Messrs. John Paul, D.D., and Thomas Houston were
the most distinguished disputants. Their contendings issued in breach of
organic fellowship in 1840. Indeed the sister-hood which had subsisted
for many years among the Synods east and west of the Atlantic ocean, was
violated in 1833; when the rupture took place in the Synod of America,
by the elopement of the declining party, who are since known by alliance
with the civil institutions of the United States. Among these five
Synods, the principle called _elective affinity_ has been strikingly
exemplified; while what the Scripture denominates _schism_, has been as
visibly rampant as perhaps at any period under the Christian
dispensation.
This brief historical sketch may serve to show the outlines of the
courses respectively pursued by the several parties in the British Isles
and America, who have made professions of attachment to that work in the
kingdom of Scotland especially, which has been called the Second
Reformation. But the duty of fidelity to Zion's King, and even the duty
of charity to these backsliding brethren; together with the informing of
the present and succeeding generations, require, that we notice more
formally some of the more prominent measures of these ecclesiastical
bodies and so manifest more fully our relation to them.
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