ding from the fathers?

XXXV.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.--A.D. 1680.

The persecution of the Covenanters under King Charles II. had now
continued twenty years. These were years of slaughter, and the horrors
were still deepening.

The battle of Bothwell Bridge was followed by a climax of suffering and
sacrifice. The wrath of the king, vented through the dragoons, fell upon
every district where the Covenanters were located and followed them into
their hiding-places. They were required to take the oath of loyalty, or
suffer the direful consequence. Some were haled to the judges to be
sentenced, others were shot like game where they were found. Like a fire
that breaks out in a city and mercilessly devours while the flames find
fuel, so this fire seemed destined to spread and devour till the last
drop of Covenanted blood would sizzle on the coals.

The persecutors were in degree successful. Four hundred ministers, in
1662, had refused to receive orders from the king for the exercise of
their ministry; they gave up home and all its comforts, rather than
admit the king's claim of supremacy over the Church of Christ. These
were now reduced to less than one hundred. Some were martyred, some were
banished, some had died of old age and some of exposure; but many, if
not most, had been constrained to accept the Indulgence and were gone
back home. Their first love had been chilled by the wintry blasts. Their
zeal for the Lord Jesus and His testimony abated as the hardships
increased. Worn with suffering, emaciated with hunger, exposed to
danger, grey with sorrows, and the darkness deepening with no relief in
prospect, they weakened and accepted the terms of a false peace. But let
them not be judged with harshness. Our Lord has said of such, "The
spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak." The struggle lasted eight
more years, during which time there were sixty ministers standing by
their Covenant instead of four hundred, and even these sixty, almost to
a man, counted it expedient to suspend their testimony and keep silence.

The real Covenanters however were not conquered. Death had slain
thousands, and defection tens of thousands, yet the faithful had not
lost heart. There was still a vigorous force of loyal men and women,
earnest quiet people, who stood fearlessly by the Covenant and Testimony
of Jesus Christ. They were called, "The remnant." With these the Holy
Spirit was pleased to clothe Himself, for the goo