment of this noble object, the memory of the martyrs and their patriotic struggle for liberty would receive an appropriate commemoration, and this two hundredth year after their martyrdom would be memorable in the history of the land. Our hope for this is not so much in the rulers in the State or the leaders in the Church, though we know that the Lord of Hosts holds in His hand the hearts of all, and can turn them at His sovereign pleasure; but our hope is in the people. Usually in the past the people have been the most powerful factor in reformation. In the Reformations in the times of Luther, and Knox, and Henderson, the people awoke from their lethargies and rose up in new life to carry on the work to its completion. Be up then and doing, we beseech you, and, by the help of Almighty God, we may yet succeed in driving the battle to the gate. The restoring of the ruined temple of the Covenanted Reformation, and thereby the effecting of a Third Reformation for Scotland, — this is the work of the present hour, the work of every true patriot, of every lover of the Church, of every lover of Christ’s crowns. “When Christ comes,” said Richard Cameron, “to raise up His own work in Scotland, He will not want men enough to do it.” May He come soon, then, to raise up His tabernacle that is fallen, and restore it from ruins, as in days of old! Awake! why sleepest Thou? Pluck Thy hand, even Thy right hand, out of Thy bosom. Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, Most Mighty, and ride forth for the sake of truth, and meekness, and righteousness. Take to Thee Thy power and reign. Reign over Scotland, and over Ireland, and over England. Reign over Europe, and over Asia, and over Africa, and over America. Take the throne of every heart, and the throne of every household, and the throne of every community, and the throne of every church, and the throne of every nation, and the thrones of all worlds; and let every knee bow and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
“Thou shalt arise, and mercy yet
Thou to Mount Zion shalt extend;
Her time for favour which was set,
Behold! is now come to and end.
“Thy saints take pleasure in her stones;
Her very dust to them is dear;
All heathen lands and kingly thrones
On earth Thy glorious name shall fear.”
And, when this sublime prophecy of Old Testament times shall have been fulfilled, there shall go up from the redeemed and emancipated millions of the broad earth, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, the triumphant ascription, — “Alleluia! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!”