II. Scotland’s Covenanted Martyrs were Churchmen of enlightened views and broad sympathies. They were so because “Thou hadst a favour unto them.” In these views and sympathies let us imitate them.
The work to which the Scottish Reformers were called, was a great work. Mountains of ecclesiastical and civil opposition to the claims of Christ, the universal and only Monarch, had to be levelled; and the people required to be lifted up from the depths of ignorance and superstition. How are the reformers to bring down these mountains, elevate these valleys, and prepare the way of the Lord? How can they pull down the principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places? How arouse the multitude from their deep sleep, and possess them with those liberties to which they had been perfect strangers? Where are the weapons for this mighty moral warfare? A perfect armour is provided: it is the Word of the living God. This is the rod of strength; this the hammer to break the rock; this the sharp two-edged sword. By means of this the Reformers are destined to level the mountains and elevate the valleys. And by means of it they moved Scotland and brought it to the feet of King Jesus. Jehovah ordained strength out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, that He might still the enemy and the avenger. “For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them; but Thy right hand, and Thine arm, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou hadst a favour unto them.”
The great and leading doctrine then, and the doctrine that underlay all the other doctrines for which the Reformers contended and the martyrs died, was the Supremacy of the Scriptures as the Word of God—the Scriptures, the whole Scriptures, and nothing but the Scriptures. In all matters of faith and duty, the Word of God was their court of appeal, and God, speaking in His Word, was their sole Judge of appeal. The Word of God was to them the supreme, and alone infallible standard. The question with them was not, What saith popular taste? or, What saith convenience? or, What saith tradition?—but, What saith the Word of God? “I’ll hear what God the Lord will speak.” That Word of God was above Protestant minister; above Papal priest; above Councils, ecumenical though they be called; above Papal Decrees, promulgated though they be by a Pontiff proclaimed Infallible; above Assemblies, however learned and godly; above Cabinets, and Commons, and Lords; above Sovereigns and Emperors. In the re-erection in Scotland, two hundred years ago, from its ruins of the Zion of the Holy One of Israel, this doctrine of the Supreme authority of the Scriptures was the foundation stone: adopted and applied, it elevated the Church and nation to moral majesty. It was the boast of the builders that they took their pattern “not from Rome, not even from Geneva, but from the blessed Word of God.”
In those Scriptures, the Reformers found a doctrine that was of special importance in the accomplishment of their Herculean labour. It was the doctrine of the Exclusive Headship of the Lord Jesus Christ over the Church. As they searched the Word, this precious truth was ever flashing before their eyes. Jesus Christ was appointed King in the Church by the Father’s everlasting decree; he was anointed to be the Church’s King; He laid down His life for the Church, so securing a right to reign over her; and when His work on earth was done, and He returned to the Father, He was formally invested with this exclusive control. For the suffering of death, He was crowned with glory and honour. This royal prerogative of Headship over the Church, which belongs exclusively to the enthroned Messiah, must not be usurped. To claim or exercise this prerogative is blasphemy, whether it be by priest or presbyter, premier or potentate, or by any other person or power whatever. The Church, having Christ for her own and only Lord, must call no man master. She possesses an independent jurisdiction under her King and Lawgiver, and in the exercise of that jurisdiction she is required and entitled to be free. As Christ’s spiritual kingdom, she must not submit that the prerogative of her King be invaded, nor permit any to wrest from her the liberties with which her King has endowed her. In the First Reformation, this precious doctrine was vindicated gloriously by the liberation of the Church from Papal domination; in the Second Reformation it was vindicated yet more gloriously by the liberation of the Church from prelatic domination. At the beginning of the Second Reformation and against the attempts of the reigning monarch to invade the prerogative of King Jesus and subvert the liberties of the Church, the Glasgow Assembly of 1638 emitted a testimony for this doctrine which shall be ever memorable. Refusing to comply with the behests or be deterred by the threats of the King’s Commissioner, the Assembly proceeded to annul all the acts of the corrupt assemblies by which Prelacy had been introduced; to set aside the infamous Five Articles of Perth; to abolish the Book of Canons, the Liturgy, and Book of Ordination; to condemn Diocesan Episcopacy, or Prelacy, passing an act that “all Episcopacy different from that of a pastor over a particular flock was abjured in this Kirk, and to be removed out of it;” to restore those constitutional rights and liberties by Sessions, Synods, and Assemblies, of which they had been deprived by Prelatic usurpation; and by other similar Scriptural measures to maintain the honour of King Jesus and the independence of His kingdom. It mattered not that upon that Assembly the royal countenance frowned while the light of God’s countenance shone; for their noble work was not accomplished by their own arm, but by “Thy right hand, and Thine arm, and the light of Thy Countenance, because Thou hadst a favour unto them.” The words of Alexander Henderson, the able Moderator of that noble Assembly, when bringing the proceedings to a close, merit a lasting memorial:—”We have now cast down the walls of this modern Jericho; let him that re-buildeth them beware of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite.” That Assembly of 1638 was, in short, the very Bannockburn of the Church’s spiritual freedom.
