As to the Settlement of Vacant Congregations among us: They have the important privilege of choosing their own ministers, and are uncontrouled in the exercise of this right. This right is of the utmost importance; but, that the benefit may be enjoyed, it seems necessary, that those concerned should be fully apprised, where it resides, and how it is to be applied. If this is not the case, the good may not be obtained; and while the means of preserved, the end may be lost. Four things seem necessary to the attainment of the full benefit of this right. The congregation ought to be fully apprised, 1. What description of persons have a right to vote …As to the First, we are not sufficiently agreed, and our practice is not uniform. It is generally required that the voters be Seceders; but I am not certain whether a person, whole under scandal, is or ought to be, in all cases excluded. I believe this is not settled. In some places, females are excluded, in others they may be electors. That they should be in any case excluded, merely on account of sex, is not enjoined in Scripture, and seems contrary to Reason. Women are, indeed prohibited from public teaching; but we do not, on that account, prohibit them from sitting down at the Lord’s Table, and there making a public profession. They are admitted to present their children for baptism, and to join in public covenanting. In each of these, they must be as chargeable with speaking in the church, as they can be in using their right of suffrage in the choice of a teacher. In a religious view, they are equally interested as the other sex; and they are often of equal discernment. To exclude a mother in widowhood, is to exclude one of the most interested; to exclude a wife, because a wife, from an independent suffrage, is to erect a patron in every family, and make the husband, in this instance, lord over the conscience: besides it gives to a single man, perhaps of precarious residence, an equal quantity of influence, as to him who is a resident householder, and represents a numerous family. And why a female, merely for want of a family connection, should be excluded from the exercise of her right, seems scarcely evident. In some cases, the right is confined to heads of families. This is liable to equal objections as those above stated, but in a more extensive degree.
My original intent was to vindicate the SDA practice of allowing women to vote in congregational church affairs, and to show that the Spiritualists at the Seneca Woman's Rights Convention in 1848 only revived the foundational principles of woman-suffrage ideology that had already been planted in a seed form and had been hiding in many Baptist churches, and even some Presbyterian churches since the early 18th Century.
Mr. Mather and Mr. Thompson [assert]:“Governing power is only in the elders, 1 Cor. 12:28; Rom. 12:8; Heb. 13:17. The people have no power, but rather a liberty or privilege, which, when it is exercised about ordination, deposition or excommunication, it is of the whole community (or, in general), but not of all and every member in particular. Women for theirsex, children for lack of discretion, are debarred.”[10]1. If there be no governing power in women, nor any act at all in excommunication, you lose many arguments that you bring [from] 1 Cor. 5 [11] to prove that all had a hand in excommunication, because: 1. Paul writes to all; 2. all were to mourn[12]; 3. all were to forbear the company of the excommunicated men.[13][If your thesis be true] Then Paul writes not to all saints at Corinth: not to women. And [consequently] women were not to mourn for the scandal, nor to forbear his company. 2. This privilege, being a part of the liberty purchased by Christ [for his] Body, it must be due to women. For the liberty, wherewith Christ has made women free, cannot be taken away by any law of God from their sex, except in Christ Jesus there be difference between Jew and Gentile, male and female [Gal. 3:28]. Nor is it removed because it is a power or authority, for the authors say it is ‘no power, but a privilege.’ 3. What privilege the people have in [the] ordination [of officers], to confer a ministry which they have neither formally nor virtually, I know not.
[10]: Richard Mather and William Thompson, A Modest and Brotherly Answer to Mr. Charles Herle’sBook Against the Independency of Churches (London, 1644), ch. 1, pp. 8-9 [Thomas Herle (1598-1659), to whom Mather and Thompson are writing against, was a leading English presbyterianand moderator of the Westminster Assembly. His book against Independency was published theyear before in 1643. Rutherford is answering Mather and Thompson in the same year their bookwas written.] [11]: 1 Cor. 5:4-5, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and myspirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for thedestruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord Jesus.”[12]: 1 Cor. 5:2, “And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done thisdeed might be taken away from among you.”[13]: 1 Cor. 5:6-7, “Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the wholelump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.”
