A Christian has the Spirit (as well as faith and morality)and a company proper to him.-The evil of Bethesda.
My Dear Brother,
It is not always enough that a man should be, as an individual, ostensibly sound in faith and holy in walk, in order to be received at the table; because inasmuch as the church is not merely a number of separate Christians together as individuals, but a fellowship by the Holy Ghost,—the question: Of what spirit are you? (see 1 John 4) may become very important to her, in connection with those she receives, for her own and their sakes; it characterizes the faith and walk, that they are to be those of heavenly men who have the Spirit of God; this will guard against declension and a lowered standard; and it may be, too, as it was in measure in Irvingism, the clue to the discovery of unsoundness in faith and practice. On the other hand, circumstances may make the same question important for the sake of the inmates of her walls, lest they should be corrupted.
Surely no gathering in the neighborhood of Oscott (the great Roman Catholic college) would be satisfied to receive a person living therein, upon the ground that individually his faith was sound and his practice holy. Of what spirit is the man who lives among the Jesuits? would be another question. For how could any gathering risk, under such circumstances, her sanction to those who looked so like false brethren, who had not the Spirit; or how risk the introduction of the deadly errors of Romanism by some one used by Oscott, perhaps, in his or her simplicity, yet as a decoy and unconscious bearer of the false doctrines; or how feel in her act of receiving such that there, was surely in him. the germ of an after spiritual walk involved.
Who again ought to be received while persisting to maintain fellowship among the Socinians, or among any fresh and new set of heretics who were raised up with a jesuitical system of their own to spread error subversive of the foundations, as the Irvingites. Of what spirit are you? must occur to a sober mind. The question is not, Are they conscious of the danger? But this rather, Does the Holy Ghost, who presides over the gathering, lend His sanction to her reception of such a one while of such fellowship and company? Does He, ever mindful of Christ and the sheep, justify the exposure of the lambs to such risks? Clearly if the gathering receives, it commits the Holy I; Ghost to the act; as if it demurs to do so, it is upon the ground that else doubts his concurrence in the reception. "The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil, that is understanding."
I would just remark, that, what the school-men call the fallacy of "composition and division," frequently gets in to trouble Christians.
Thus, because the church collective is the Bride of Christ, some individuals have forgotten that their connection with this honor is only as being each a member in particular in their place in the body; and some have called themselves as individuals the Bride of Christ. As an illustration of the opposite error, I may instance what is a very frequent case, and that is individual believers being so engrossed in what they are in themselves, as individuals, as that they entirely forget that they are still a part of that body the church which is accepted in the beloved, and of which He himself is the head, which is His body-the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.
And is it not quite clear that not only may a body be eliminated by one of its members upon the ground of company or fellowship, as was the whole camp of Israel in the case of the sin of Achan, for God was offended-even He who was the God of Israel;-but also that an individual may be criminated by the body as Caleb and Joshua, who had to wander till their generation had died for its sin. And Moses and Daniel, and the Prophets and the Apostles, too, knew and tasted the sorrows of this. And just let me note here that sin is in its essence a' negative. If God is not in the will, the heart, the mind, there is sin just as much as in any result of this in overt transgression. And a man may get involved, as a man, for not protesting against that which he has no power to prevent. If a ship's crew mutinied, and I knew the plot and did not even protest, I should be an accessory before the fact in the eye of the law. " Be not a partaker in other men's sins."
There is another case mentioned:-1 Cor. 10:11Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; (1 Corinthians 10:1) may advert to in the contrast drawn between God's house of true worship and Satan's many houses of false worship (15-33), and the way a member of the former disqualifies himself by association with the latter.
