“The first step that they insist on,” says Mr. T., “is entire separation from the Church and all other Christian societies. This is of course a necessary consequence of the view they take of the state of those societies. The arguments against separation, which may be fairly urged in dealing with the members of other sects, have no place here. If universal Christendom is in a state of utter condemnation, if the fires of Divine wrath are destined shortly to consume it, separation becomes not only lawful but necessary. It is worse than useless, it is sinful to remain in a society, which lies under a Divine sentence, and accordingly the very first requisition of the Brethren is ‘Come out from among them, and be ye separate.' It is admitted, indeed, that individuals who abide in 'the ruin' may be saved at last; but by touching the unclean thing they deprive themselves of the fullness of Gospel privileges, and especially of that great blessing of visible unity which Christendom at large has forfeited forever.” (pp. 43, 44.) Does Mr. T. really think we claim to restore “visible unity"? That we are bound, ceasing from the causes and results of disunion, to insist on the true ground of unity and thus walk, is another thing, and true.
Doubtless this is said with upright intention, which indeed characterizes our author favorably, in contrast almost singular with others in their critiques; but every intelligent person among Brethren would demur to the opening phrase, “entire separation from the Church,” &c., and for the simple and sufficient reason that we regard “separation from the Church” as entirely unjustifiable. The church may surely lose its character (as at Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Rome, says Article xix.) not only in life but in faith, by departure from its distinctive principles. If there be acceptance of evil in its confession or its conduct, then separation from evil according to scripture is imperative; because its leavened condition is incompatible with its claim to be considered Christ's witness, and hence with God's aim, nature, will, and authority, as made known in His word, which acts and is meant to act on the conscience of the believer.
Time was when all western Christendom was Romanist: Mr. T., it is to be presumed, holds cheaply their reproach on the Anglican body of “entire separation from the Church"; nor does he want any reason from us for not joining any of “all other Christian societies.” He assumes that the Anglican establishment is “the Church,” which we deny, believing it to be at issue with God's constitution of the Church in its headship, its ministry, and its membership. For (1) the Sovereign's chief government of estates ecclesiastical is inconsistent with Christ's headship; and none can serve two masters. (2) The ministry is doubly unsound; not only in claiming godly order and lawful consecration for its “bishops, priests, and deacons,” without and against scripture, but in rejecting the free action of the Holy Ghost in gift, which is the only true scriptural ground of Christian service, now that we have neither apostle, no apostolic vicar, to validate local charges. And (3) as the rubric insists that every parishioner shall communicate at the least three times in the year (only excepting an open and notorious evil liver or an impenitent offender in wrong or malice), it is plain that its membership is fundamentally vicious by embracing the decent world as a whole, instead of contemplating none but those baptized by the one Spirit into the one body, believers on the Lord Jesus Christ, enjoying the like gift of the Holy Ghost as God gave at the beginning. Brethren therefore separate, from the Anglican establishment, not for its state only through abuses of various kinds, but because its constitution, were there no abuses, essentially differs from that of God's church as revealed in scripture; in order to walk together, confessing their weakness and shortcoming, on the imperishable principles of His church. How faithfully carry out the church according to God's word, without separating from what is opposed to its nature? This we seek to do.
Mr. T. allows that “with perfect truth” we point to Christ as the true center, and to the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven as the true power, of unity. Only he adds, that in so saying we but echo “the voice of universal Christendom; for no truths have obtained more general recognition than those just named” (pp. 44, 45). Would to God this were the fact! Though not a young man, nor unacquainted with all that bears the name of the Lord all over the earth, I know of no Christian society which either confesses them as the truth, or even attempts to reduce them to practice, as already shown in Chap. III. It is an amiable but grievous misapprehension: no evidence is even essayed of what really does not exist. But having stated what is manifestly unfounded (though in good faith, as Mr. T. does not quite comprehend the matter), he immediately after shows that, in asserting too much, he in effect says nothing. For, closing one paragraph with the flourish about “the voice of universal Christendom,” he opens the next with the words “But having abandoned the divinely constituted society [by which, I suppose, he means Anglicanism now, and Roman-ism for many centuries before the Reformation!], in which the expression of those truths has ever been found by those who sought it (!), they are obliged to seek for their realization by a method of their own.” But this is as wholly mistaken as inconsistent. For how could there be the disunions of Christendom, or the different denominations which men call “churches,” with their manifold and even discordant tongues, in nothing more notorious than their slight of Christ as the center, and the Holy Spirit as the power, of unity, if they all uttered, and uttered truly, this one voice? And if we listen to the Anglican society alone, nothing is farther from the actual fact, nothing less before the minds of its founders, than such a practical development of these truths as is seen in the church of the Scriptures. They just wished to turn over the people en masse from Popery to Protestantism, and to a Protestantism of their own, different from Luther's on the one hand, and from Calvin's on the other.
