For Christ's Crown & Covenant!

Posted at  Jardine's Book of Martyrs : In 1685, the Covenanters may have trained for a rising that they later refused to join. When he was captured by John Graham of Claverhouse , among the things that John Brounen gave intelligence of was a field preaching by James Renwick at the back of Cairn Table hill on the edge of Ayrshire when 260 men mustered for weapons training in early 1685. It is clear that Renwick’s Covenanters were preparing for a confrontation with the Scottish Army, as records of their musters are extremely unusual. The Cairn Table muster was the largest gathering of armed militant Society people between the Battle of Bothwell Bridge and the Revolution. The question is why? The historical evidence does not make it clear when the muster took place. Can a time frame for the muster be pinned down? Was it on Sunday 22 March, 1685? Why did it take place? In his letter of 3 May, 1685, Claverhouse gave an account of his interrogation of John Brounen, whom he...

By Dr. Mark Jardine - Posted at Jardine's Book of Martyrs : Renwick's Tree in 2006 - Image from Jardine's Book of Martyrs It is a curious fact, that James Renwick , the minister of the Covenanters, has remarkably few places named after him considering his central role in their struggle in the 1680s. That stands in marked contrast to Alexander Peden, whom Renwick opposed, who has a plethora of trees, caves and stones associated with him. One reason for that may be that Peden’s wanderings through the landscape had a superb and evocative publicist in the form of Patrick Walker, whose Life of Peden was a very popular work in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One place where Renwick is remembered in the landscape is at his place of birth, Moniaive, in his native parish of Glencairn in Dumfriesshire. There a monument was erected ‘about 100 yards from the place where he is supposed to have been born’ just over the hill to the north of the monument. Thanks to Evelyn Boyes ...

Posted at New College Librarian : February was a suitable month to remember James Renwick (15 February 1662 – 17 February 1688). Renwick was a graduate of Edinburgh University who accepted a call to the ministry within the independent Presbyterian church ‘societies’. These communities were formed by the Covenanters, so named because they bound themselves in ‘covenants’ to maintain the Presbyterian doctrine as the sole form of religion in Scotland. They rejected the attempts of the Crown to control church government and patronage in Scotland. Renwick’s short career included illegal field preaching, baptizing, and eluding capture by the authorities. His sermons and letter were published as tracts and pamphlets, some of which are preserved in New College Library’s Pamphlets Collection. Read more...

Posted at ExecutedToday.com : Though none of the crowd that thronged Edinburgh’s Grassmarket this day in 1688 could know it, that date’s execution of minister James Renwick would make to the Killing Time , the great 1680s persecutions that scattered martyrs’ bones  across Highland and Lowland. Renwick, at any rate, was the last of many Covenanters who submitted to the public executioner; only a few months yet remained when officers in the field were empowered to force an oath of abjuration upon suspected dissidents, on pain of summary death in the field. By year’s end, the absolutist Catholic King James II — with whose brother and predecessor the movement had such a tortured history — fled to exile as the Glorious Revolution brought the Protestant  William of Orange to power: royal recognition of Scottish Presbyterianism ensued.* Monument to Renwick at his native Moniaive. (cc) image by Scott Hill . Read more...

Minister of the Gospel, who suffered in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, February 17, 1688. Emitted from his own hand, the day before his suffering. MY DEAR FRIENDS IN CHRIST, It hath pleased the Lord to deliver me up into the hands of men; and I think fit to send you this salutation, which I expect will be the last. When I pose [i.e., question] my heart upon it, before God, I dare not desire to have escaped this lot; for no less could have been for His glory and vindication of His cause on my behalf. And as I am free before Him of the profanity, which some, either naughty, wicked, or strangers to me, have reported that I have been sometimes guilty of, so He hath kept me, from the womb, free of the ordinary pollutions of children; as these that have been acquainted with me through the tract of my life do know. And now my blood shall either more silence reproachers, or more ripen them for judgment. But I hope it shall make some more sparing to speak of those who shall come after me; and so...

From: A CLOUD OF WITNESSES, by Rev. John H. Thomson - Posted at CRTA: ON A MONUMENT AT MONIAIVE:  In memory of the late Reverend James Renwick, the last who suffered to death for attachment to the Covenanted Cause of Christ in Scotland — born near this spot, 15th February 1662, and executed at the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, 17th February 1688.   JAMES RENWICK was born February 15, 1662, at Moniaive, in the parish of Glencairn, Dumfriesshire. His father, Andrew Renwick, was a weaver, and in profession and practice a fervent and faithful Christian, which was enough, says Alexander Shields in his Life of Renwick , to nobilitate the birth of his worthy son, who had what honor was wanting in his first birth made up in the second. He died as he lived, in the Lord, February 1st, 1676, the same day twelve years after that his son was taken to die for the Lord [age 26]. His mother, Elizabeth Corsan, was of like piety with her husband. She had several children, but all died previous to the...

By Angela Wittman James Renwick I can think of nothing more stirring than hearing accounts of those martyred for their faith. While there are those who scoff at the zeal of Christians willing to lay down their lives for Jesus Christ, history proves that those who have done so were full of the grace and joy of the Holy Spirit even until the very end. These men and women who counted their lives not as dear as the Gospel impacted the world for Christ in a way that will never be forgotten. J. C. McFeeters, author of “ Sketches of the Covenanters ” writes this about those who spill their blood for the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “God has His own way of calling out His witnesses, and assigning service to them. The Church, as a whole, has invalidated and incapacitated herself for this responsibility, by weakness, declension, and compromise. God does not commit His testimony to the Church, while in such condition; nor to the faithful in the Church, whose voice and actions are weakened or neutraliz...