Robert S. Candlish on the obligation of the Scottish covenants

[Reformed Covenanter]

... The obligation under which we lie to maintain our principles, does not arise primarily from any engagements or covenants of man. We know and we feel that the obligation under which we lie to maintain and carry out these principles primarily and essentially arise out of the authority of the Word of God. We do not desire to maintain the principles for which we have testified, and to follow them out, merely because our fathers did so, and because our fathers bound themselves to do so. We recognise as the only primary obligation the authority of the Word of God.

But when, as in ordinary life, and as in the intercourse of man with man, and still more, in the intercourse of nation with nation, we do own and acknowledge contracts and engagements entered into, as increasing or enforcing the obligation under which men originally lie to do justly to one another, so I think we cannot dispute that in some sense or other, and to some extent or other, if we are identically the Church that entered into engagements in former times, and that was enabled to make attainments in former times, we lie under a superadded obligation to be faithful, and to hand down to the generation following the testimony which has been handed down to us. ...

For more, see Robert S. Candlish on the obligation of the Scottish covenants.