differences, best known to themselves, occasioned a rupture in that pretended Presbytery, which for some years subsisted:  but this breach being some considerable time ago again cemented, they constituted themselves in their former capacity, upon terms (as appears from a printed account of their agreement and constitution, which they have never yet disclaimed as unjust) not very honorable nor consistent with their former principles and professed zeal for maintaining the same.  Which agreement was made up, without any evidence of the above author’s retracting his lax principles, contained in the foresaid sermon.  Whatever was the cause, whether from the influence of others (as was said by the publisher of their agreement), or from a consciousness of dropping part of formerly received principles, is not certain; but one of these brethren, for a time, gave up with further practical communion with the other, namely, Mr. Hugh Innes, late of the Calton, Glasgow; while yet it was observed, that both used a freedom, not formerly common to them, anent the present authority, in their public immediate addresses to the object of worship; which, together with their apparent resiling from part of their former testimony occasioned stumbling to some of their people, and terminated in the separation of others.  Foresaid latitudinarianism and falling away, is also sadly verified, in the conduct of another principal member of their pretended Presbytery, who has professedly deserted all testimony bearing for the reformation principles of the Covenanted Church of Scotland.[5]

At last, after their declared interviews for that purpose, these brethren have patched up a mank agreement, which they have published, in a paper entitled Abstract of the covenanted principles of the Church of Scotland, &c., with a prefixed advertisement in some copies, asserting the removal of their differences, which arose from a sermon on Psal. cxxii, 3, published at Glasgow,—­by a disapprobation of what is implied in some expressions hereof, viz., “That all the members of Christ’s mystical body may, and ought to unite in visible church communion.”

Here is, indeed, a smooth closing of the wound that should have been more thoroughly searched, that, by probing into the practical application of said sermon, the corrupt matter of communion with the Revolution Church, in the gospel and sealing ordinance thereof, might have been found out; but not one word of this in all that abstract, which contains their grounds of union, and terms of communion.  Nothing of the above author’s recanting his former latitudinarian practices of hearing, and thereby practically encouraging, that vagrant Episcopalian, Whitefield; his communicating, which natively implies union, with the Revolution Church, in one of the seals of the covenant; nor his public praying for an Erastian government, in a way, and for a reason, that must needs be understood