The determined efforts of Charles I. and his advisers to make the Church of Scotland in all respects like the Church of England, were fiercely opposed, and, for a time, the party which was resolved to make them as dissimilar as possible prevailed. Episcopacy, liturgy, ancient ecclesiastical customs and rites, and all that savoured of Prelacy or Popery, were swept away by the rising flood. Yet, without committing oneself to the doctrine of passive obedience, it may be doubted whether the course of policy followed by the Covenanters was either wise or scriptural. For, notwithstanding the vehement protestations of loyalty expressed in the National Covenant, armed resistance to the royal authority was not obscurely hinted at in it. "We," said the subscribers, "promise and swear by the great name of the Lord our God to continue in the profession and obedience of the said religion; and that we shall defend the same, and resist all those contrary errors and corruptions, according to our vocation, and to the utmost of that power which God hath put into our hands, all the days of our life." It is quite possible, it may be hoped, for one to be in sympathy with a certain political party, and yet to regret that the Church should identify itself with that party; and it certainly was not in the end a good thing for the cause of religion that it should have been so closely allied as it was with party politics in the seventeenth century. "My kingdom is not of this world," said Christ; "if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight." "Put up again thy sword into his place," He said to St Peter, "for all they that take the sword, shall perish with the sword." It is difficult to see how these clear and emphatic utterances can be made to harmonise with the resolution not only to use force in the correction of ecclesiastical abuses and religious errors, but also to coerce those who were not prepared to follow the same course of policy.[44]
The Covenanting party were successful beyond their hopes. The influence of the Marquis of Argyle secured the allegiance to the cause of the Highlanders in the west of Scotland; while, in Inverness and the region north of the Moray Firth, the movement was enthusiastically welcomed. Only one district in Scotland held aloof--that of which Aberdeen was the centre. The community there had probably but little sympathy with the innovations which Laud was bent upon bringing in, but they had still less with the Covenant. They were attached to the modified form of Episcopacy which had now existed in Scotland since the Reformation (with the exception of the years between 1592 and 1610), in which the bishops were little more than permanent moderators of Presbyteries, and were subject to the General Assembly, and in which the ritual was of a very simple character.