The instruction is presented variously in this chapter; 1st. in warning very solemnly, and especially so in connection with my subject; because, first, from verses 1-13, the conduct and experience of Israel as a nation while in the wilderness is declared to have been typical of what would befall the church; and then, 2ndly the unity of the table is illustrated by the unity of Israel with its altar, and the unity of the false demon-worshippers with their altars:. I add, that the unallowableness and the impossibility of commixing the worshippers of different kinds is (verse 21) pressed. I would just remark here that people deceive themselves (themselves most surely, if no one else) when they remain in a place of fellowship and think that their individual dissent from its spirit, theory or acts, as a body, exonerates them from the fellowship and its responsibility. Whether that dissent be mental, verbal or in action, they must remain shareholders in the blame or praise of all the acts of the body, if it is in their own power to leave and they do not do so. And the nature of the excuse they plead is of no value, save as an index to what it is which is governing them. God is not mocked. If the fellowship is an entity, it criminates them; if a non-entity, why do they profess it? The unity of each scene of worship as above presented is based upon the questions; as to form, 1st, of truth or error; and 2ndly, of " animating energy" as to that which is the power of fellowship. The church had the truth and grace of God, as presented in the Lord Jesus, once here on earth, but now at the right hand of God, and about to return, as the formative of her standing, while the animating energy was the Holy Ghost as Comforter. In Babylon, as such, the animating energy was clearly of Satan, with all untruthfulness, lying, and cunning craftiness.
It was molded clearly on corrupted truth. A false Christ as to the past, present and future, but such an one as human selfishness could act upon to exalt itself in the world by was presented, while a mock unity, authority, and catholicity was wrought out thereby, and the church was made mistress of the world-a queen on earth. At the reformation, Scripture was recognized as being the word of God and alone standard; and sanctification by faith alone was owned: yet the church recovered not her proper position as the confidante and widowed spouse of Christ, dependent on God, and therefore guided and sustained. She had been the queen of earth-she now became its vassal; the world was lord of the church, or that which was called so. Very interesting is the question as one advances onward into nonconformity in its various forms, and the synagogues of Satan, as Swedenborgianism, Irvingism, etc. In national reformations, etc., the world held a place connected with the church as much as in Romanism, though, as being now tyrant of her whose servant it was before, her experience more nearly approximated to that of the primitive normal state of the church; when, as being "set in pointed contrast and avowed opposition to the world, though it might be used at one moment to caress her, at another it would vex and worry her. In the normal state it vexed habitually and only occasionally seduced. Since the Reformation it has habitually seduced and only occasionally vexed. In nonconformity the world has been more stood aloof from, and a fuller range of truth held and rejoiced in; but the flesh and the will of man not thereby set aside, nor the maxims of the world purged out. Expediency and human policy will constantly be found in dissent as the order of government; sure token, as well as is often the very form of the constitution of the body (which could not be ruled without some man's presence), that human will is not duly set aside. In such cases as Irvingism, Princism, etc., in which most surely an unclean spirit has worked, it will generally, I think, be found, that some individual man has at first set himself and his own name and honor as an object, and that, trying to force a worship for himself (which godly nonconformity would not tolerate), a lying spirit has been allowed to enter. Such a spirit, once entered, gives a perfectness of unity to the house and system, which would be as far beyond the unity of a system the animating energy of which was human will, as the energy and power of a lying spirit are above those of a mere man. I cannot but think that this will be found to be the case. If true, it will Solve the riddle of what all feel, viz., that there is something which constitutes a most essential ground of difference practically between a nonconformist body and a body of Princites. Defective truth and human will may mark the former, but their corporate fellowship is ideal and conventional; the members are really a bundle of units, whose truth is common to all saints, and whose human will, alas we all also share; though they may think themselves bound to consecrate its energy, while the more intelligent saint counts it is to be crucified. The body of Princites have perverted truth and a lying spirit. Their fellowship is a real thing in spirit, and their corporate fellowship identifies them with the adversary. I do not speak with confidence; but I suggest here what has struck me as the solution of a difference all godly saints admit, while they do not account for it, viz., why persons coming from Romanism, Campbellism, Irving-ism, Princism, Swedenborgianism, and such things, would prima facie be to be rejected, though godly persons from the church establishments and various nonconformist bodies would be to be received.
