Had a brain gitch last night, my brother in Christ corrects me well:
quotingI love the sentiment, but this is not entirely accurate. What was actually handed down to us from 1646 read quite differently in WCF 23.III.
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Here's the original:
"The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God."
This was amended in 1788 to read as you quoted it, and as was adopted by the newly formed PCUSA in 1789, and later by the OPC and PCA when they broke away from the mainline denomination.
Likewise, what you quoted as 31.IV was originally 31.V in the 1646 version, but the 1788 revisions removed the original section 31.II, thus bumping paragraphs III, IV, and V to being numbered II, III, and IV respectively. The original paragraph II read as follows:
"As magistrates may lawfully call a synod of ministers and other fit persons to consult and advise with about matters of religion; so, if magistrates be open enemies to the Church, the ministers of Christ, of themselves, by virtue of their office, or they, with other fit persons, upon delegation from their churches, may meet together in such assemblies."
So what the Presbyterian Church, even in the colonies, confessed was a much more integrated idea of the Church and State mutually protecting one another from corruption. To that end, it granted the civil magistrate some significant ecclesiastical authority and it was not until 1788 that the WCF was amended to remove reference to any authority of the civil magistrate over ecclesiastical affairs.
This was in close relation to the drafting of our Constitution itself, which was drafted in September of 1787 and ratified in June of 1788. Just as the US Constitution built protections for the Church from civil government into the First Amendment, the Church likewise built protections for itself from the civil magistrate into the Confession that had not been present before.
So, what you quoted doesn't show the influence of Westminster on Enlightenment thinkers (since that version of the text did not exist at the time), so much as it shows the influence of having overthrown tyrannical government on the Church's previously held views concerning the relationship between Church and State.