pears that the duties there mentioned, cannot be performed except by a church officer coming up completely to the Presbyterian idea of a Ruling Elder.

"All the foregoing qualifications must concur in an individual (if he be not a pastor or bishop,) before he is capable of being voted for as a commissioner to the General Assembly. All these concurring, he may be voted for, and if elected, must, before his name is enrolled as a member of this body, produce a commission here, under the hand of the Moderator and clerk of his presbytery, asserting upon the face of it, that he is a ruling elder in a particular congregation. See chapter xxii. sec. 2, Form of Government.

"Now there is nothing even conducing to prove that the said Clement Tuttle was ever elected or ordained as a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church; that he has ever formally and publickly adopt ed its Confession of Faith, and approved its discipline and Form of Government; -that he has been elected by any Presbytery or Commissioner to this Assembly in the character of a ruling elder; nor that he bears any commission, certifying any such fact, but on the contrary, the commission he produces, shows clearly that he is not a ruling elder but a committee man,' and that the church to which he belongs can be only in part, and for any thing that appears, in very small part Presbyterian church.

"Wherefore we do solemnly protest against the decision of the General Assembly, allowing the said Clement Tuttle to take his seat in this body as a ruling elder by virtue of his said commission as a 'committee man,' because that decision is contrary to the plain letter of our church constitution. And we do protest against the right of the said Clement

Tuttle to take a seat in this General Assembly as a ruling elder, by virtue of a commission certifying that he holds another name and office, because the neglect and disrepute into which such practices must bring the office of ruling elder are in a high degree fatal to the Presbyterian church.

"The articles of agreement alluded to in the beginning of this paper are supposed to give this individual, and all others similarly situated a seat in this As. sembly. That agreement is one altogether anomalous to our Form of Government, and so far as it does extend, is in derogation of it.

"The plainest rules of common sense tell us, that the principles of such instruments shall not be extended beyond the cases to which they are applied in terms, and must be strictly limited by the details contained within themselves.

"The rule is, that a body of men when making such an agreement, shall not be called on to embrace in a codicil of exceptions, every point to which a given rule would apply, and except it by say. ing-this is not granted away; but on the other hand, having plainly set down what was meant-it is very clear that what is not set down, is not meant. It is the only rule of sense or safety. This being so, those articles can never cover this case, because they expressly stipulate the church Session and Presbytery, as the church courts to which these 'committee men' may have access in the character of ruling elders, and mention no others. As the grant was in derogation of the rights of the eldership, and adverse to the nature of our church government, it is manifestly just such a grant as, if valid at all, could only be so within the strict import of its own terms.

We do not feel called on to discuss the fact, whether those articles thus interpreted are constitutional or not. If, however, they are so construed as to place members here, who are by our constitution forbidden to be here, or as in any degree to affect the principles of the organization of this house, as clearly defined in our books, then it is manifest that the articles must be considered utterly null and void.

"The constitution cannot be obligatory, and yet something else, which is against and adverse to the constitution, be obligatory also, unless a sense can be found in which the same proposition is both false and true at the same moment, and at every successive moment.

"If any one will fix with precision, the time when the principles of our government shall grow into disesteem, there will no longer remain any difficulty in designating the period, when every other peculiarity of our church will be viewed with equal aversion.

"The preservation of the true principles of Presbyterian policy affords the best external security for the preservation of the true principles of Presbyterian doctrines.

"We do therefore consider ourselves to be discharging a high and solemn duty when we thus point to a vital principle in our system of Government, wrested from its original design, and thus enter our protest against an unconstitutional act arising therefrom."

REPLY TO THE PROTEST.

"The Committee appointed to prepare a reply to the Protest of R. J. Breckenridge and other members of this Assembly, against the decision of the Assembly, allowing Clement Tuttle, a Commissioner from the Presbytery of Grand River, a

Government, and admits that it is correctly recited by the protestants," it is entirely silent on the reference made in the same protest to the 18th chapter, which relates to the manner of electing and ordaining ruling elders, and to the 9th chapter, in which their duties are specified. The reason of this procedure no doubt was, that a show of resemblance might be made out, between the general designation of the office of a ruling elder, in the 5th chapter of the Form of Government, and that of a committee man, "contemplated in the articles of agreement to which the protestants refer;" but the widest and most palpable difference between the office and the duties of these two descriptions of men-a difference which no ingenuity could conceal or disguise would strike every reader, if the 9th und 13th chapters of that Form were inspected. When therefore the reply states that it is only in appearance, in the letter, and in the name of the commissioner, that there is a departure from the constitution, while its spirit is not violated, and the nature of the delegated trust is not defective-the very reverse of this statement will appear to be the fact, to every candid person who will take the trouble to compare the quoted chapters of the Form of Government, with "the articles of agreement," to which reference is made in the pages of the DigestIt will appear, that the resemblance between the office and the duties of a ruling elder and a committee man is very slight, and lies within a very small compass; that the offices they hold, are, in their nature, in the manner in which they are created, and in the mode of conferring them, essentially different; that the duties to be performed by the ruling elder are far more extensive and responsible than those of a committee man; and that the office of a committee man is temporary, continuing perhaps for no more

