---
title: 'Why Should We Read About the Covenanters and Huguenots? Thomas B. Balch Explains'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2022-05-20
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2022-why-should-we-read-about-the-covenanters-and-huguenots-thomas-b-balch-explains
---

# Why Should We Read About the Covenanters and Huguenots? Thomas B. Balch Explains

“Let me counsel you to read very extensively the Scottish Covenanters—the Huguenots in France, and the Seceding Divines in Scotland. For twenty-eight years did the Covenanters stand the shock of persecution from Charles, the Second; and yet, that perjured mountebank had himself, sworn to the covenant. Their blood dyed the lakes, caves and heather of Scotland, and their annals are very interesting. Divines are now searching every Caledonian glen to find traditions of those martyrs, who were shot down in platoons by Claverhouse. And the same may be said of the Huguenots, sixty thousand of whom were cut off in one night by the sanguinary arm of Rome. Nor do we know of anything in the way of sound Divinity, more worthy of being read, than the Discourses of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, or the works of Boston, who wrote among the fir-trees of his Ettrick manse. Scotland is a country quite poor; but it has given us some rich Divinity, on which millions have fed; and when its rocks have been ruptured by the earthquake of persecution, their gaps and valve; have yielded gems of piety. These martyr grounds; are to the Christian, what good mineral grounds an to the mineralogist, or what botanical gardens are to the lover of plants. The Christian can here find fields of thistles, in which the white flower of innocence is mingled with the purple blossom of martyrdom. But why recur to those gloomy days? Because the blood of martyrs is not forgotten in Heaven! — Why should it be on earth?” — [Thomas B. Balch](/authors/thomas-bloomer-balch), “An Outline of Christian Reading,” in *The Ringwood Discourses* (1850), pp. 152-153