SEC. V. With the foregoing party may be classed those different and conflicting fellowships in Scotland and Ireland, whose recent Terms of Communion and Judicial Testimony, substantially identify with those mentioned in the preceding section.
1. Public fame charges the Eastern Synod of Ireland, and the Synod of Scotland, with connivance at the members and officers under their inspection, in co-operating with the immoral and anti-christian government of Great Britain. They are therefore guilty of giving their power and strength to that powerful and blood-thirsty horn of the beast. We are inclined to give more credit to public fame in this than we would in many other cases, because:
2. These Synods have opened a door in their new Testimony for such sinful confederacies. "What!" will the simple and uninitiated reader of the Testimony ask, "does not that Testimony declare, often and often, that the British constitution is anti-christian?" We answer, the _book_ declares so; but we caution the reader to be on his guard, lest he judge and take for granted, without a careful examination, that the book and the Testimony are the same thing. Let the honest inquirer consult the _preface_ to the _Historical_ part of the book, and then the preface to the Doctrinal part: the latter, he will find, on due examination, to constitute the Testimony. True, in page 8 of the preface to the volume, it is said, "the Testimony, as now published, consists of two parts, the one _Historical_ and the other _Doctrinal_." This sounds orthodox; but, in the same page, when these two parts come to be defined, it is said, "when the church requires of those admitted into her fellowship, an acknowledgement of a work like the present, the approbation expressed has a reference to the _principles_ embodied in it, and _the proper application_ of them," &c. "So they wrap it up"--better than our fathers succeeded in a similar enterprise in America. The truth is what they call the _historical_ part is largely _argumentative_; and both these parts are carefully and covertly excluded from the _terms of fellowship_! We shall have occasion to recur to this subject, as there are many others likeminded with these innovators.