I should never have spoken of Mr. F. Olivier's pamphlet if it had not contained very decided principles on some important points, and an object which is not seen by all. If it were only a desire to cast contempt upon his brethren that were manifested in it, nothing would be easier than to pass it by. Every one may judge how far Mr. O. has profited by the light of those brethren whom He is pleased to treat with a kind of scorn. It does not seem to me a very noble procedure; but if one will give a kick behind to overthrow the ladder by which one has got up, it is certainly not worth writing a pamphlet, however small, in order to publish it. Mr. O. tells us that he has groped his way along. When we submit to what is in the word, we do not grope along. With men's thoughts one may grope; with the word we may still be ignorant on many points, but if we receive (and that with joy) the yoke of the word, we do not grope.
Mr. O.'s object is to establish or to direct independent assemblies, and to justify laxity in discipline. He understands absolutely nothing as yet of the unity of the body. In a practical sense his pamphlet is directed against that unity. These are the only points that I shall take up, presenting what the word of God says of assemblies, and some fresh light that God has granted me. The latter is not of any great importance, but what the word says is always interesting for the Christian. It is a happy thing to know that, if we take the word of God for our basis, fresh light that we may receive never overthrows the old, it completes and renders it clearer.
First, let me be permitted to say, that the assemblies of those called Plymouth Brethren are so far from calling themselves the assembly or the church of God in a place, that they have always formally set themselves against that title. So little truth is there in the insinuation that this is what has chiefly hindered these brethren from forming part of the Rochat flocks. They believe that they alone meet on the true principle of the Church of God, which I do not at all doubt; but they believe that the Church is in ruins, and that the pretension to be the Church of God in any place would be a false pretension. I add that if all the Christians in a place were to be met together, which would form, in a state of order, the assembly of the place, I would not give it that title, because the universal church is not gathered together, and I do not believe in independent churches. I believe that there were formerly local churches, representing in a certain sense the whole in their localities; but we are very far from that now. All those who have been willing to take the trouble to inquire know or might have known, that from the first the brethren in question have taken as their ground the principle of Matt. 18, as a resource given of God for a state of general ruin. The pretension to be the assembly of God has always been rejected by the brethren in question. Every assembly united by the will of God around the person of Jesus and in His name is an assembly of God, if it be simply a question of the force of words; but when it is a question of being the assembly of God in a place, it is not so in the true sense of the word, and could not be so because of the state of the universal church. It may meet together on the principle of the Church of God, may find the promised blessing, may be the only assembly which is gathered together according to this principle in the place, and it may attach immense importance to it, and ought to attach immense importance to it if it wishes to be obedient and faithful; but it is only God's witness so far as by its separate walk it renders testimony to the faithfulness of God, to the divine principles which govern its walk and to the real condition that the Church is in as a whole. In this case it would be God's witness: it is certain that it ought to be so.
Mr. O. insists that the totality of churches, that is to say of assemblies, constituted the Church or the assembly. Nothing of the kind. Numerically speaking that is not true. Many Christians were scattered here and there preaching the gospel, converted without being associated with a flock, like the treasurer of Queen Candace, like Paul and Silvanus, and Timothy and Titus in their labors. But, what is still more important, the principle is entirely false, and herein lies the whole question that occupies us. The assembly or the body was composed of individuals and not of churches or of assemblies. These are Mr. O.'s words in page 11:— “Assemblies united among themselves by one and the same faith and one and the same worship, and forming, by their totality, the body of Christ upon the earth.” There is no such idea in the word. The body had members. Now the assemblies were not the members, but individual Christians were the members, and although the assemblies might have the same faith and the same worship, that was not the constitutive principle of the unity of the body; the principle of this was the presence of the Holy Spirit, who united all the believers, Jews and Gentiles, into one and the same body. 1 Cor. 12 makes the doctrine of the word perfectly clear with regard to this. The body of Christ on earth is composed of individuals and not of churches. Now in this case there is only unity in the whole; there is none in any local assembly if that assembly is detached from the whole as a whole.
If one considers that assembly as an independent church, it has nothing to do with the body; it is not in principle an assembly of God. At the beginning of the Epistle to the Corinthians it is said, “To the assembly of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.” Thus the apostle could say, “Ye are the body of Christ.” The assembly at Corinth represented at Corinth that one and only unity, that of all individuals united to Christ in one body by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Everything had reference to the one body, a body composed of all the members of Christ. There was no action which did not refer to the whole body, no suffering of one member which was not felt by all the members of the body. 1 Cor. 12 leaves no doubt upon this point. The ministries were exercised in this whole. (1 Cor. 12:27, 28.) Their object was first the perfecting of individuals, and then the edifying of the body of Christ. (Eph. 4:12.)