When a work of God had been set in bold relief and contrast, and victory over a work of Satan at the Bath meeting in May, it was an unwise and unholy act of Bethesda to cut itself off from connection with that work of God (thereby also casting out some really godly people from among themselves), and to identify itself with and endorse that work of Satan by receiving and retaining the emissaries of it.
Now the peculiarity of Bethesda is, that it not only has let in the jesuitical system of Compton-street, and given currency to the doctrine of Mr. Newton, but it has done so in acts which exhibit the very same evil system of want of moral integrity, and in a way by which it has made the whole body of its members, as such, commit themselves to the evil.
This I shall now proceed to. It is the answer, most unwillingly given, to the question raised by Mr. Jukes of Hull, and by many others, who love and desire to honor George Muller for his past service in the Lord—Why is not George Miller to be received? To examine George Muller as an individual, and accredit him for his confession of faith and moral walk,-if he stands connected with an immoral spiritual system, and if his name stands signed to a paper full of gully pretexts and containing untruths, a paper which at once sanctioned in Bethesda the presence of the emissaries of a heresy, cast out many saints and raised a mound against others (that is, was the power by which an heretical schism was accomplished)-and if, too, it was he whose influence led to the body's adopting that paper-would be impossible until he has confessed his error and removed the evil.
The primary charge against Bethesda was the sin of receiving and sanctioning the agents of the system, the immoral system of Compton-street; clearly, if not tainted with the blasphemous errors, yet, if agents of such a system -a system in which men of the highest natural rectitude had proved that (being deluded) they could state as fact that which they knew to be the very opposite of it, and deny to be fact what they knew was fact-I say, if agents and under the energy of such a system, their being individually free from the error in doctrine mattered not. I knew in Ebrington-street those who are now in Compton-street who repudiate with horror the doctrine, and perhaps do not hold it, and who yet are under the power of this spell, so that they circulate the books and are utterly regardless of truth. The primary charge against Bethesda was, that it I made itself the home of some that were such.
The history of Bethesda and of its decline, of its reasonings and actings during the Plymouth controversy; of the consultations, debates, conferences, etc., which it held; whether in the question at issue between it and Bath, or in that in which it was at issue with all the brethren as such, as to accrediting the members of. Compton-street, it is not my task to write.
All I propose doing is, to present " The Act " of its accrediting itself, after receiving members of Compton-street, against those who were ejected by this act.
The whole is briefly presented in two documents: one, a circular of Mr. Alexander's; the other, in reply to it, signed by ten of reputation in Bethesda. This was approved by the congregations of Bethesda and Salem, as such.
Mr. A.'s circular, I shall leave to speak for itself. As to the public document signed by ten of its pillars, which the body, as such, accepted; I have numbered, for conveniency's sake, its sentences, and added below it a running commentary. Spread both humbly and prayerfully before God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and in faith look to Him for light, through the Spirit. The document you can now examine for yourself. My comment, too, you can weigh and prove easily for yourself. The greater part of it results from the mutual relationship of the various parts one with another, i. e. its internal evidence: the other parts, which flow from external evidence, are either-
lst. Such as flow from Scripture where Scripture truth seemed to me to be infringed by it; or-
2ndly. Such as result from the evidence of documents which are appended; and thus far your judgment, reader, can correct mine. The only point of evidence where this is not the case, which is a very small part here, is-
3rdly. Such as rests upon the testimony of two or three credible witnesses.
Scripture requires us, in cases of the highest moment, to admit that in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word shall be established. Law and Gospel alike confirm it; and Paul owned himself, as apostle, subject to it. The persons who give me this evidence must stand to their testimony, and be ready, if a general meeting is held anywhere, to meet our brother Muller and Mr. Craik, and before you to confirm their words.
Of course, I am still open to further light.