So far, too, are Brethren from abandoning the divinely constituted society in which the expression of those foundation-truths of the church of God are found, that it is precisely on this they have fallen back, in ceasing to do this unscriptural thing, or in correcting that unscriptural thought. They clear themselves of every known accretion, sectarian or worldly, in order to abide faithfully in their relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, as members of His body. They own and act on the truth of His body, the church, and nothing else; welcoming all others who give credible witness that they are His, and in the position wherein God has set each of them in the church. This, in its poor measure, is holding fast, not casting aside, the only ecclesiastical association of which God speaks, for it is on the ground of the assembly instituted by Him. Inventions ecclesiastical of man, ancient or modern, are of no account in their eyes; because they are substitutes for, rivals of, and rebels against, that which alone is of God. If we hear the scriptures, we cannot overlook the saints from Pentecost meeting in the power of the Holy Ghost round the person of Christ, and thus worshipping and holding communion with the Father, as Mr. T. describes the aim of Brethren. Nor can it be denied that, according to the Acts and Epistles, the Holy Ghost did act in the assembly as well as individually, to exalt and endear the Lord unto the glory of God, in the varied need and to the blessing of all concerned.
Thus even the Apostle Paul was but a minister of the assembly (Col. 1): the minister of an assembly is unknown to scripture, and therefore an encroachment on God's revealed will. Disorders might enter, but scripture rebukes and corrects them, were they but an inopportune display of miraculous power. The commandment of the Lord enforces edification and order, but unquestionably on the ground of the presence and free action of the Holy Ghost in the assembly. To abandon this is to abandon the only divine constitution and the sole normal working of a church, as such, which scripture furnishes. The very aberrations at Corinth were the occasion of the fullest instruction on church matters in the New Testament. Christendom in general, and Anglicanism in particular, have not even sought to realize “the assembly” of scripture; but resorted, each sect, to notions and practices of its own. Brethren, whatever their weakness, and it is not small, own the obligation of cleaving to the assembly, while they avoid the assumption and imitation of apostolic authority.
Mr. T. states fairly on the whole (pp. 46, 47) what Brethren hold as to gifts according to the word, save that he does not with it all connect the Lord's place whose glory the Spirit is here to make good. Hence the prominence given to His authority in 1 Cor. 14, where the exercise of gifts in the assembly is regulated. But the practical difficulty is pleaded: “who is to decide whether this or that brother possesses the requisite gift?” To an outside mind, to a theorist, the solution seems difficult, and the more if God be left out; but why doubt His gracious care in that which so nearly concerns Himself and His children? No one would conceal that questions arise here as everywhere; but God watches over those who desire to do His will; and in practice there is perhaps more loss from the backwardness of those who might help but shrink from an overstrained sense of responsibility, than trial of patience through the forwardness of the incompetent. Men of spiritual intelligence in scripture are found generally and everywhere among Brethren; and it is easier to pass before a bishop's examining chaplain than to deceive such, though they assume no authority to interdict, unless error or other evil should draw out open rebuke or even more. It is a delusion to suppose (as in p. 48) that there is in any instance for the assembly an approach to electing its own ministers for the time being. The Lord is counted on, and the Holy Spirit knows how to guide. But along with this outside the assembly we have always maintained individual responsibility in the exercise of gift; each servant being responsible to trade with the goods entrusted to him for this purpose by the Master. (Matt. 25, Luke 19) In No. 3 of “Lectures on the Church of God” there seems absolutely no ground for the imputation. The page, if not the words, should have been cited. To worship with its central institution, the Lord's Supper on the Lord's day, Brethren have recalled the attention of Christians. Mr. T. notices this in pp. 48-50, with the discipline in 50-52 scripture—enjoins to guard all; but his comment is slight. It is Matt. 18:2020For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20), rather than xvi. 18, (p. 53) that we point to for the Lord's guaranteed presence to two or three gathered to His name—the highest sanction and highest favor the church enjoyed even at Pentecost. Christendom as a whole has become like “the camp” of Israel; an earthly religion for man in the flesh, which suits the world and seeks its glory, instead of boasting only in the cross, walking and worshipping in the faith of the heavenly glory of Him who was here put only to shame and death. Mr. T. (p. 54) repeats to us the old popish cavil against the Reformers: if Brethren are right as to the assembly, where are we to find a true expression of it from the apostolic age till now? He forgets that this is part of the evidence as to the ruin-state of Christendom. Had we seen any saints manifesting, in ever such feebleness but truly, God's assembly, we should have found ourselves there, instead of beginning afresh on that ground in separation from all the systems which ignored it. The argument in p. 55 drawn from ecclesiastical history is therefore quite worthless. So the scriptural argument in p. 56, founded on “elders.” &c., does not even touch the question of the assembly; as any Christian ought to see from the undeniable fact that churches are fully recognized before those charges were appointed in them; no elders as yet being referred to in Rome or in Corinth, but the strongest presumption of their absence. It is the old error of confounding the church with the officials, where there were officials, and of denying the church to be where they were not; a probably Ignatian invention at issue with scriptural truth.