It will be evident from this reference to the work of the Glasgow Assembly, that the Reformers maintained that the form of Church Government laid down in the Scriptures, and sanctioned by the Church’s King, was Presbyterian. Their principle here was this:—The Presbyterian form of Church Government is the only form prescribed in the Bible, and therefore of Divine right and original. They did not suppose that several distinct and differing forms of government were to be found in this infallible standard, and that Christians were at liberty to select the form that would best suit their taste or convenience. If it were so, there would be some good reason to argue that the Head of the Church, who is also the Author of the Scriptures, did not know or did not care to reveal the form of government that might best promote the Church’s highest interests. But the Reformers and Martyrs had not so learned Christ. Their search of the Statute Book of their King was rewarded by the discovery of the great outstanding principles of Presbyterianism, and nowhere could they find a warrant for Independency or Episcopacy. Hence, they valiantly contended for the former and resisted the latter to the utmost, realising that the honour of their King and the rights of His subjects were involved in the struggle.
Moreover, the Reformers brought themselves into complete subjection to the Scriptures as to its directions affecting worship in the Church. Hence they removed all rites and ceremonies therein that were opposed to the prescriptions of the Word, or for which no Scriptural warrant could be produced. This was following out the Supremacy of the Scriptures and the Headship of Christ to one of their last and grandest conclusions. It was like the lopping off of the topmost boughs of papal superstition and ecclesiastical corruption. It was the erection of the headstone of the corner, and the ornamentation of the ecclesiastical structure. The Reformers of the First Reformation grasped this principle tenaciously and applied it with much thoroughness. John Knox enunciated this principle in such words as these:—”It becomes the Kirk of Jesus Christ to admit what He speaketh, and when He maketh end of speaking or lawgiving there to rest. All worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of man in the worship of God without His own express commandment is idolatry.” So said all the Reformers. By this principle Knox and his co-Reformers wiped away all the Christ-dishonouring ceremonies of the Church of Rome. And by the still more thorough application of it in the Second Reformation, when, by its unauthorised rites, Episcopacy still marred the Church’s beauty, Henderson and his co-Reformers loosed the Church from these bands of her neck, and arrayed her in the beautiful garments her King had prescribed for her. The simplicity of the Church’s worship is her special adornment. It would have been well had the English Reformers risen to the same high platform of principle, but they conceded to the Church a power to decree rites and ceremonies, and because of this, to a large extent, the English Church today is a productive recruiting ground for Rome. The Reformation in Scotland was a “root and branch Reformation.” “It is not brick nor clay,” said Rutherford, “nor Babel’s cursed timber and stones that is in our second temple; but our blessed King Jesus is building His house all palace work and carved stones. It is the habitation of the Lord.”