than a single year, while that of the ruling elder, unless he be ecclesiastically deposed, is as lasting as his life. The whole spirit, and even the letter of the constitution, is therefore violated, when committee men are placed on the same footing with ruling elders. But it is said they are thus placed, by the agreement that they shall be the representatives of congregations in Presbyteries-that they have accordingly acted as such, and therefore ought to be permitted also to represent the Presbyteries as commissioners in the Assembly. The reasoning on this point in the protest is, we think, conclusive and unanswerable; and indeed a direct answer is not even attempted in the reply. The answer is wholly inferential-it is, that if the committee man may sit in the Presbytery, he may also have a seat in the Assembly; whereas, the just reasoning of the protest is, that "The plainest rules of common sense tell us, that the principles of such instruments shall not be extended beyond the cases to which they are applied in terms, and must be strictly limited by the details contained within themselves-that what is not set down is not meant;" and that this "is the only rule of sense or safety." If this be correct, as we are confident every individual of candour and intelligence will say it is, it follows that a committee man can have no just claim to a seat in the Assembly, hecause he is permitted to have one in a Presbytery.

The protest declines entering formally into the question whether a committee man can constitutionally, in any case, take the place of a ruling elder, although it intimates with sufficient plainness that he cannot. This however, is the ground we take-and we take it without hesitation or reserve. We say, that a committee man is not a ruling elder, and that ruling elders only, so far as the laity are concerned, have any right to sit in any judica

tory of the Presbyterian churchfrom the church session to the General Assembly, both inclusive. We appeal also to the paramount authority of the Constitution, and say that the Assembly have as little right as any other judicatory to violate its provisions; and that if such violation take place, whether through inadvertence or design, the violating act is ipso facto void, and of no binding authority. The General Assembly is as much the creature of the constitution as the church session, and has no better claim than the session to go beyond its appropriate powers and duties. We do not believe that the Assembly has ever deliberately, designedly, or knowingly, acted contrary to the constitution. But the Assembly itself has publickly admitted that it has done so, inadvertently, in one instance-we refer to the right of voting, granted to delegates of corresponding bodiesand we maintain that the admission of committee men into its body, or even into its Presbyteries, is another instance of the same kind, equally plain and palpable. It will also appear from the early records of the Assembly, that they invited ministers who happened to be present, although never chosen as commissioners, or understood to be such, to sit as corresponding members, and that such correspondents actually took their seats as members of the body-having, at that time, a right to vote, as well as to speak on every subject.

It will be observed, that all the instances of disregard to the constitution, to which we have referred, took place, not long after the constitution of the Assembly-the last mentioned instance very early, and the other more than thirty years since. These errors were occasioned by two causes, which we shall mention cursorily. 1. The Supreme Judicatory of the Presbyterian Church, before the existence of the General Assembly,

was not a delegated or representative body. It was a Synod, in which all the Presbyteries were present-or entitled to be present not by commissioners, but personally, or as individuals, each empowered to speak and act for himself. Hence, subjects which at present cannot be touched by the Assembly, till a new constitutional grant of power is obtained from the Presbyteries, could then be taken up and acted upon immediately. The Synod had no limitation of its powers, except that which a sense of duty and expediency imposed. And when a delegated and representative body was appointed, the influence of the old usages and feelings, appear to have remained for a time, in such strength as to lead the Assembly to contravene its written constitution, recently made, and with which the minds and habits of the members were not yet familiar. Hence they invited correspondents to sit in the Assembly, as they had been accustomed to do in the Synod; and hence they gave the power of voting to the delegates from the New England churches, and powers to committee men to act as ruling elders in Presbyteries-doings which palpably contravene both the spirit and letter of the written constitution. As a Synod they were authorized, and had been accustomed to do things of this character, and they continued to do them in the Assembly, without adverting to the fact that they now had no powers beyond those which the written constitution specified, and which it distinctly limited and accurately defined. Whatever may be thought of this explanation, truth permits, and duty we think calls us to say, we know that it is the true one-that it assigns the real reason why the Assembly did not see, in the cases we have mentioned, that their acts were unconstitutional.

2. There was, however, another