nations, determining by law, some indispensable qualifications that their rulers must have; but particularly the practice of these once reformed lands, when reformation had the sanction, not only of ecclesiastic, but also of civil, authority, is hereby condemned.  Scripture and covenant qualifications were then made essential to the being of a lawful magistrate, by the fundamental laws and constitutions of the nations; so that however the inclinations of the people might run (as it soon appeared they were turned in opposition to these), yet, by these laws, and in a consistency with that constitution, none could be admitted to the place or places of civil authority, but such as professed, and outwardly practiced, according to reformation principles.  See Act 15th, Sess. 2d, Parl. 1649.  And how happy we had been, if we had constantly acted in conformity to these agreeable laws, experience, both former and latter, will bear witness.  How much better had it been for us to have walked in God’s statutes, and executed his judgments, than by our abhorrence of them, and apostasy from them, to provoke him to give us statutes that are not good, and judgments whereby we cannot live (Ezek. xx, 25), or have any comfortable enjoyment and possession of the blessings and privileges of his everlasting gospel, as it is with us at this day.  And yet, this is what Seceders would have us caressing, embracing and (with them) blessing God for, under the notion of a present good; and so bless God for permitting his enemies (in anger against an ungrateful and guilty people) to overturn his work and interest, and establish themselves upon the ruins thereof; to bless him for making our own iniquities to correct us, and our backslidings to reprove us, until we know what an evil and bitter thing it is to depart from the LORD GOD of our fathers; to bless him (for what is matter of lamentation) that the adversaries of Zion are the chief, and her enemies prosper, Lam. i, 5:  and all this abstractly, under the notion, of good, which comes very near the borders of blasphemy.

But, moreover, the civil settlement at the revolution is also condemned by this principle of theirs; not because of its opposition to a covenanted reformation, but in regard it includes some essential qualifications required in the supreme civil ruler.  The nations are, by that deed of constitution, bound up in their election of a magistrate; and all Papists, such as marry with Papists, or do not publicly profess the Protestant religion, are declared incapable of the throne.  So that we see the present law makes some other qualifications, besides the consent of the body politic, essential to the constitution of a lawful sovereign in Britain.  From all which it is plain, that this principle of Seceders is neither a reformation nor a revolution principle; let then the impartial world judge whence it came.