1702-Alexander Shields.-This 1691 sermon, on 2 Samuel 15:26—preached as Shields’ farewell before departing for Flanders—explores the spiritual crisis of feeling abandoned by God, using David’s flight from Absalom to distinguish between God’s unchangeable love of benevolence and the sensible manifestations of His delight, which may be withdrawn due to sin or sovereignty. While believers cannot submit to being objects of God’s hatred, Shields argues they must submit to the loss of particular blessings, callings, or comforts, acknowledging God’s justice and their own unworthiness. The work remains profoundly relevant today for its nuanced treatment of spiritual desertion and the “dark night of the soul,” offering a framework for enduring the loss of religious privilege or felt presence without abandoning faith. Furthermore, its piercing critique of a lukewarm, compromised church—more aligned with “malignants” than with holiness—resonates sharply in an era of cultural Christianity and institutional decline, challenging modern believers to examine whether indifference and worldly alliance have forfeited God’s active delight. Ultimately, the sermon calls for a radical, resigned submission to God’s sovereign will, even when it means accepting that He may employ other instruments to accomplish His purposes.
Read More
1690-Alexander Shields.-This Short Memorial remains invaluable today as both a primary source of unflinching documentary evidence and a sustained legal argument against arbitrary power. Its meticulous catalog of thirty-three grievances—naming specific perpetrators, victims, fines, and extrajudicial killings—provides an irreplaceable record of the systematic dismantling of legal and ecclesiastical protections between 1660 and 1690, preserving details that official records often suppressed or sanitized. Beyond its historical testimony, the work’s enduring significance lies in its constitutional reasoning: Shields demonstrates that the Cameronians’ resistance was grounded not in sectarian anarchy but in the existing laws of Scotland, the conditions of the Coronation Oath, and the binding obligations of the National and Solemn League Covenants—arguing that allegiance is conditional upon the magistrate’s fidelity to these fundamental compacts. Crucially, by extending his indictment into the “present grievances” under William, Shields exposes the Revolution’s incomplete settlement and establishes the continuity of protest that would shape the Reformed Presbyterian tradition, making this document essential for understanding how a principled minority could maintain that they were the true defenders of the national church and covenant, not schismatics from it.
Read More
1687-Alexander Shields.-A thorough survey of the history of the Scottish church which contains many hints on church communion together with several chapters devoted to Covenanter controversies.
Read More
1687-James Renwick and Alexander Shields.-This is an extensive apologetic for the course of act taken by the United Societies during the latter end of the Killing Times. It explains their beliefs and their actions in the face of the prevailing currents of apostasy and the vicious persecution that ensued on the covenant keepers.
Read More