Of Personal Sinfulness, Salvation Might Result. Samuel Rutherford Spoke of 'my

desires of saving souls’ (p. 87). Personal assurance was deemed to be essential and those who denied it were accused of Arminianism, yet preachers strove to undermine it, for fear of laxity creeping in. Robert Baillie prescribed ‘a diligent effort “to make our personall Election sure” ’ (p. 99). On the one hand, divine grace is irresistible, but on the other the preacher demands effort from the believer – salvation by works? Most believed that the invisible church was tiny, but ‘only rarely did divines take seriously the possibility that one’s own offspring might not be of the elect’ (p. 67), and the inherent contradiction of masssubscription of the National Covenant was lost on them. The first eight chapters almost serve as a preparation for the last, on the Covenant itself, embodying the centrality of paradox to Scottish puritanism and to this book. How could a religious view emphasising personal liberty in relation to God and against an oppressive Kirk and State seek to impose unity through subscription to the Covenant? At the heart of the Covenant were notions of conformity and obedience, yet at the heart of puritan piety was the individual covenant of grace. For the nobility, puritan individualism was politically dangerous. The constitutional revolution began with religious change at the gerrymandered General Assembly at Glasgow in 1638. To maintain that victory, the leadership of the Kirk had to make a ‘Mephistophelean bargain’ (p. 301) with the nobility in the creation of new political structures. The gathering pace of the last few chapters takes the reader into a powerful ‘Epilogue’. Some may find unpalatable the view that the ministers betrayed their puritan beliefs in return for political power. Yet this careful and sympathetic book does make one inclined to agree that Scottish puritanism was dealt a severe blow by the Covenant. Oppressed dissident Christians with a faith focused on a personal relationship with God and defiance of the establishment at the heart of their self-image became an essential component of an oppressive regime. Whereas their English counterparts developed theories of personal liberty, these ‘religious cranks’ (p. 312) were ‘lusting after power to the extent of perverting their own theology and prostituting their religion’ to ‘an untrustworthy nobility pursuing its own goals’ (p. 319). Samuel Rutherford, for one, lived to regret it. Mullan has produced an absorbing account of early modern religious belief which also adds a fascinating twist to how the National Covenant, its background and aftermath are to be understood.