[8] The narrative and argument of this elaborate and able document cannot be reproduced here. In substance it is a claim "as of right" on behalf of the church and of the nation and people of Scotland that the church shall freely possess and enjoy her liberties, government, discipline, rights and privileges according to law, and that she shall be protected therein from the foresaid unconstitutional and illegal encroachments of the said court of session, and her people secured in their Christian and constitutional rights and liberties. This claim is followed by the "declaration" that the Assembly cannot intrude ministers on reclaiming congregations, or carry on the government of Christ's church subject to the coercion of the court of session; and by the "protest" that all acts of the parliament of Great Britain passed without the consent of the Scottish church and nation, in alteration or derogation of the government, discipline, rights and privileges of the church, as also all sentences of courts in contravention of said government, discipline, rights and privileges, "are and shall be in themselves void and null, and of no legal force or effect." [9] The Scottish members voted with the minority in the proportion of 25 to 12. [10] The number ultimately rose to 474. [11] By this formal recognition of the qualifications to the Confession of Faith made in 1647 the scruples of the majority of the Associate Synod of Original Seceders were removed, and 27 ministers, along with a considerable number of their people, joined the Free Church in the following year. [12] See Taylor Innes, _Law of Creeds in Scotland_, p. 258 seq. [13] The language of Dr Buchanan, for example, in 1860 was (_mutatis mutandis_) the same as that which he had employed in 1838 in moving the Independence resolution already referred to.