It need hardly to be said that our form of Church government is Presbyterian. While this aspect of the Church, we admit, is not essential to salvation, still it is a point of divine revelation, and therefore cannot be overlooked. How can the whole counsel of God be conserved if a scriptural government is not established and maintained? While we agree that the rigid detail of organisation which marked the Old Testament Church is not to be looked for in the New, which enjoys greater liberty, yet we do assert that the principal features of the new mode of government may be clearly discerned in the history of the early Christian Church. We are, therefore, to follow the pattern shown us in the New Testament.

An examination of the main principles which entered into the polity of the early Church of the apostles shows that the form of Church government was Presbyterian. The central feature of this system of ecclesiastical government is that it entrusts the rule of the Church under Christ to presbyters or elders in their corporate capacity.

The following six principles characterised the government of the early Christian Church (see Witherow's Apostolic Church ):

• The office-bearers were chosen by the people.
• The office of a bishop and an elder was identical.
• There was a plurality of elders in each Church.
• Ordination was the act of a presbytery - that is, of a plurality of elders.
• There was the privilege of appeal to the assembly of elders; and the power of government was exercised by them in their associate capacity.
• The only Head of the Church was the Lord Jesus Christ.

A fair comparison of the three principal forms of Church government into which the Christian world falls - Prelacy, Independency, and Presbytery - shows that Prelacy conforms to none of the above principles; Independency to only three of them; while Presbytery conforms to all six. We conclude, therefore, that Presbytery, since it has the approbation of Scripture, is of divine right, and by the will and appointment of Jesus Christ.