Their Testimony was adopted in 1837.
This document ostensibly consists of two parts, historical and
doctrinal; but really only of the latter as _authoritative_. This will
appear from the preface to the history, as also that it is without the
_formal_ sanction of the Synod, which appears prefixed to the doctrinal
part of the book. A considerable time before they ventured to obtrude
this new Testimony on the church; they had prepared the way for its
introduction, by supplanting the authoritative "Rules of Society,"
framed and adopted by their fathers. This was done by issuing what they
called a "Guide to Social Worship," which the Scottish Synod sent forth
under an ambiguous _recommendation_, and the spurious production was
republished by order of Synod, in America, 1836, with the like equivocal
expression of approbation.
What has been just related of the Ref. Pres. Church in Scotland, will
apply substantially to that section of the same body in Ireland. On the
doctrine of the magistrate's power _circa sacra_, however, there was a
controversy of several years' continuance and managed with much
asperity, in which Rev.
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