1809-1909 Centennial Souvenir

and prelacy were to be extirpated. In opposition to the theory that the church is the creature of the state, and that the King is head of the church, they maintained that d1e Lord Jesus Christ is the head of nations, and vowed not to rest until this principle and those which flow from it should be acknowledged throughout the length and the breadth of the earth. Thus at this early day the Covenanters had a vision of church unity which has not yet be– come a reality. Cromwell and the Commonwea!Jh were followed by the Res– toration of the Stuarts, dtiring which epoch Episcopacy was re– established and the Solemn League and Covenant was set aside. The Scotch, however, held fast to the old doctrine and covenant, and finally in 1680 the bloody persecution commenced. It was then that Richard Cameron, from whom the Scotch Covenanters were afterwards called Cameronians, issued the Sanquhar Dec– laration, formally renouncing allegiance to the tyrant and declar– ing war against him and his adherents. His followers were scattered and he took his place among the Scotch martyrs. Over twenty thousand Presbyterians were killed during the reigns of Charles and James, among them the Rev. Donald Cargill, who had excommunicated the King. Not a minister was· left to ordain a possible licentiate, and James Renwick, who offered himself, had to go to the Church of Holland to be ordained. After six years of labor, he too was executed, the last martyr to the cove– nanted reformation. Th Revolution of 1688 stopped the bloody persecution, and as a measure of pacification, Presbyterianism was established in Scotland by Act of Parliament in 1690, but it was of a modified kind, countenancing the Erastian doctrine of the Revolution Set– tlement that the church is a mere creature of the state, dependent upon it for its existence and authority. The great majority of Presbyterians accepted the Settlement, thus establishing the Kirk of Scotland, but the Cameronians, or Reformed Presbyterians, as they called themselves, could not forget the Solemn League and Covenant, and maintained that the ends thereof had not been attained. For sixteen years -tF1ere was not an ordained minister in the church, or only one. The congregations, or Societies, as 24