mination in
the church; both which opinions are not only expressly contrary to
scripture, Acts xv, throughout, and xvi, 4; I Cor. v, 4; 1 Tim: v, 17;
Heb. v, 4, and xiii, 17, &c, but also have been found hitherto most
hurtful and dangerous to the church of God, depriving her ministers and
members of just and necessary recourse to superior judgment and decision
in matters difficult, discrediting and prostituting the sacred office of
the ministry, and tending to overthrow a standing ministry in the church
of Christ, and subvert that comely and beautiful order he hath
prescribed therein.

In like manner they reject and condemn that gross invasion and
encroachment upon the church's liberties, by the intrusion of popish
patronages, whether imposed as a law by civil, or executed by
ecclesiastical powers. Of the latter of these, the ministers and
judicatories of the now corrupt, harlot Church of _Scotland_, cannot but
be more egregiously guilty. The nature of their sacred function and
trust obliges them to preserve inviolate the church's freedom and
liberties: but in place of this, their hands are _chief in the
trespass_, in an authoritative and active enforcement of this wicked
act--an act evidently destructive of the very nature and essence of that
mutual relation between pastor and people, and which has the native and
necessary tendency to schism in the church, spiritual leanness, and
starving of the flock, by thrusting in idle, idol shepherds upon them,
such as serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own bellies; feed
themselves, but not the flock; and seek not them, but theirs, contrary
to John x, 2, 9; Heb. v, 4; 1 Tim. iii, 3; 1 Cor. xii, 14, with many
more; and to acts of both church and state, in times of reformation in
these covenanted lands.

But, on the other hand, that the Presbytery, when thus condescending on
particulars, pass not over in sinful silence, what stands opposite to
the word of God and their declared principles, as above concerning civil
authority, the administrators thereof, and subjection of the people
thereto: they reject, likeas they hereby reject and condemn that
anti-scriptural principle and opinion, that the divine scriptural
ordinance of magistracy has not its foundation in the moral preceptive
law of God (wherein alone his will is revealed and declared unto his
people, concerning the nature, use, and ends of all his ordinances), but
in the subjective light of nature (even as corrupted),