Boast not of the great man’s settled abode, boast not of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth; how suddenly may disaster and death pluck him up by the roots!  The rich fathers, where are they?  Do the nobles live forever?  Shall their dwelling continue to all generations?  How often, in a few years, the rich inheritance changes its master, while the race of the poor hovers about the same spot for many generations!  What if the cottager attend more to gospel ministrations, in one year, than the rich in forty! what if, removing at next term, he carry his beloved pastor in his heart, and by effectual fervent prayers, availing much, by multiplied groanings that cannot be uttered, he bring manifold blessings on the parish and ministry which he leaves; while your rich man, if wicked, if of the too common stamp, continues in it, for no better purpose than to distress the faithful pastor, corrupt the people, bring down a curse, and cumber the ground!  The great man bears the load of the stipend no more than the poorest cottager.  He purchased his estate with this burden upon it, and on that account had its price proportionally abated.  Suppose it were otherwise, might not a poor widow’s two mites be more in Jesus’ account than all he gives?  Will we, with the Samaritan sorcerer, indulge the thought that the gifts of God, the spiritual privileges of his Church, are to be purchased with money?  For money to erect the church or defray the benefice we must not, with the infamous traitor, betray the Son of God in his church—­his ordinance, his ministry, into the hands of sinners to be crucified.

It is in vain to mention the civil law:  the very worst statute thereof, relative to the point in hand, indirectly supposes the consent of the congregation.  It leaves to the presbytery the full power to judge whether the presentee is fit for that charge.  If the congregation generally oppose, with what candor do the presbytery, in Jesus’ name, determine that he is fit?  The last statute relative hereto declared the presentation void, unless accepted.  Nor is there in being any, but the law of sin and death within them, the law of itch after worldly gain, that obliges candidates to accept.  How unmanly, how disingenuous, to blame the civil law with the present course of intrusions!—­Since the resurrection of Christ, we think we may almost defy any to produce an instance of bloody squabbling, or like outrageous contention, in the choice of a pastor, where none but the visible members of Christ’s mystical body, adult, and blameless in their lives, were admitted to act in the choice.  But if at any called popular elections, the power was sinfully betrayed into the hands of such baptized persons, as in ignorance and loose practice equalled, if not transcended, heathen men and publicans; into the hand of those who, to please a superior, to obtain a paltry bribe, or a flagon of wine, were readily determined in their vote for a minister; let the prostitutes of Jesus’ ordinance answer for the unhappy consequences of their conduct.  If they so enormously broke through the hedge of the divine law, no wonder a serpent bit them.  But who has forgot what angry contentions, what necessity of a military guard at ordinations, the lodging of the power of elections in patrons or heritors, as such, has of late occasioned?