desperate shifts Seceders are driven to in defense of their favorite notion, they say, that scriptural qualifications cannot be essential to God’s ordinance of magistracy, or necessarily required as a condition of it sine qua non; for then it would be the same thing with magistracy; nor can these qualifications be the condition (sine qua non, or), without which one could not be a magistrate; for then it would be necessary, that every one were possessed of them faultlessly, before he could be owned as a lawful magistrate; either of which they allege would be grossly absurd.  But this plausible and fair-set argument of theirs, if it prove any thing, will prove more than it is supposed they themselves will grant, and consequently proves nothing at all.  For the same gross absurdity may, with equal reason, be inferred from a maintaining, that a due measure and performance of scripture qualifications and duties are essential to any other of God’s ordinances, and so that these are the ordinance itself.  For instance, they might as well reason (as some have justly observed already), that scriptural qualifications are not essential to a lawful gospel minister, for then it would be the same thing with the ministry, itself; nor can it be a condition, without which one is not really a minister, unless he were so faultlessly.  And thus they have at once stripped, not only all of the race of Adam, that ever exercised that office, but themselves also, of any real mission, as ministers, unless they have assumed the Pope’s infallibility, and are advanced to the Moravian perfection.  So, although the scripture declares it essential to the true church, that she hold the head, yet by their childish reasoning, this would infer a conclusion big with absurdities, even that this qualification of a true church, is the church itself.  And, in like manner, it can no longer be admitted, that faith in Christ, and holiness, are essential to the being of a true Christian; for that would be to make faith the same thing with a Christian, and would infer, that as in heaven only holiness is in perfection, so there alone Christians are to be found.  Upon the whole, as the Lord has given an indispensable law, respecting the constitution of kings, showing what conditions and qualifications are required of them; it undeniably follows, as an established truth, that Christianized nations must invest none with that office, but in a way agreeable to that law, and those alone according to scripture, are magistrates of God’s institution, who are in some measure possessed of these qualifications.  It is therefore an anti-scriptural tenet, that nothing is requisite to constitute a lawful magistrate, but the inclinations and choice of the civil society.