4. Who were the Scottish commissioners? 5. What was the oath of membership? 6. What was the work assigned to the Assembly? 7. How long did the Assembly sit? 8. What benefit derived from the study of these manuals? XIX. DIVISION IN THE COVENANTED RANKS.--A.D. 1648. The 1638 Covenant produced gratifying results in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. She was revived, enlarged, strengthened, consolidated, and fortified beyond precedent. Ten years of marvelous prosperity followed, and yet she had no easy road to travel. She was still beset by dangers; enemies were plotting her overthrow; wars were convulsing the country; the external conditions were extremely adverse; yet she grew, waxed mighty, and became irresistible in the work of the Gospel. The Church honored the Lord in His holy Covenant, and He honored her with growth, success, and victory in the presence of her foes. He was a wall of fire round about her, and the glory in the midst thereof. These were years of phenomenal power and splendor unto the Covenanted Church. Then followed the gloaming. The evening of that prosperous day grew very dark; the darkness increased for forty years; ten thousand midnights seemed to have condensed their horrid blackness upon Scotland and her prostrated Church. At length the storm of fire and blood exhausted itself, but not till a whole generation had wasted away in the anguish of that protracted persecution. The steps that led to the Church's prostration and decimation, we may trace with profit; but as it is crimsoned with the blood of the brave, and marked with many a martyr's grave, the eye will oft be moist and the heart sick. While the Church stood to her Covenant, she was like an impregnable fortress, or an invincible army. While she held the truth tenaciously in her General Assembly, presbyteries, and sessions, and applied it effectively, she spread forth her roots like Lebanon. But when doubt and fear, plans and policy, compromise and temporizing entered into her councils, her gold became dim and her sword pewter. The Lord went not with her armies into the battle, and they fainted and fell on the field. A brief review is necessary to understand the situation.