Parliament imposed the Covenant upon the Irish. The Royalist authorities did all in their power to resist the imposition. The Lords-Justices and the Council laid an embargo on its adoption by the military, and condemned it as seditious. But old Scotch officers, commanding troops in the sister island, heeded not the mandate, and the proscribed symbol received a warm welcome in the camp, and also in the northern cities, where the Protestants rallied around it. With great solemnity, the soldiers swore to it in the church of Carrickfergus. Throughout Down and Antrim it became popular. At Coleraine it contended with opposition, but at Derry, which place abounded in anti-prelatists, it won a tumultuous victory over the opposite party.1 As it has been from the beginning in the history of tests,2 so it was with the Covenant. It bore the character of a compromise; and, accordingly, that which was meant at the same time to declare truth and to accomplish union, received different explanations from different persons. First, the Presbyterians thought themselves bound by it to oppose schism as well as prelacy; next, the Independents, it was said, deeming Presbyterianism superstitious, conceived that the Covenant gave authority to oppose that system; and, thirdly, the cavaliers, swearing by it to preserve and defend the King's majesty, concluded they might lawfully oppose both the other parties. In this way the subject is represented in a publication of later date, written by one who had no sympathy 1 Mant's History of the Church of Ireland, i. 580. 2 Eusebius observes, in his Epistle respecting the Nicene Creed, that he and his friends did not refuse to adopt the word ὁμοούσιος, “peace being the end in view, as well as the not falling away from sound doctrine." He excused the damnatory clause, simply on the ground that it aggrieved none by prohibiting the use of unscriptural phraseology.— Socrates' Ecc. Hist., b. i. c. 8. whatever with the movement; and there is much truth, no doubt, in the representation, as well as in the following remark by the same writer, in reference to the ambiguity of the terms employed in the symbol: "It must needs own almost anything, especially seeing the sense of it hath never been plainly demonstrated, but left to men's own interpretation in several particulars." But whilst each could discover something in the Covenant of a negative kind, which he could turn to account in opposing his adversaries, nearly all persons in England, except the most advanced Presbyterians, saw there were things in it of a positive kind, which they knew not how to adopt. Hence, in spite of its various interpretations, and also in spite of Parliamentary orders and Presbyterian activity, great numbers refused or evaded the test.2 Where 1 "Epistle" by John Canne, quoted in Hanbury's Memorials, iii. 380-386. The following passage occurs in a paper by the Dissenting Brethren in 1646, also quoted in Hanbury, iii. 62" This Covenant was professedly so attempered in the first framing of it, as that we of different judgments might take it, both parties being present at the framing of it in Scotland." "It is as free for us to give our interpretation of the latitude or nearness of uniformity intended, as for our brethren." The following passages illustrate the state of public feeling in reference to the Covenant : Men cry shame on the Covenant. Those that took it down cast it up again, and those that refuse it have given a world of arguments that it is unreasonable, which arguments our Assembly, like dull, ignorant rascals, never answered. I know, my Lords, many of our friends never took this oath, but they refused it out of mere conscience." . . . . “I hold the Covenanters extremely rea sonable. Though some malignants take it, yet many refuse it; and, as some who love us do hate the Covenant, so some who hate us do take it. Yet our friends who hate it do love to force others to it, for their hatred to malignants is more than to the Covenant; and, as the one takes it to save his estate, so do others give it to make him lose his estate. They both love the estate, and both hate the Covenant."