On the Desolations of the Covenanted Reformation

covenant reformation testimony

The Covenanted Reformation of these lands is in desolation. Scotland, which once bound herself by solemn national oath to the cause of Christ’s Crown and Covenant, has long since cast off that bond as an unwanted restraint. The Kirk has fallen. The State has forgotten. The people sleep.

And yet — the promises of God are not broken.

The Testimony That Remains

There is a peculiar comfort afforded to those who walk in the paths of the old Covenanters: the knowledge that they too saw the desolation of what had been built, and yet they did not despair. Richard Cameron, dying at Airdsmoss, is reported to have said before the battle, “Lord, spare the green and take the ripe.” He was twenty-six years of age.

Richard Cameron (c. 1648–1680), the Lion of the Covenant, field preacher and leader of the Cameronians, killed at the skirmish of Airdsmoss.

The testimony did not end with his death. It was continued by those who gathered his mantle: by Cargill, by Renwick, and by the faithful who signed the Sanquhar Declaration and refused the indulgences of a corrupt and Erastian church-state.

A Present Application

We who remain in these latter days must learn the same lesson. The desolation is real. We are not to pretend otherwise, nor to baptise the present ruin with comfortable language. But neither are we to lose heart, as though the Covenant God of Israel had forgotten His oath.

For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

Isaiah 51:3

The promise is sure. The Reformation of these lands shall yet come again — not by the arm of flesh, nor by political cunning, but by the sovereign grace of the God who sweareth by Himself.

Until that day, we record. We testify. We pray.

Soli Deo Gloria.