Out of these enlarged views of doctrine and duty arose that catholicity of spirit and those broad sympathies which were such prominent characteristics of the Reformers and Martyrs. They mourned over the evils of the Church and land in their times. They longed for the salvation of souls, and laboured to bring men to the feet of Jesus. They concerned themselves with the public weal, and devoted themselves to the good of all. Intensely did they love the Church which their own Saviour had purchased, and their own King ruled. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning; let the tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.” Earnestly did they labour to secure union and uniformity in doctrine, discipline, worship, and government, among professing Christians. Their union aims embraced not the people of Scotland only, but those of the three kingdoms. “We do welcome,” said Rutherford, “England and Ireland to our Well-Beloved.” “Oh, when,” said Renwick, “shall those be agreed on earth that are agreed in heaven. Methinks if the shedding of my blood would effect this, I would count it a small sacrifice for so great an object.”
By these doctrines, then, the desolated temple of the Church of Christ was raised up in Scotland two hundred years ago. Zion “looked forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.”
“How fair the daughter of Jerusalem then?
How gloriously from Zion hill she looked,
Clothed with the sun, and in her train the moon,
And on her head a coronet of stars;
And girdling round her waist, with heavenly grace,
The bow of mercy bright, and in her hand
Emmanuel’s cross, her sceptre and her hope.”
“Walk about Zion and go round,
The high towers thereof tell;
Consider ye her palaces,
And mark her bulwarks well.”
But the Church of Christ was not to be left long in the peaceful possession of the rights and liberties which she had succeeded in achieving. The restoration of Charles Stuart in 1660 was the signal for an outburst of Erastian and Prelatic fury which lasted without intermission for a period of nearly thirty years. A determined tyrannical attempt was made to raze even to its foundations the Reformed Protestant Presbyterian Covenanted Church of Scotland. The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts was to be a vineyard of red wine. The king is resolved to reduce the Church to subjection to his absolute will—overturning her liberties and dethroning her King. The question in contention was this—Shall King Charles reign in the house of King Jesus; or shall King Jesus reign in His own house? The call to battle sounded: Who is on the Lord’s side? Who? A devoted band of Covenanters fearlessly responded, “Thine are we, David; and on Thy side, thou Son of Jesse.” King Charles, supported by the whole civil power, said, “I shall reign in Christ’s house.” “Nay,” said the Covenanters, “thou shalt not, neither shall any arm of flesh; but King Jesus shall reign in His own house.” And then
“Their blood about Jerusalem
Like water they did shed,
And there was none to bury them
When they were slain and dead.
“For these are they that Jacob have
Devoured cruelly,
And they his habitation
Have caused waste to lie.”
By the standard that had been erected, God’s faithful servants stood; stood with their faces to the foe; stood without flinching; stood to be hewn down even to the last man. They stood for the Supreme Authority of the Holy Scriptures; for the Exclusive Headship of the Lord Jesus over the Church; for the Church’s independent spiritual jurisdiction and power; for the Divine right of Presbytery; for the purity of worship in the Church and the Church’s freedom from all unauthorised rites and ceremonies. They stood for every pin of the tabernacle, for every item of truth to which they had attained. The bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed. The “course of the ship of glory was traced by the white sheen of sufferings left on the sea of time.” The persecuted did hang their harps on the willows and wept, as they thought on Zion—tears now as they cease from their former joys. On one occasion, as their persecutors, hunting for them, approached a place of concealment, they heard the voice of prayer borne out upon the breeze, the burden of the hearts of the afflicted finding expression in the Old Testament prayer—”O Lord, Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness; Jerusalem is a desolation: behold, we beseech Thee, visit Zion in Thy mercy bring her out of the deep waters.” Assuredly it was “Thy right hand and Thine arm and the light of Thy countenance” sustained and cheered them “because Thou hadst a favour unto them.”
