A Protest Against the Unlawful, Unfree and Unjust Assembly of the Resolutioners (1652) by Samuel Rutherford, James Guthrie, William Guthrie, Robert Traill, James Nisbet, and numerous other Protestor Covenanters.

Hewison writes of this paper, "the Protesters compeared (at the pretended assembly of the Resolutioners -RB) to lodge a protestation subscribed by 63 ministers and 80 laymen, who declared the Assembly to be 'unlawful, unfrie, and unjust.' The Assembly threatened them with discipline" (The Covenanters, vol. 2, p. 43).

Samuel Rutherford and the other Protesters held their ground and refused to have ecclesiastical fellowship with the backsliding, covenant-breaking Resolutioners -- a lesson on faithful biblical separation that has long since been forgotten, which makes this book of great importance in our day.

This faithful Covenanter Protest gives us a little slice of the Protesters views during this most important period of controversy in the Church of Scotland, for as Anderson notes, "(f)uture events showed the impolicy of these Resolutions. The men who were admitted by them into places of power and trust in the army and state, became, as the Protesters always predicted, the persecutors of the Church.

Had the counsels of the Protesters prevailed, the twenty-eight years' persecution might not have existed" (cited in Treasury of the Scottish Covenant, p. 120). Dodds adds this testimony, "Last fatal sign that the ancient spirit and the freedom of Scotland were about to disappear under a total eclipse, the Kirk hitherto impregnable, unyielding Kirk, stooped down from her old height and emitted Resolutions in favour of those proceedings of the royalists.

Against these Resolutions, a large, bold, fierce minority headed by James Guthrie of Stirling protested that the principles of the Covenant should be maintained" (also cited in A Treasury of the Scottish Covenant from page 120).

Finally, Johnston writes, "Durham's last treatise had reference to the 'scandalous divisions' thus created, and what is particularly noticeable is the circumstance that David Dickson's last hours were embittered by the recollection of his short-sightedness in adopting these Resolutions. To a lady who visited him on his death-bed he said, 'Madam, I must confess, the Protesters have been truer prophets than we were'" (Idib.)

24 pages.

For application of the Protester's position to the modern Reformed church, see A Brief Defense of Dissociation by the session of the Puritan Reformed Church of Edmonton (free on the web at: http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualnls/BriefDef.htm) and Greg Barrow's The Covenanted Reformation Defended (free on the web at: http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualnls/CovRefGB.htm). Both books noted above are also free on SWRB's Puritan and Reformation Hard Drive on this site (PuritanDownloads.com), along with over 12,500 other classic and contemporary Reformation, Puritan and Covenanter resources.