It is with reluctance that one notices, even in a single point, the growing error of the monthly in question. Notorious for its old and persistent unfriendliness to gospel work and to those gifted and earnest in it, it is now in danger of perverting the truth of the church into a lever of party and pride. These little essayists have lost the watchful eye and ready hand which used early to nip their buddings of heterodoxy. It is an unfaithful voice.
That the church is Christ's body, one with the Head, none of us denies but believes, at least as firmly as the theorist who reasons on it apart from Scripture. The mystery is a great one; yet is it no mere figure, but a present, precious, and living reality. And as is the privilege, so is the responsibility for practice. “As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ.” But thence to deduce, with the help of Acts 9:44And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? (Acts 9:4), that Christ and the church are on so dead a level that offenses against the one are equivalent to those against the other, is not faith but the prompting of fanaticism. The discerning reader will see that it is a poor speculation, and a real abandonment of scripture as far as this question—a very serious and practical one—goes. They go on, as they began, with not wanting Scripture; they oppose it now.
For the statement objected to is that no ecclesiastical error, however real or gross, could justify the rigor demanded by scripture where the doctrine of Christ is subverted. This is a plain fact throughout the range of scriptural doctrine. There were schismatics in the Corinthian assembly; and they are blamed. (1 Cor. 1 xi.) Heresies, or parties outside, the apostle descries as the sure fruit of schism (1 Cor. 11); and, when a man does go on to this factious extreme, Titus (iii.) is ordered to admonish him once or twice, and then to leave him alone as a self-condemned soul, who prefers his own will to the faith, or to the fellowship of the church. The disorderly idler, though to be withdrawn from, was to be admonished as a brother. (2 Thess. 3) The saints were to turn away from such as create divisions and scandals. (Rom. 16) The wicked person was to be put out from among them. (1 Cor. 5) But he who came and did not bring the doctrine of Christ was not to be received into the home, nor even greeted (2 John). For such deceivers and antichrists the sternest dealing is reserved. Think where those are getting who dare not only to deny this plain distinction of God's word, but to brand a correct statement of it as “the most pernicious leaven of the day!” May their own ignorant railing, virtually of scripture which thus distinguishes, be forgiven! At any rate, manifest is their folly who prefer their Own imaginative deductions to that inspired teaching of which long since they professed their independence for direction in the present crisis.
Entirely accordant with this scriptural distinction has been our procedure hitherto. We have frankly and habitually received known godly men from the various orthodox sects; but we judged all the while that every such sect is “an offense to the body,” to cite the rather peculiar and unintelligent language of the periodical. We did not deal with them as with offenders against Christ, like Irvingites on one side or Arians on the other; and even those who now innovate went apparently in heart with this most just and imperative distinction. We have even been in the habit of receiving in love the chief instruments of this “offense to the body,” such as godly clergymen and dissenting ministers; yet a man who but trifled with Christ's person would have been indignantly rejected. Nor need we repeat here the leniency of old often shown to ecclesiastical error amongst ourselves.
Either then the critic must (to be consistent with the past) condemn his present teaching as baseless, to say the least; or he must try to extricate himself from his own noose by denying the sects and their officials to be “an offense to the body.” If he will still affirm that an ecclesiastical offense stands on the same platform, and should be so dealt with, as an offense against Christ, we must treat this offender against the truth as unworthy of further notice; and the notion itself as false, evil, and irreverent. Not to bring the doctrine of Christ is heinous in any one professing His name; but it is rare indeed to find those who bring the doctrine of the church, His body, and we should utterly err in treating them alike. Those who can so feel, do they really know what the truth of the church is? if they have it in letter, can they have it in spirit?
Let me counsel sober men in those ranks to weigh the deliberate judgment of the late Mr. Darby in laying down the great principles of revealed truth, which was pre-eminently his gift. “I could not for a moment put a question of blasphemies against Christ on such a ground. It is really wickedness. The attempt to cover them by church questions, or by pleas of conscience, I abhor with a perfect abhorrence.” “But I shall never be brought to such wickedness as to treat acceptance of blasphemers as an ecclesiastical question.” (Eccles. iii. 459, 460.) Now this without disguise they are doing—treating an ecclesiastical question, even were they right in it, as one ought to treat the acceptance of blasphemers. Leveling up or leveling down, it is a grievous wrong, and in fact wickedness, as we quite agree with him.