Crime & punishment > Times of Claverhouse, or, Sketches of the persecution

THE TIMES OF CLAVERHOUSE.
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J friendly co-operation which would make them for-
j midable to their enemies, and, at the same time,
f render them more effectually the safeguard of the
; nation’s privileges. Wait not till days of trial fuse
us into one,—let us unite previously, and our union
I may, perchance, ward off the threatened evil.
1 And on what points better calculated to form the
j grounds of a general coalition can we meet, than
the great principles embodied in the Covenants, for
the maintenance of which our ancestors suffered so
} much ? Was it not the very principles avowed in
* these documents that wrought out the boasted Re-
; volution of the famous eighty-eight, although the
constitution in Church and State came not up to
the fulness of these Covenants, but in some things
fell far short of their acquirements. The Covenants
may yet form a rallying-point to the various deno¬
minations of the Church of Christ in our land; and
why should they not ? If there be any thing in the
wording of these Covenants that, requires a modi-
! fication to suit the times, let that modification he
[ made; and if there be nothing, let them remain as
| they are. That mawkish sensitiveness that seems
[ to shrink from the very mention of the Covenants,
i' is quite unmanly, quite unworthy of freemen, and
more unworthy still of Christian freemen, to whom
J the Covenants have been the means of transmit-
| ting all the freedom they now enjoy. Why ap-
l plaud the Covenanters and decry the Covenants ?
t Who were the Covenanters ? The men who upheld
j the Covenants, and who died in support of the
principles they embodied. You honour the mar-
; tyrs, don’t you ? and yet you trample their testi-