Introduction

The Solemn Acknowledgement is the most penitential document in this collection. It neither defines doctrine nor regulates worship: it is a public confession of sins, made by a whole nation before God, followed by the engagement to amend. If the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant are the oaths, the Acknowledgement is the examination of conscience of those who had broken them. That is why the Scottish editions of the Confession of Faith printed it together with the two covenants, and so we include it here as well.

To understand it, one must know what happened in 1647 and 1648. Defeated in the English civil war, Charles I negotiated in secret with a group of Scottish nobles headed by the Duke of Hamilton. In December 1647, on the Isle of Wight, they signed the so-called Engagement: the king bound himself to establish presbyterianism in England for three years, and the Scots, to restore him to the throne by force of arms. The Scottish Parliament approved it, but the Church condemned it: the king did not swear the Covenant, the promised reformation was provisional, and the alliance was made with the very enemies of the cause. Even so, in July 1648 a Scottish army invaded England, and in August it was routed by Cromwell at Preston.

The defeat changed the government of Scotland. The supporters of the Covenant recovered power, and the Commission of the General Assembly wanted the nation not merely to change its policy, but to repent. On 6 October 1648 it ordered the Solemn League and Covenant to be renewed in all the congregations of the kingdom, and for that purpose it drew up this Acknowledgement; the Committee of Estates of Parliament approved it on 14 October. It was read publicly in every church, two days of humiliation and fasting were kept, and afterwards ministers and people swore and subscribed the League anew. On that same 6 October the Commission debarred from the renewal, from the Lord's Supper and from the offices of the Church those who had held command in the army of the Engagement or had promoted it, until the General Assembly should determine their case; and in January 1649 Parliament excluded them from public office.

The document has three parts, which we have separated here for ease of reading. First, the causes: the afflictions that God had sent upon the land and the resolution to humble themselves and confess their sins. Next, the confession properly so called, surprising in its frankness. It begins with the public sins: having tolerated the enemies of the reformation, having broken the Covenant by the Engagement, having waged an unjust war against England, and having sought their own interest in the cause of God; and it ends with the ignorance of God, indifference to the Gospel, the neglect of seeking God in families, and profaneness. No one is left out, neither nobles nor ministers nor people. Lastly, the engagement: six specific duties, corresponding to the sins confessed, and the promise to renew the covenant "not upon any politick advantage or private interest", but sincerely and from a sense of duty.

Its tone is that of the prophets and of Ezra and Daniel: "Righteousnesse belongeth unto God, and shame and confusion of face unto us as appears this day". It is not the voice of a party blaming its adversaries, but that of a people acknowledging itself guilty as a whole and seeking the mercy of God. Nor is it an abstract examination: it names the sins of public life and of private life in the same detail, because for its authors a nation's faithfulness to God was at stake in both.

Its later history is that of the covenants themselves. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, the League was repudiated and the presbyterians faithful to it were persecuted. But the Acknowledgement was not forgotten: the Covenanters used it again when they renewed their covenants, at Lesmahagow in 1689 and at Auchensaugh in 1712, and the Scottish editions of the Confession went on printing it. To read it today is to learn that repentance can also be public, and that a people that has promised something to God must examine itself in the light of what it promised.

The text we publish is that of the original Edinburgh print of 1648, which is accompanied by its title page and by the three acts of the Commission of the Assembly and of the Committee of Estates that ordered the renewal; later editions omitted one of them, the one that debarred those who had taken part in the Engagement from the renewal and from Communion.