3. This party are chargeable with mutilating the Judicial Testimony emitted in Scotland, 1761; and also with changing the terms of communion, and obtruding a mutilated formula upon an unsuspecting people, contrary to due order.
History and argument are excluded from the terms of Church Fellowship, on the very face of "Reformation Principles Exhibited;" and the Auchensaugh Covenant expunged from the formula of terms of communion, without submitting them in overture to the people for inspection. We say these steps of defection and apostasy are chargeable to the account of those who made the breach in 1833: First, Because the senior and leading ministers in that separation were the men who framed the American Testimony and Terms of Communion; and so had many years before laid the platform and projected the course on which they violently entered at that date. Second, These separatists, in the edition of these symbols of their profession lately published, have consistently left out of the volume, the Historical Part, and also remodeled the formula of Terms of Communion.
4. This body continues to wax worse and worse, against all remonstrance from their former connections and others, as also in the face of providential rebukes;—losing, because forfeiting, the confidence of conscientious and honorable men, exemplified in the frequent meetings, and to them, disastrous results, of the Convention of, so called, Reformed Churches.
SEC. V. With the foregoing party may be classed those different and conflicting fellowships in Scotland and Ireland, whose recent Terms of Communion and Judicial Testimony, substantially identify with those mentioned in the preceding section.
1. Public fame charges the Eastern Synod of Ireland, and the Synod of Scotland, with connivance at the members and officers under their inspection, in co-operating with the immoral and anti-christian government of Great Britain. They are therefore guilty of giving their power and strength to that powerful and blood-thirsty horn of the beast. We are inclined to give more credit to public fame in this than we would in many other cases, because:
2. These Synods have opened a door in their new Testimony for such sinful confederacies. "What!" will the simple and uninitiated reader of the Testimony ask, "does not that Testimony declare, often and often, that the British constitution is anti-christian?" We answer, the book declares so; but we caution the reader to be on his guard, lest he judge and take for granted, without a careful examination, that the book and the Testimony are the same thing. Let the honest inquirer consult the preface to the Historical part of the book, and then the preface to the Doctrinal part: the latter, he will find, on due examination, to constitute the Testimony. True, in page 8 of the preface to the volume, it is said, "the Testimony, as now published, consists of two parts, the one Historical and the other Doctrinal." This sounds orthodox; but, in the same page, when these two parts come to be defined, it is said, "when the church requires of those admitted into her fellowship, an acknowledgement of a work like the present, the approbation expressed has a reference to the principles embodied in it, and the proper application of them," &c. "So they wrap it up"—better than our fathers succeeded in a similar enterprise in America. The truth is what they call the historical part is largely argumentative; and both these parts are carefully and covertly excluded from the terms of fellowship! We shall have occasion to recur to this subject, as there are many others likeminded with these innovators.
3. These people are also deeply involved in the popular, so called, benevolent associations of the world, Sunday Schools, Bible Societies, Temperance Reforms, Missionary Enterprise, &c, evidencing a wide departure from our covenanted uniformity, based upon our covenanted Testimony.
SEC. VI. Those who in 1838, on account of sensible tyranny, growing out of defection on the part of the majority, declined the authority of Synod, have shared all along in our sympathies; and it has been our desire that they and we could see eye to eye in the doctrines and order of the house of God.
Although this party promised fair for a time, and apparently contended for "all the attainments of a covenanted reformation," in process of time it became apparent that they possessed not intelligence sufficient to manage a consistent testimony for that cause. They seem to have been under the influence of temporary impulse, arising from the experience of mal-administration; rather than to have discovered any constitutional defection in the body from which they separated. This is apparent indeed if we have access to any credible source of information relative to the principles they profess, and their Christian practice. More particularly,
1. Although that paper which they designate "Safety League," has the sound of orthodoxy; yet, as originated, and since interpreted by them, there is a lamentable falling off from the attainments and footsteps of the flock. First, so far as we can ascertain, that instrument had clandestine origin being framed and subscribed by those who were yet in fellowship with the Synod! This might be earnest, but, we think, not honorable contending for the truth. Second, when this paper comes to be interpreted by its framers and signers, it seems to cover only the American Testimony and Terms, as remodeled by breach of presbyterial order. At other times, it will conveniently extend to the Scottish Testimony, 1761, and the Auchensaugh Deed, 1712! From which we infer that these people have no settled standards.