-A learned Speech spoken in the House of Peers by the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery upon the 28th July last, taken out of Michael Ouldsworth's own Copy. State Papers, 1647. "All this while I did not take the zealots were able, they enforced it rigorously; but in unsettled times the imposition of anything of the kind is sure to be encumbered by great difficulties. Some even who held Presbyterian opinions disliked this form of expressing them; and we find that Richard Baxter prevented his flock at. Kidderminster from submitting to the Covenant, lest, as he said, it should ensnare their consciences; and also he prevailed on the ministers of Worcestershire not to offer it to their people. The truth is, that while the Covenant in Scotland was a reality, inasmuch as it sprung from the hearts of the people, and expressed a sentiment to which they were devoted, the case was far otherwise in our own country. Imported here, it never rallied around it the sympathies of the nation. Exasperating High Churchmen, it did not please the Puritans. Many could not go so far as it went and many were anxious to go much further still. Moderate Episcopalians were reluctant to adopt it, because they were not prepared for the total abolition of Episcopacy; and, on the other hand, many Independents disliked it, because its condemnation of schism, they knew, was regarded in some quarters as a condemnation of themselves. They were advocates for a liberty and a toleration to which the spirit of the Covenant was thoroughly opposed. That the Scotch should insist upon its adoption by the English, and that the rulers of this National Covenant, not because I refused to do, for I would have made no bones to take, swear, and sign it, and observe it too, for I had then a principle, having not yet studied a better one, that I wronged not my conscience in doing any thing I was commanded to do by those whom I served. But the truth is, it was never offered to me, every one think- country should accept the condition, and endeavour to enforce it upon all their subjects, was an unfortunate mistake, destined to be attended in some instances by failure, in others by mischief, in all by disappoint ment. The adoption of the Covenant by the Westminster Assembly will be in the reader's remembrance; and to the subsequent proceedings of that venerable body his attention is now to be directed. The Divines first met in Henry the Seventh's Chapel. That stone building, pleasantly cool in summer, became too cold for them as autumn drew on. They then, by order of Parliament, adjourned to the Jerusalem Chamber.1 "What place more proper for the building of Zion, as they propounded it," asks Fuller, "than the Chamber of Jerusalem, the fairest of the Dean's lodgings where King Henry IV. died?" Romance and poetry, through the pens of Fabian and Shakespeare, have thrown their hues over this memorable room; other and higher associations now belong to it as the birth-place of a confession of faith still dear to the Church of Scotland, and as the spot where the Puritan advocates of religious liberty fought one of its early and most earnest battles. The Chamber adjoins the Abbey, at the south corner of the west front. There is a painted window on the north side, and two plain ones give light on the west. The walls are hung with tapestry, representing the Circumcision, the Adoration of the Magi, and, apparently, 1 Journals. Sept. 21st-It was resolved by the Commons: That the Assembly of godly Divines, who, by Ordinance, July 1st, 1643, met in King Henry the Seventh's Chapel, shall, in respect of the coldness of the said chapel, have power to adjourn themselves to the Jerusalem Chamber, in the College of Westminster. the Passage through the Wilderness. A portrait of Richard II. generally considered the oldest extant picture of an English sovereign-hangs at the south end of the apartment; and a curiously-carved chimney-piece, put up by Williams, Dean of Westminster, spans the fire-place. The room was rather different in appearance at the time of the Assembly. The situation of the fireplace was the same, and the mantel-piece had but just been erected. The arras, however, was brought into the Chamber after the coronation of James II., on which occasion it had been used in the Abbey; and the portrait of Richard II. did not come there till 1755, when it was removed from the Abbey choir.1 Baillie paints the place and the Assembly as he saw it. Near the door, and on both sides, were stages of seats; the Prolocutor's chair being at the upper end, "on a frame." In chairs before him were the assessors. Before them, through the length of the room, ran a long table, at which sat the secretaries, taking notes. The house, says Baillie, was well hung with tapestry, and a good fire blazed on the hearth-"which is some dainty at London." Opposite the table, to the right of the president, on the lowest of the three or four rows of forms, appeared the Scotch Commissioners, Baillie himself a conspicuous individual of the group. Behind were Parliament members of the Assembly. On the left, running from the upper end to the fire-place, and at the lower end, till they came round to the seats of the Scotchmen, were forms for the Divines, which they occupied as they pleased, each, however, commonly retaining the same spot. From the chimney-piece to the door was an open passage; the For some of this information I am indebted to the kindness of the Dean of Westminster. |