The pretension to competence in everyone who takes it into his head to judge for himself, independently of what God has instituted, is, taken in its most favorable aspect—not an individual pretension which is its real character—the well-known and unscriptural system which has been known since Cromwell's time, that is, independency—one body of Christians being independent of every other as a voluntary association. This is a simple denial of the unity of the body, and the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in it.
J. N. Darby