But pp. 57-59 are worse, and illustrate how tradition ever tends to unbelieving views and ways. For it is boldly laid down that the regulations in 1 Cor. 14 have reference to a state of things which no longer exists. Why then should Anglicans or others habitually quote, for practical guidance, words out of this chapter from ver. 1 to ver. 40? It is granted at once that Mr. T.'s unbelief is logically more consistent with the routine of his system, as of the rest of Christendom. But one's heart prefers the well-meant but blundering application of these precious words of the Lord, however little they suit arrangements which essentially differ from the order and decency demanded by holy writ. Does Mr. T. question that the “order” of the assembly laid down in 1 Cor. 14 was then invariable “in all churches of the saints"? So little is that “order” founded on the miraculous endowments of tongues or miracles, as his argument assumes, that one of the objects of chaps. 12-14. is to lower the overweening value set on those displays by the ostentatious brethren in Corinth, and to claim the superiority of such a gift as “prophesying,” because it builds up the assembly. Power is inferior to spiritual intelligence, and the higher gifts which the Corinthians slighted in their folly abide to this day for comfort, edification, and exhortation.
The real ground of the regulations, then, is the presence of the Spirit sent down to remain in and with us forever. Undoubtedly (and there we have no controversy with Mr. T., but with. Irvingites or mere fanatics) tongues and other miracles ceased; and when they did, the references to them would no longer apply. But therefore to infer that the always and immeasurably more important “state of things,” which turned on the presence of the Spirit and His free action in the assembly, no longer exists, is as unfounded as it is ruinous. Sign-gifts formed but part; and, however momentous for the time, being vouchers of the Holy Ghost's presence as a new and stupendous fact, are not to be compared in value with those gifts which laid the foundation and were to carry on the building of God's habitations by the Spirit. The regulations of 1 Cor. 14 implied of course the very small part of the Spirit's power which wrought in a tongue or its interpretation; but they contain the general course of the assembly, and from first to last they subordinate extraordinary powers (even when in action) to the spiritual and ordinary ways of the Holy Ghost in building up the faithful. It is the traditional school of Christendom which assumes the transitory character of 1 Cor. 14 because in it are some regulations of sign-gifts passed away. But this chapter regulates also speaking to edification, exhortation, and comfort, which believers need at least as much now as ever; and it refers to prayer, and singing, to blessing and thanksgiving, which are surely not “a state of things passed away,” any more than the assembly itself, and its responsibility to be energized of the Spirit in subjection to the commandment of the Lord.
It is Mr. T. and his friends who are therefore plainly opposed to all sound reasoning on this head; but, what is worse, they practically treat 1 Cor. 12; 14 as a state of things dead and gone, because the extraordinary or sign gifts no longer exist. And what can be less sound than to claim that they truly heed the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, because they imitate the apostle or his vicar, without the commission they enjoyed, as compared with Brethren who refuse to go beyond their province, and can too easily use these very Epistles to refute traditional pretensions? If Mr. T. could show us with the least appearance of solidity persons with such true apostolic title to appoint elders or deacons, we should gladly bow; for we have not the most distant aversion to the exercise of just authority. But our faith in the word and our value for apostolic order arm us strongly against mere imitation or assumption, even if it could boast of the hoary old age of fifteen centuries, instead of the rather green one of three or four.
What is erroneously branded as our “entirely modern system” (p. 59) is the very same in substance as that in which all assemblies at the first found themselves which had not the added privilege of an apostle or apostolic delegate to choose elders for them. We frankly own the deficiency in this respect, as they no doubt did; but we refuse unscriptural methods of appointing these charges, such as Christendom has long adopted, as different from one another as from God's word. To use such methods would be a loss, not a gain.
Mr. T. admits “the undoubted truths” Brethren have enshrined in that early churchism which we find in Holy Writ, and which he unintelligently libels as a novel system. But his verbal admission that “far more discipline is needed” in Anglicanism, according to the desire of the Commination Service, does not rebut the fact of its shameless absence, especially when one of its own standards confesses the right use of ecclesiastical discipline to be one of the three marks of a true church. And the prayer in the second collect for Good Friday, or any little development of what they call lay agency (p. 90), cannot atone for their absolute annulling of the only principle and practice of the assembly known to God's word, to which Brethren, if alone, by grace adhere; though it be equally binding on all the members of Christ's body. “What I came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?” To separate from an unscriptural system is not to separate from the church (p. 60) but from that which never was the church. Neither in Anglicanism nor in Dissent was Christ ever in any real sense the one center, nor the Holy Ghost the one power, of gathering. Separation, if we find ourselves in what is false, is a necessary first step toward carrying out the true. But we need to be guided only by, the word and the Spirit of God, with Christ before our eyes; for error is easy and manifold, and truth is one. All real Christians are members of the one body. Oh that they were content, judging before God themselves and all that hinders others justly, to let go the petty differences that scatter, and to hold fast Him who died to gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad!