SEC.  III.  The Reformed Dissenting Church embraced more of the peculiar principles of the covenanted reformation than either of the two preceding.  On the doctrines of magistracy and toleration, abstractly considered, they have manifested commendable fidelity.  Nevertheless, in the practical application of these doctrines and in other respects, we are constrained to continue a testimony against them.

1.  What has been remarked of the origin of the Associate Reformed body, is partly true also of the party which dissented from them:  their organization was uncalled for, there being no scriptural attainment embraced by them, which was not already exhibited under a judicial banner.  Those who erected the Reformed Dissenting Presbytery may have been harshly treated by ministers of the Reformed Presbytery, when attempting negotiations for union, as public fame has often rumored:  yet supposing this to have been the case, multiplying separate fellowships was not a happy expedient for effecting union in the truth.

2.  This body of Christians have been all along unfaithful in applying their own avowed principles relative to magistracy.  Their innovation in this respect would seem to have been a carnal expedient to reach a two-fold object:  the one, to retaliate on the Reformed Church for supposed indignities offered; the other, to render themselves more popular in the eyes of other communities.  They admit that a constitution of civil government may be so immoral, that it cannot be considered as God’s ordinance; that in such a case “no Christian can, without sinning against God, accept any office supreme or subordinate, where an oath to support such a constitution is made essential to his office.”  These admissions are equally just and important; yet these concessions are wholly neutralized in practice by these people, for they claim it as their privilege to choose others to fill those offices, which they say, they themselves cannot fill “without sinning against God.”  We must continue our earnest testimony against this attempt to separate in law, between the representative and his constituents, involving as it does, if consistently carried out, the total overthrow of the covenants of works and grace, and ultimately of God’s moral government by his annotated Son!  The effort made to sustain their practice in this matter, from the examples of the Marquis of Argyle and Lord Warriston, is very disingenuous; simply because the church of Scotland had not at the date referred to, reached the measure of her attainments on that head.  Indeed, the whole drift of their argument goes to justify the position, that in some cases, it is expedient to do evil that good may come.

3.  On the doctrine of faith this church has, we think, darkened counsel, by words without knowledge.  Their distinctions and caveats relative to assurance, are calculated rather to bewilder than enlighten the mind of the general reader.  “Receiving and resting on Christ as offered in the gospel,” amounts to “appropriation, certainty, assurance,” &c.  There is evidence of a tendency to “vain jangling” here, against which, even suppose there be no error couched in the terms, we ought to testify.