, if
their own inclinations alone were sufficient to determine it? If God has
declared, that the corrupt will of the people is the alone basis of
civil power, then, not only are all state constitutions and fundamental
laws useless, because, on every vacancy of the throne, they not only
must all give place to the superior obligation, the incontrollable law,
of the uncertain inclinations of the body politic, but they are in their
nature unlawful; their proper use in every nation being to prevent all
invasion upon the government by unqualified persons, and to illegitimate
it, if at any time done. So that, if the consent of civil society is the
only essential condition of government which God has authorized, not
only are all scriptural conditions and qualifications useless and
unlawful, but also all human securities, either from intruders or for
lawful governors, are unlawful, in regard the very design of them all is
to oppose this grand foundation principle, the jure-divinity of which
_Seceders_ have found out, and do confidently maintain. And thus, by the
seceding scheme, is condemned, not only the practice of almost all other
nations, determining by law, some indispensable qualifications that
their rulers must have; but particularly the practice of these once
reformed lands, when reformation had the sanction, not only of
ecclesiastic, but also of civil, authority, is hereby condemned.
Scripture and covenant qualifications were then made essential to the
being of a lawful magistrate, by the fundamental laws and constitutions
of the nations; so that however the inclinations of the people might run
(as it soon appeared they were turned in opposition to these), yet, by
these laws, and in a consistency with that constitution, none could be
admitted to the place or places of civil authority, but such as
professed, and outwardly practiced, according to reformation principles.
See _Act_ 15th, _Sess._ 2d, _Parl._ 1649. And how happy we had been, if
we had constantly acted in conformity to these agreeable laws,
experience, both former and latter, will bear witness. How much better
had it been for us to have walked in God's statutes, and executed his
judgments, than by our abhorrence of them, and apostasy from them, to
provoke him to give us statutes that are not good, and judgments whereby
we cannot live (_Ezek._ xx, 25), or have any comfortable enjoyment and
possession of the blessings and privileges of his everlasting gospel, as