so confused and
dark in its discoveries, so gross and selfish in its principles,
motives, and ends, that neither the true nature of this, nor any other
of the ordinances of Jehovah, as revealed in his word, can hereby be
known, or the true use and ends thereof sufficiently discovered or
obtained.

They likewise testify against, and reject that equally absurd opinion,
as a stream flowing from the foresaid corrupt fountain, that the office,
authority, and constitution of lawful magistrates, does not solely
belong to professing Christians, in a Christian reformed land, but that
the election and choice of any one whosoever, made by the civil body
(whether Pagan, Papist, Atheist, Deist, or other enemy to God, to man,
and to true religion), makes up the whole of what is essential to the
constitution of a lawful magistrate according to God's ordinance. A
tenet contrary to the light and dictates both of reason and scripture.

And they hereby also disclaim that corrupt notion, that all providential
magistrates, who are, and while they are acknowledged by any civil
society especially in an apostate backsliding land and people from the
scriptural standard (in respect of the origin of their office), are also
preceptive; and that the office and authority of all so constituted and
acknowledged, in itself considered, does equally arise from, and agree
unto the preceptive will of God, contrary to scriptural precepts, Deut.
xvii, 18; what falls under scriptural reproof, Hos. viii, 4; and what
greatly depreciates the valiant contendings of our honored ancestors for
civil reformation, and tends to invalidate their deeds of constitution
thereanent.

Again the Presbytery testifies against, and condemns that principle,
that the Christian people of God ought to give explicit acknowledgment
of, implicit subjection and obedience to, whatever civil authority
(though most wicked and unlawful) the Lord in his holy providence, may,
for the trial and punishment of his church, permit a backsliding people
to constitute and set up, without regard to the precept of his word. And
they hereby reject whatever in opposition to the covenanted principles
of the Church of _Scotland_, does justly, and in its own nature imply a
voluntary and real acknowledgment of the lawfulness of the title and
authority of an anti-scriptural, anti-covenanted, and Erastian
government, constituted upon the ruins of our scriptural covenanted
reformation. Particularly, they te