This plan would have defeated its own object, the unity
of the visible church, and subverted that form of government established
by Zion's King. Upon trial by some of the New England Independents and
Presbyterians, the plan has proved utterly abortive.
Prior to the Revolutionary war, a Presbytery had been constituted in
America, upon the footing of the covenanted reformation. The exciting
scenes and active sympathies, attendant on the Revolutionary war, added
to a hereditary love of liberty, carried many covenanters away from
their distinctive principles. The Reformed Presbytery was dissolved, and
three ministers who belonged to it, joining some ministers of the
Associate Church, formed that society, since known by the name of the
Associate Reformed Church. The union was completed in the year 1782,
after having been five years in agitation.
These ministers professed, as the basis of union, the Westminster
standards; but the abstract of principles, which they adopted as the
more immediate bond of coalescence, discovered, to discerning
spectators, that the individuals forming the combination, were by no
means unanimous in their views of the doctrines taught in those
standards.
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