ABSTRACT
On September 3, 1650, two armies clashed at the battle of Dunbar, 30 miles to the east of edinburgh. Both sides were conspicuously godly. The english New Model Army was dominated by independents and famous for its prayer meetings and lay preaching. The Scottish Covenanter army had recently followed the example of Gideon, and purged ungodly “malignants” from its ranks, in an effort to win divine favor.2 The fighting began under moonlight, but at 6 a.m., as a full sun rose over the sea, Oliver Cromwell roused his troops with the shout of the psalmist: “let God arise, and his enemies shall be scattered.” The parliamentary horse and troops soon created panic through the enemy’s ranks. For the Scots, the outcome was carnage. Three thousand of their men were slaughtered in the field, another 10,000 taken prisoner.3 Among them was an intensely pious Aberdonian, Alexander Jaffray, who was wounded by a sword thrust in his back. injured and demoralized, Jaffray agonized about the spiritual meaning of this military catastrophe. He held extended conversations with two of the New Model’s commanders, the lord General Oliver Cromwell and Charles Fleetwood, and with a young chaplain, John Owen. They persuaded Jaffray that God had a controversy with the Scottish nation. in particular, he now recognized:
the sinful mistake of the good men of this nation, about the knowledge and mind of God as to the exercise of the magistrate’s power in matters of religion
– what the due bounds and limits of it are. The mistake and ignorance of the mind of God in this matter – what evils hath it occasioned! Fearful scandals and blasphemies on the one hand, and cruel persecution and bitterness among brethren on the other.4
