supremacy unto itself, they are quite silent.  They have not the faithfulness to say, in their warning, to the robber of Christ, in this matter, as once the prophet of the Lord said to the king of Israel, in another case, Thou art the man.  On the contrary (which cannot but have a tendency to ward off any conviction of his sin that this warning, should it come into his hands, might be expected to work), they are guilty of the basest flattery, used by court parasites, stiling him, “the best of kings, of the mildest administration,” as in page 13th; and acknowledge it, as a particular effect of the Lord’s goodness, that we are privileged with such an one.  But is he indeed deserving of such a character? better than which could not be given to the most faithful ruler, devoting all his power, as in duty bound, to the support and advancement of the kingdom and interest of Jesus Christ, that over reigned.  Does he really merit such an encomium, who sacrilegiously usurps and wears the crown, that alone can flourish on the head of Zion’s king?  And is this such a blessing to the church, that an enemy to her Lord and Head rules over her?  Oh! may not the Lord say?  “I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright.”

6.  The Presbytery testify against said Seceding party, because of the sinfulness of their terms of ministerial and Christian communion, as being partly destructive of that liberty wherewith Christ has made his people free.  By which they have both imposed upon themselves, and shut the door of access unto the privileges of the church, upon all such, as, in a consistency with their adherence to truth and duty, cannot accept of their unwarrantable restrictions.  Of this, they gave early discoveries, as appears from the known instance of that notable, backslider, Mr. Andrew Clarkson, whom they obliged, before license, to make a public and solemn renunciation of his former principles and profession, respecting the covenanted reformation.[4] As also, their rejecting all accessions from his Laodicean brethren, wherein was contained an explicit adherence to the same, until they did drop their former testimony.  This blind zeal in Seceders, against a testimony for truth in its purity, did gradually increase, until it hurried them on to a more particular and formal stating of their terms of communion, whereby were totally excluded all the free and faithful of the land from their communion, who could not approve of, nor swear the bond, whereby they pretended to renew the covenants:  as in their act at Edinburgh, 1744; wherein they did resolve and determine, “That the renovation of the National Covenant of Scotland, and the Solemn League and Covenant of the three nations, in the manner now agreed upon, and proposed by the Presbytery, shall be the terms of ministerial communion with this Presbytery, and likewise of Christian communion, in admission of people to sealing ordinances; secluding