CHAPTER 3. CLOSING SKETCH OF THE HISTORY.
This peculiarity belongs to those who here occupy our attention, that the failure of their expectations, which to others may be but a trial and bring correction of haste, is to the Irvingites fatal. The reason is as evident as it is unanswerable. Their edifice rests, first, on the genuine character of their prophets, who committed themselves, with all the leaders as well as the led, to their utterances as of God; secondly, and even more distinctly, on the twelvefold unity of their apostolate, as raised up to prepare the bride for the returning of the Bridegroom. For they have ever avowed, before and since as well as in their Great Testimony, that “apostles, and apostles alone, are in Scripture declared to be the center of authority, of doctrine, of unity in all things, to the visible church of Christ on earth, until His second and glorious appearing to those that look for Him without sin onto salvation.'“ Hence, in flagrant contradiction of scripture, they claim for the apostles what they never claimed for themselves at the beginning who were the foundation on which the church was built. Never did they restrict to themselves the call to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them; never did they assume that the Lord gave this mission, not only to them alone directly and immediately, but to none other except through them. Consequently never in the N. T. do we hear in a single instance of ordaining the evangelist to that work, or of preachers receiving their mission from apostles. Very different in position, they are alike the gifts direct of the ascended Head. Irvingism is here a false witness.
They admit nominally the rain of the church. “As truly as the angels left their first estate, as certainly as the nations before the flood apostatized and quenched the light given unto them from God through Adam, as surely as the Jews who crucified the Lord rejected the counsel of God against themselves, so truly the baptized have fallen from the glorious standing wherein God placed the church at the beginning.” Yet instead of repenting in sackcloth and ashes, and inquiring of God what His word directs as befitting those who desire to do His will, they arrogate to themselves to restore all as at the beginning—an expectation contrary to every analogy in the past, and without any word to warrant it in the N. T. scriptures, not to say wholly opposed to all just inference, and inconsistent with the provision of grace for failure.
The Reformation never so presumed. Indeed the men whom God then used and blessed knew little of God's church, being pre-occupied in getting rid of the Papal imposture and its more glaring departures from the truth. An open Bible they did recover and vindicate, though not without an undue reliance on the civil power, which thenceforward crippled the Protestant bodies. Non-conformity again sought and sometimes fought for relief of conscience and a liberty which did not fail to degenerate into self-will; it never rose to the assertion of Christ's rights acting by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven; as the church became less and less known in these conflicts. There was no due sense of ruin. They endeavored to do the best they could in their various societies. Their ministers were Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregational, as the case might be. They pretended not to the apostolate.
Irvingism confessed in word the church's ruin as they did not; and yet pretended to divinely given apostles with so much the graver guilt. For if there was one feature more essentially distinctive of the primitive church, it was those who constitute the foundation. Yet they knowing this, confessing present ruin, and avowing faith in a constantly to be expected Lord, claim a fall apostolate once more, as if a foundation could be the pinnacle as well as the basis of that building, the church. If this claim be a monstrous error, morally as well as doctrinally, even an Irvingite must own that no claim of theirs is so distinctive. But the apostle Paul, predicting the ruin at hand, never casts the faithful on apostolic succession, still less on restoring the ministry of apostles to the church. This is not the least lie of the enemy that distinguishes the body, which therefore calls itself Catholic Apostolic. Their own effort to set up the church again is a new and more monstrous form of evil than that of any serious Christians, and all the more blind and obnoxious to judgment because they professed to see the ruin which Romanists denied, and Protestants saw not. It may be true that the cessation of the apostleship, and the rain of the church, too sadly coincided; but, without warrant of scripture, for those involved in the ruin to look for apostles and accept twelve men in that capacity, as a remedy for evil and restoration of broken unity, is to fall into presumptuous sin, instead of humbling ourselves for our sins and those of the church at large.
But, even on their own showing, their anticipations have been proved false. Take the Narrative, by the N. German apostle's “permission,” where three anointings of the apostles were to answer to David's. Whatever may be pretended as to the first and second, the third has confessedly failed altogether; when it was fondly hoped that the apostles would “receive a power and extent of jurisdiction which they did not then possess.” Can the most sanguine say that this day has ever come? Why then do they not take and humble themselves in the dust?
Further, on the face of the facts, the apostolate for the end, which was to usher in the Lord's Appearing, has waxed old and is ready to vanish away. Does this consist with the voices of the accredited prophets and the universal faith of Irvingites? Candor will not dispute the clear inconsistency. For these twelve to die is fatal to all their testimony. Yet they are all deceased save one. Mr. R. Woodhouse, now an aged man, still lives at Albury, and appears occasionally at Gordon Square. Mr. Mackenzie, the last, who withdrew in 1840, was the first of the apostles to die; Mr. Carlyle followed; and Mr. W. Dow, all in 1855. Messrs. Perceval and Drummond died in 1859. Great things were looked for in 1856, and yet more in 1866, when apparently the prophets of error sought to cover over these unexpected deaths by the deceit of carrying on the sealing in the unseen world, which had so conspicuously failed in this world. This fable seems to be accepted, not only by Dr. Norton (pp. 183, 4), but on the testimony of one of these apostles who died expressing his full assurance that God had further work for him to do! in flat contradiction of the apostle's word in Phil. 1:22-2522But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor: yet what I shall choose I wot not. 23For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: 24Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. 25And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith; (Philippians 1:22‑25). Besides, as sealing was avowedly to exempt from the great tribulation on this habitable earth, how could it apply to persons defunct? The alleged object is gone. Up to this time Mr. Dalton, one of the Twelve, still stuck to his position as an Anglican presbyter, and in fact not till 1860 gave himself up to apostolic work. Mr. Tudor died in 1862, Mr. Sitwell in 1865, and Mr. King-Church after him. Mr. Dalton died in 1871, Mr. Armstrong, then paralyzed, lived some time longer. Mr. Cardale, who had ever been the energetic leader of the Twelve, remained till 1878. The idea of coadjutor apostles, overruled when Mr. Taplin first presented it, seems to have since prevailed: whether it is still in contemplation to add largely in this form, which is not unlike succession, is not certain. But Mr. Miller informs us that the prophetic utterances latterly, instead of addressing the Twelve as of old, have been saying, “O ye Twelve and O ye seventy.” But whatever this may indicate of the dissolving system, it is very certain that the Seventy of Luke 10 were in no way coadjutor apostles. The idea is a fiction, as opposed to their universal expectations founded on utterances in power, as it is fundamentally subversive of their ecclesiastical principle and scheme.