extension of Scottish Presbyterianism over all England and Ireland, or,
at all events, the union of the two kingdoms in some common form of
Church-government not essentially differing from Scottish
Presbyterianism--for that object the Scots _would_ strike in; for
that object they _would_ shed their blood, as fellow-soldiers with
Englishmen, in the fields of England! Now the English Commissioners, like
wary men, and probably in accordance with their instructions, would fain
have avoided any too definite a pledging of England to a particular
ecclesiastical future. Nye, in especial, as an Independent, must have
desired to avoid this; and Vane, as a man who did not know how far from
his present opinions continued reasoning might carry him, may have felt
with Nye. Hence, on the religious question, they tried to get off with
generalities. If there were a league between the two kingdoms for their
civil liberties, would not a uniformity in Church matters naturally
follow? But this was not quite satisfactory to the Scottish
Commissioners. "The English were for a civil league, we for a religious
covenant," says Baillie; and the event has made the sentence memorable
historically. Let England and Scotland unite first in subscribing one and
the same document, swearing one and the same oath, which should base
their alliance on a certain amount of mutual engagement in the matter of
Religion! To such oaths of mutual allegiance the Scots, among themselves,
had long been accustomed. They called them "Covenants." This agency of
"Covenanting" had been a grand agency in Scottish History. Was not the
present liberation of Scotland, the destruction of Episcopacy root and
branch within its borders, the result of the "National Covenant" sworn to
only five years and a half ago--that Covenant being but the renewal, with
slight additions, of a document which had done not unimportant work in a
former age? Why not have another Covenant for the present emergency--not
that National or purely Scottish Covenant, but a Covenant expressly
framed for the new purpose, and fit to be a religious pact between the