The book makes an implicit judgement that the religious culture that emerged in Scotland at the end of the sixteenth century was widely analogous to the Puritanism that dominated the Church of England at the same time, though with the significant distinction that in Scotland, Presbyterianism was more successful than south of the Tweed. Scottish Puritan writers, mainly clergy, of course, and including as in England, both Presbyterians and most Episcopalians, began to produce significant amounts of practical piety around 1590, both evoking and supplying a kind of lay piety that emphasized an emotional religious content. Central to this piety was the Word, the Bible, and also the sermons and literature that divines prepared for pulpit and press—enhanced by a strong attachment to the sacraments, and particularly to the Lord's Supper. Laymen and laywomen were urged to engage in Bible reading, meditation, prayer, Sabbath observance, family devotional activities and attendance of celebrations of the Lord's Supper, even in parishes other than their own. The inner life typically included a shattering experience of conversion and a striving for a sense of assurance that God had indeed included one amongst the limited numbers of the elect. Women not less than men were the objects of pastoral concern and the feminine formed an essential part of the discourse of divinity. The notion of the covenant was linked indissolubly to this theology, though differing conceptions of covenant—national and personal—did not mesh well and thus inscribed a deep tension upon Scottish Puritanism. The author raises a question as to whether this emotional and conversion‐based piety was reconcilable with the sense of a nation in a covenantal relationship with God, and whether the National Covenant of 1638 represented a fulfilment or a betrayal of the divinity of the previous two generations during which Protestant divines had offered very little by way of resistance theory. But this outlook was quickly awakened after the prayer book riots of July 1637.
* We are very grateful to Anita Anand, Faculty of Law, Queen's University for assisting our understanding of the way in which the Ontario Securities Commission and the various Self Regulatory Organizations in the Ontario financial sector intersect for regulatory purposes. The general Canadian legal literature in this domain is surprisingly slight. However, in writing this paper, we found useful the following:
In Jacobean and Caroline Scotland there was little Arminianism to be found, whether in its Remonstrant (Dutch) or Laudian (English) versions. Nevertheless, the representation of this teaching by a few Scottish divines, its more strenuous advocacy in England, and reports of its spread in Europe unnerved those who would lead the covenanting movement after 1638.Arminianism represented a two-pronged threat to the Calvinist covenanting vision. Its attempt at moderation in the theological strife of the time approximated a compromise with, if not a surrender to, popery. But Arminianism also suffered from an identification with the scepticism then fermenting in European philosophy. The decay of a providential worldview undercut the national self-image of Scotland at the forefront of resurgent Reformed religion. The significance of free will threatened the individual's assurance of election. The loss of certainty about theological authority, accepting the individual's right to interpret the Bible and to express his views publicly, shattered the ideal of a religiously uniform society. Thus considered, the persistent interest in Arminianism provides a useful perspective on the mind of the covenanting movement.Contemporary English historians have engaged in a debate about the rise of Arminianism in the years before the Revolution. It is clear that there were increasing catholic liturgical tendencies associated with William Laud, John Cosin and other influential churchmen, but there has been disagreement as to the nature and extent of explicit theological division in the ranks (the question of a Calvinist consensus). Still, there were a number of outspoken antiCalvinists in later Jacobean England, some of these occupying high office in the church and evoking strenuous responses from the defenders of Calvinist orthodoxy, in itself a somewhat imprecise description of a variety of positions,
Presbyterianism favoured limited monarchy, rejecting any form of human absolutism in state, church, and family. However, in the period covered by this book, they were generally political conservatives, and up until the eve of the National Covenant had little to say about advocating rebellion, though they did uphold the Melvillian notion of the two kingdoms in which church and state, while inseparably linked, also tended to different areas of human interest, meaning that when the king tried to interfere with sermon content and liturgy, there was bound to be trouble. Scotland was favoured by God, and defection from the truth would lead inexorably to God's departure from the land—a theme counterbalanced by covenantal notions, again nourished by the Hebrew Bible, that God would at least spare a remnant, so that Scotland's future, while dire, was not without all hope. There was similarly a deep tension in that political change must be effected by the lesser magistrates, the nobility—a caste of men who had for decades shown themselves generally to favour personal advantage over religious loyalty.
The notion of the covenant was essential to the Scottish Puritan experience. John Knox may well have imported the idea into Scotland from his prophetic interpretation of the English Reformation, and perhaps in 1557 one may see the lineaments of the first religio‐political covenant. The Negative (King's) Confession of 1581 was quickly interpreted in covenantal terms and it became the foundation of the National Covenant of 1638. But the covenant idea also developed in the context of the individual's relationship with God—increasingly interpreted in terms of federal theology—and during this period one observes the building blocks of the personal covenant, which would later in the century become a familiar component of Presbyterian piety. The National Covenant was subscribed by men across the length and breadth of the country and was often received with a revivalistic emotional outpouring.
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