“Whose faith follow.” Let us embrace those doctrines affecting the Church’s existence, privileges, and prosperity, for which the martyrs suffered, and let us imitate their fidelity to the high attainments of a preceding period. The great Scriptural doctrines for which they were honoured to contend and which constituted the Church’s glory, are still more or less lightly esteemed by even many professing Christians and ecclesiastical denominations. The past two hundred years have not witnessed so daring an assault as have the present times upon the infallible truth and supreme authority of the Scriptures—this daring assault too being made within churches reputedly orthodox, and by men who have subscribed the Westminster Standards, and have never repudiated that subscription. Many have discovered a new standard of theology and religion in this enlightened century. This new standard is nothing less than the “human” or “Christian consciousness”—a standard sufficiently elastic for a loose generation, and by which every man becomes a standard and law unto himself. A wave of Biblical criticism, very unlike the wave that came from Geneva in the days of Luther, has passed from the Continent to this land, and some men of theological standing are being whirled within its eddies. The theology of Naturalism and Rationalism is taking the place of the theology of Revelation—the only true theology. A blow at the inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures is a blow at the foundation. Arising out of this, that central doctrine of the Gospel of Salvation—the substitution of Christ for sinners—is ignored or denied by not a few prominent leaders in some of the evangelical Churches, and Arminianism is making rapid strides to popularity. Dishonour is done to the royal prerogative of Christ as Zion’s King by those Churches that appeal to or base their claim of rights upon the Revolution Settlement—a Settlement that proceeded upon Erastian principles, and left many of the attainments for which the martyrs suffered in the oblivion to which the Stuarts had consigned them. This dishonour is intensified by the appeal of the same Churches to the Act of Union, by which provision was made for the national support of that Prelacy against which the Covenanters fought, and fighting fell. The doctrine of Christ’s Exclusive Headship over His own Church, and of the freedom of the Church under her exclusive Head, requires to be vindicated and testified for against all modern departures therefrom. There is need to maintain and propagate the doctrine of the Divine right of the Presbyterian form of Church government, for at the present time only two of the Churches—and these among the smallest—hold this doctrine in all its Scriptural completeness. There is need to maintain the high scriptural doctrine concerning the modes of worship in the Church, that no rite or ceremony is to be introduced into the forms of worship for which an express prescription, direct or indirect, cannot be produced from God’s Own Word. The additions to the Church’s worship of forms of human invention, and called for in order to the gratification of mere religious fashion, constitute one of the saddest signs of the present time. “As though God had been defective,” as Charnock writes with reference to such innovators, “in providing for His own honour in His institutions, and modelling His own service, but stood in need of our directions and the caprichios of our brains. In this they do not seem to climb above God, yet they set themselves on the throne of God and would grasp one end of His sceptre in their own hands. They do not attempt to take the crown from God’s head but discover a bold ambition to shuffle their hairy scalps under it, and wear part of it upon their own.” By the unflinching maintenance and profession of these doctrines, then, we are to prove ourselves the legitimate descendants of Scotland’s Covenanted Martyrs. This duty may draw down upon us reproach and shame, but, as the doctrines are Scriptural, the shame, like that of the martyrs, is transformed into glory. These doctrines are not now popular nor fashionable; still they are in advance of this age and prevailing ecclesiastical opinions, and they shall be popular and fashionable in the Church everywhere when “God shall help her, and that at the breaking of the morning.” They shall have a resurrection with power, when Zion shall be set upon the mountains, and when the glory of her King shall array her. They shall be triumphant when a whole banner for the truth shall wave upon the battlements of the Millennial Church of Jesus. “O thou afflicted, tossed with the tempest, and not comforted; behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and thy foundations with sapphires; I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.”
“When Zion by the Mighty Lord,
Built up again shall be,
In glory then and majesty,
To men appear shall He.”
Tyranny, both in Church and State, owes its original to pride.
Matthew Henry.
* Certain of the Covenanters refused to accept the Revolution Settlement of 1688. That the Settlement was unsatisfactory in some of its provision was proved by subsequent Church history.— Ed.