Introduction

The National Covenant is the elder brother of the Solemn League and Covenant. Five years before Scotland, England and Ireland joined together in that league, the Scottish nation had already bound itself, in 1638, to defend the reformed religion against the impositions of the king. Without the National Covenant neither the League nor the Scottish presence at the Westminster Assembly can be understood. That is why the Scottish editions of the Confession of Faith printed it for centuries together with the Standards, and so we include it here as well.

Its core is much older than 1638. In January 1581 the young King James VI and his household signed a short confession of faith, drawn up by the minister John Craig, at a time when a return of popery to the court was feared. It is the one known as the Negative Confession, because, besides adhering to the Scots Confession of 1560, it lists and rejects one by one the doctrines and practices of Rome. The whole nation subscribed it again in 1590.

Half a century later, Charles I sought to bring to completion what his father had begun: to govern the Church of Scotland by means of bishops and to conform her worship to that of the Church of England. The Five Articles of Perth of 1618 had already imposed, among other things, kneeling to receive the Lord's Supper and the keeping of holy days; in 1637 the king ordered, without consulting either the Church or Parliament, a new prayer book in the Anglican manner. On the day it was first read in St Giles' Kirk in Edinburgh, in July 1637, a riot broke out, and the resistance spread throughout the whole kingdom.

The answer was the Covenant. It was drawn up by the minister Alexander Henderson and the lawyer Archibald Johnston of Wariston, and its signing began on 28 February 1638 in Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh; within a few weeks thousands of people of every estate throughout the country had subscribed it. They did not invent a new religion: they renewed the confession that King James himself had sworn. Its strength lay precisely in this: the subscribers were not rising up against the law, but defending the religion that the laws of the kingdom had already established.

Hence its structure, in three parts, which we have separated here for ease of reading. First, the Confession of 1581. Next, a long recital of acts of the Scottish Parliament that condemn popery, protect the reformed religion and bind kings to defend it from their coronation onwards, and which fills almost half of the document; it is its legal argument, the work of Johnston. Lastly, the covenant properly so called, in which the subscribers promise and swear, "by the GREAT NAME OF THE LORD OUR GOD", to persevere in the true religion, to defend it, to defend the king as well in the defence of it, and to live as befits "Christians who have renewed their covenant with God". As in 1581, they did not want a mere signature: "we believe with our hearts, confess with our mouths, subscribe with our hands".

In its 1638 wording the Covenant held in suspense the novations that had been introduced "till they be tried and allowed in free Assemblies and in Parliament". The General Assembly that met in Glasgow in November 1638 deposed the bishops, and that of 1639 declared unlawful both the government of the Church by bishops and the Articles of Perth. That determination was added to the Covenant at its subscription of 1639, and it is the short declaration with which it closes.

The rest is told in the introduction to the Solemn League and Covenant: the war with the king, the alliance with the English Parliament in 1643, the Scottish commissioners at Westminster. Charles II swore the National Covenant together with the League in 1650 and 1651; once restored to the throne, he repudiated them both, and the presbyterians who remained faithful to them, the Covenanters, were persecuted for decades. To read the National Covenant today is to witness the moment when a whole nation bound itself to God to maintain the reformed faith, and to understand the source of the impulse that led to the Westminster Assembly.

The Covenant is preceded by its original title, which sums up the history of its subscriptions between 1580 and 1651.