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However belied and misrepresented the persecuted covenanters were in their own day, impartial history has not failed to do justice to their memory, and to show that their faithful contendings had no little influence in the nation's deliverance from degrading oppression. A question was raised in the later times of the persecution of difficult solution, but of vast practical importance.
What dost thou think, then, of "Faithful Contendings"? 'I have not read it. 'Or of Baxter's Sermons? she asked. 'I have not read them. 'Of Bull's "Spirit Cordial," then? 'I have not read it. Mistress Ruth Timewell stared at him in undisguised wonder. 'You may think me ill-bred to say it, sir, she remarked, 'but I cannot but marvel where you have been, or what you have done all your life.
Notwithstanding the faithful and earnest contendings of the Waldenses, Bohemians and others on the continent of Europe, seconded by the Lollards in England, so far were the votaries of Antichrist from repenting of their idolatry and profligacy, that they became more and more exasperated against those witnesses who tormented them, and attempted to silence their testimony by committing their leaders to the flames.
From what is noticed above, the presbytery cannot but declare their hearty approbation of the zeal, courage, and faithfulness of our honored ancestors, in their valiant contendings for the valuable liberties and privileges of the spiritual kingdom of the MESSIAH, until they got the same established, and the nations brought under the most solemn, sacred, and inviolable engagements, to maintain every branch of this glorious reformation; a reformation, not only from the more gross errors, and idolatries of Popery, but from the more refined superstition of Prelacy, and all that Antichristian and Erastian supremacy, that in former times had been exercised on the heritage of the LORD; a reformation of both the divine ordinances of ministry and magistracy, from all the abuses and corruptions thereof, by the inventions of men, joined with the above mentioned establishment of them, in some measure of agreeableness unto their scriptural institution.
His faithful contendings and arduous labours contributed not a little to subvert the throne of a bigot and tyrant, and to achieve the nation's liberties. They served also to secure the purity and independence of the Church, and to transmit a legacy of imperishable principles to future times, when "the handful of corn" upon the top of the mountains, "shall shake with fruit like Lebanon."
The book of life, then, is now opened for further conviction of damned reprobates, that their mouths may be stopped for ever, as touching all their cavils, contendings, and arguments against God's proceeding in judgment with them.
James Renwick, January 17, 1688. And to whatever wrestlings or contendings have been made, or testimonies given against the endeavours of any in their subtle and sedulous striving to insinuate and engadge us in a sinful confederacy with a malignant interest and cause, contrar to the Word of God, our Solemn League and Covenant, and testimony of this Church.
Although the Presbytery cannot be supposed, in a consistency with their present design, to reckon up all, yet they would endeavor to take notice of some of the most remarkable instances of backsliding, treachery and oppression, bloodshed, &c, acted in those nations during the late persecuting period, together with the faithful contendings, and patient sufferings unto death of the saints and servants of CHRIST, in this hot furnace of affliction into which they were cast.
Their contendings issued in breach of organic fellowship in 1840. Indeed the sister-hood which had subsisted for many years among the Synods east and west of the Atlantic ocean, was violated in 1833; when the rupture took place in the Synod of America, by the elopement of the declining party, who are since known by alliance with the civil institutions of the United States.
Not only have eminent historians and other distinguished writers, in recent times, done justice to the character and labours of Renwick, and the contendings of the Society people; but within the last few years, by several public Commemorative services in Scotland, the spirit and testimony of the later Scottish martyrs, have been held forth as worthy of the grateful regard of posterity, and commended to their imitation and adoption.
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