As
the Episcopalians owned the king, in the exercise of his Erastian
supremacy over them, so the Revolution Church, instead of opposing, did
take up her standing under the covert of that anti-christian supremacy,
and has never since declined the exercise thereof. And, as the civil
power prescribed limits unto, and at pleasure altered, the prelatic
church, so this church has accepted of a formula, prescribed by the
civil power, requiring that all the ordinances within the same be
performed by the ministers thereof, as they were then allowed them, or
should thereafter be declared by their authority, as _Act_ 23d, _Sess._
4th, _Parl._ 1st, 1693, expressly bears. By what is said above, it may
appear, that this church is Erastian in her constitution. But it is
further to be observed, that the present constitution is no less
inconsistent with the scriptural and covenanted constitution of the
church of _Scotland_, in regard that the retrograde constitution, to
which the church fled back, and on which she was settled at the
revolution, was but an infant state of the church, lately after her
first reformation from Popery, far inferior to her advanced state
betwixt 1638 and 1649 inclusive.
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