And sure, by the same reason, that man may take a liberty to dispense
with the authority of God, in one point of his commanding will; he may
also in another, until at last every part of it is rejected. It is but a
contempt of the same authority, and he that offends in one point, is
guilty of all. Such are the absurdities that this their scheme leads to,
though it is hoped the authors do not intend so. It may here be only
necessary further to observe, that among the other desperate shifts
_Seceders_ are driven to in defense of their favorite notion, they say,
that scriptural qualifications cannot be essential to God's ordinance of
magistracy, or necessarily required as a condition of it _sine qua non_;
for then it would be the same thing with magistracy; nor can these
qualifications be the condition (_sine qua non_, or), without which one
could not be a magistrate; for then it would be necessary, that every
one were possessed of them faultlessly, before he could be owned as a
lawful magistrate; either of which they allege would be grossly absurd.
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