This will appear from the preface to the history, as also that it is without the formal sanction of the Synod, which appears prefixed to the doctrinal part of the book.  A considerable time before they ventured to obtrude this new Testimony on the church; they had prepared the way for its introduction, by supplanting the authoritative “Rules of Society,” framed and adopted by their fathers.  This was done by issuing what they called a “Guide to Social Worship,” which the Scottish Synod sent forth under an ambiguous recommendation, and the spurious production was republished by order of Synod, in America, 1836, with the like equivocal expression of approbation.

What has been just related of the Ref.  Pres.  Church in Scotland, will apply substantially to that section of the same body in Ireland.  On the doctrine of the magistrate’s power circa sacra, however, there was a controversy of several years’ continuance and managed with much asperity, in which Rev. Messrs. John Paul, D.D., and Thomas Houston were the most distinguished disputants.  Their contendings issued in breach of organic fellowship in 1840.  Indeed the sister-hood which had subsisted for many years among the Synods east and west of the Atlantic ocean, was violated in 1833; when the rupture took place in the Synod of America, by the elopement of the declining party, who are since known by alliance with the civil institutions of the United States.  Among these five Synods, the principle called elective affinity has been strikingly exemplified; while what the Scripture denominates schism, has been as visibly rampant as perhaps at any period under the Christian dispensation.

This brief historical sketch may serve to show the outlines of the courses respectively pursued by the several parties in the British Isles and America, who have made professions of attachment to that work in the kingdom of Scotland especially, which has been called the Second Reformation.  But the duty of fidelity to Zion’s King, and even the duty of charity to these backsliding brethren; together with the informing of the present and succeeding generations, require, that we notice more formally some of the more prominent measures of these ecclesiastical bodies and so manifest more fully our relation to them.  It is not to be expected however, that we are about to condescend upon all the erroneous sentiments or steps of defection, supplied by the history of these communities.  To direct the honest inquiries of the Lord’s people, and assist them in that process of reasoning by which facts are compared with acknowledged Standards, supreme and subordinate, that their moral character may be tested, is all that is proposed in the following sections.

SECTION I. The Secession from the Revolution Church of Scotland in that country assumed a position in relation to the civil institutions of Great Britain, which their posterity continue too occupy until the present time in the United States without material alteration.