When John Pym, the leading parliamentarian in Westminster, asked Alexander Henderson, the minister of St Giles’ in Edinburgh, to put together a second document, the Solemn League and Covenant emerged. Along with Magna Carta (1215), Petition of Right (1628), and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679), the National Covenant (1638) and Solemn League and Covenant (1643) were documents of vital importance in developing our constitution in Britain.
The actual text of the Solemn League and Covenant is shorter than that of the National Covenant, and it was signed by people in Scotland, England and Ireland. The document itself represented the opinion of many noblemen, barons, knights, gentlemen, burgesses, citizens and commoners. The agreed uniting factor was that those who signed it would be of ‘one reformed Religion’ for the sake of ‘the true publick Liberty’. After ‘mature deliberation’ it was resolved that the document would reflect ‘the example of the best Reformed Churches’ that agreed with a Presbyterian ‘form of Church-government’, which was democratic and acknowledged Christ as the Head of the Church. Along with this came the section that deplored the hierarchy of the Church of England and called subscribers to endeavour to remove ‘Popery, [and] Prelacy (that is, Church-government by Arch-bishops)’, with its pyramid control structure.
This document was more political than the National Covenant. In section 3 it expressed the subscribers’ desire to ‘preserve the Rights and Priviledges of the Parliaments, and the Liberties of the Kingdoms’. There was no defiant broadside against the monarchs, for the people were also called to ‘defend the Kings [sic] Majesty’s Person and Authority’. The leaders were well aware of the ‘Malignants’ who were scheming and plotting as ‘evil instruments’, seeking to divide the king from his people, contrary to the League and Covenant. Such people, they agreed, should be judged and punished.
The document finishes with a humble confession of their sins before God, recognizing that the people had not laboured for purity of the faith, and had not always walked in a worthy manner. There is a call for a ‘real Reformation’ amongst them and a conscious effort to realise that this document should not be signed lightly, because it was a covenant made before a holy God, ‘the Searcher of all hearts’. Lastly, there is an ‘encouragement to other Christian Churches groaning under, or in danger of the yoke of Antichristian Tyranny… to joyn in the same, or like Association & Covenant’.
The Solemn League and Covenant stands as a document of great importance, because it combines both the reformed Christian faith, together with the civil liberties of the English and Scottish Parliaments and people. It also shows how much the Presbyterian model of church democratic governance had impacted the English churches and Parliament in Westminster, at this crucial stage of our long march towards a fairer and more democratic constitution.
‘Come and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that will not be forgotten’ (Jeremiah 50:5, NKJV).
Image: Wikipedia Free Commons, http://www.sorbie.net/covenanters.htm