Confessions, Covenants and Continuous Reformation in Early Modern Scotland

Abstract

This article examines the swearing of collective religious covenants in early modern Scotland. Scotland’s Covenants were public oaths in support of protestant beliefs and in favour of national and individual Reformation. Though they shared some of the characteristics of the confessions of faith found across Europe, the Covenants were written in times of crisis and focused on doctrines of particular salience at the moment of composition. The article traces the origins of covenanting in the Scottish Reformation, before examining the Negative Confession of 1581, the National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1643). Because these oaths were sworn repeatedly, and on a national basis, they propagated the idea that Scotland was in covenant with God, and that this covenant should be periodically renewed. The Covenants also enshrined a notion of continuous Reformation: a process of constant striving for reform, and of perpetual vigilance against error and sin. When Scots again renewed the Covenants, nationally in 1648, and by a dwindling number of radical Presbyterians in 1666, 1689, 1712 and 1743, they were not commemorating the Reformation, but reaffirming its apparently timeless principles. Covenanting thus came to epitomize resistance to royal control over the church and then to the liberalizing tendencies within the Kirk.

Keywords

• Scotland; Reformation; presbyterianism; confession of faith; Covenants; oaths; worship; commemoration