Those ignorant of the fundamental truths of Christianity; those scandalous, profane deniers of the divine original of the Old and New Testaments, or of any truth therein plainly revealed; those neglecters of the public, private, and secret worship of God; those given to cursing, swearing, Sabbath profanation, drunkenness, whoredom, or other scandalous courses, are destitute of capacity and right to choose a gospel minister.  The ignorant are utterly incapable to judge of either the preacher’s matter or method.  The openly wicked have their hatred of Christ, and a faithful minister, marked in their forehead; neither are such qualified to be visible members of the Christian Church.  To admit them therefore to choose a Christian pastor would be a method, introducing ruin and we; a method equally absurd as for unfreemen to choose the magistrates of a burgh:  rather, equally absurd as if ignorant babes, and our enemies the French, should be sustained electors of our members of parliament and privy council.

Whether visible believers, adults, and having a life and conversation becoming the gospel, have a right from God to choose their pastors and other church officers, must now be examined.

All along from the Reformation it has been the avowed principle of Scotch Presbyterians, that they have a divine warrant to choose their own pastors and other ecclesiastic officers.  The first book of discipline, published A.D. 1560, declares the lawful calling of the ministry to consist in the election of the people, the examination of the ministry, and administration by both, and that no pastor should be intruded on any particular kirk without their consent.  Their second book of discipline declares that the people’s liberty of choosing church officers continued till the Church was corrupted by antichrist:  that patronage flowed from the Pope’s canon law, and is inconsistent with the order prescribed in God’s word.  From various documents the assembly of 1736 declared it obvious, that from the Reformation it had been the fixed principle of this church that no minister ought to be intruded into any church contrary to the will of the congregation.  They seriously recommended a due regard hereunto in planting the vacancies, as judicatories would study the glory of God, the honor of God, and the edification of men.  It is the law of heaven, however, the book of the Lord, that here and everywhere we intend to build our faith upon.

That of Matthias is the first instance of an election of an officer in the Christian Church.  No doubt, then, it is marked in the sacred history as a pattern for the ages to come.  Being an officer extraordinary, his call was in part immediately divine, by the determination of the lot.  Being a church officer, he was chosen by the Church as far as consistent with his extraordinary office.  The disciples about Jerusalem (120) were gathered together.  Peter represented the necessity of filling up Judas’s place in the apostolate