The object of this effort to make independent flocks is the desire of being independent, of doing one's will without submitting to the discipline of the Church as one body. Mr. O. says as much. (Page 43.) Each assembly being independent, united only by one faith and one worship (page 11), has the power of judging the acts of discipline of another assembly. (Page 43.) The unity of the body does not then exist. The action is the action of an independent church, has no reference whatever to the whole, is not binding upon other assemblies or other Christians. A person may be put away by one assembly, and another assembly may receive the one who is put away. This is evident, though it may be disorderly. The without and the within are not the world and the Church of God: all that is lost. It is the within of a little voluntary and independent assembly, which only exercises its discipline in relation to itself. It is very evident that the without and the within of 1 Cor. 5 is not only the without and the within of a particular assembly, so that the wicked person might be outside at Corinth and within at Ephesus. The epistle carefully teaches the unity of the body on earth, and recognizes no local action except in that unity, a unity composed of individuals and not of churches. Look at disciplinary action from another point of view and you will see the enormous difference of the principles, and how this system of independent churches destroys the truth of scripture on this subject. What is the true force, the true source, of authority in discipline? The presence of Jesus; not that this discipline is the act of a voluntary society which excludes one of its members from its bosom, but it is the act of an assembly according to God, gathered to the name of Jesus and acting in His name and by His authority, to maintain the holiness which is connected with that name. Now the independent church is only a society which acts for itself; another assembly may judge what it has done. There is no trace in this either of the unity or the authority of the Church of God.
Is a flock then bound hand and foot in these cases if another assembly has acted hastily? Not at all. Just because the unity of the body is true and recognized, and that with regard to discipline the members of that body which are gathered elsewhere take an interest in what passes in each place, they are free to make brotherly remonstrances, or to suggest some scriptural motive; in a word, they are capable of all brotherly activity with regard to this. If it be an independent assembly, it does not concern it; it has nothing to do with looking into it. If these things are done in the unity of the body, every Christian is interested in what is passing. It may happen that the discipline of an assembly is not recognized; but then it is rejected as an assembly and the presence of Jesus giving authority to its acts is denied—a very grave thing, but one which may happen. Mr. O. has entirely falsified the unity of the body, and wishes for independent churches and a unity of faith and worship, the whole of the churches forming, according to him, the unity of the body. The word knows nothing of this system. The reader may judge of it by reading 1 Cor. 12.
But another object is proposed wherever this half-Plymouth-Brethren half-Independent system is adopted; for it is not in Switzerland only that they have wished to take this ground. They wish to be free to support the discipline of Bethesda or of the Neutrals, of those who condemn “absolute exclusiveness” as Mr. O. calls it (page 41), an expression which, I confess, I do not understand. Every one is not excluded, I suppose. Some persons are excluded in Mr. O.'s independent churches. The assemblies of so-called Plymouth Brethren also exclude some.
The question is whether the limits that have been put to exclusion are scriptural. The expression, “absolute exclusiveness” may serve to cast reproach upon assemblies with which one does not agree: it is nonsense. But we have some expressions which are rather more intelligible: “Disciplinary ways which go far beyond scripture.” (Page 42.) Again, “in order to oppose such teaching we do not excommunicate in large masses Christians who are strangers to it.” (Page 43.) One cannot be mistaken about it. Mr. O. condemns the discipline of the so-called Plymouth Brethren, and he wishes the discipline of Bethesda or the Neutrals. This is the object of his pamphlet and of the support he gives to the independent churches.
I will not weary either my reader or myself with the history of this question, but the point which is really at issue is of great gravity for the Church of God: Can an assembly be corrupted? We have broken with what we have considered insults and blasphemies against Christ. Up to that point there had not been any great difficulty; some painful things, but decided without much delay. But here is an assembly which receives those that we had excluded as being blasphemers. Could one go on with that assembly taking the Lord's Supper with those excommunicated people?
This is the first question. For my part, I could not do so, and those who received them, knowingly and willingly, were not a “new lump.” (1 Cor. 5) That raised the question, Is an assembly corrupted when knowingly and willingly it admits sin or blasphemy? Our adversaries have maintained that an assembly cannot be defiled; that the individuals who are in sin are defiled, but that the assembly could not be so. They have insisted upon this in many tracts. Not only so, but the principal brothers of a so-called neutral meeting signed a printed circular, affirming that, if an assembly admits fornication knowingly and willingly, we ought not the less to recognize that assembly and receive letters of recommendation from it. We have judged that if an assembly, not taken by surprise, which may happen anywhere, or by carelessness, of which we are all capable, but knowingly and willingly admits sin or blasphemy, it is not a new lump; that in order to be a new lump it must purify itself from the old leaven (1 Cor. 5:7), and that it is by doing so that the other members showed themselves pure in that matter (2 Cor. 7:11): otherwise they would not have been so. This is the principle in question. Many individuals have gone farther, maintaining that in no case could blasphemy or any doctrine give occasion to discipline.
The effect has been, to my mind, most fatal; but I limit myself to proving the question, except that I shall communicate the result in a case that may arouse Swiss consciences. The doctrine taken up in the United States has not been Mr. Newton's, but the denial of the immortality of the soul. There is a meeting at Philadelphia (and there are even two) on the neutral principle, which does not follow the so-called exaggerated discipline, and blames the severity of Brethren. Those who deny the immortality of the soul were admitted into the meeting; then the doctrine was taught in it. We broke with, or rather refused all connection with, those meetings. Those persons who blame our severity were not willing to keep themselves thus apart, and now the chief instruments of the Swiss mission or of the “Grande Ligne,” deny the immortality of the soul. I hope that all have not got to that: God knows. I will not enter into farther details; it would be too painful and of little use. It is certain that the want of faithful discipline, the lax system, cried up by Mr. O., the lack of absolute exclusiveness, with regard to that which is false and evil, have thrown the Swiss mission into the doctrine which denies the immortality of the soul. It may be that they say, We do not preach it, but the doctrine goes on: they go and ask the minister what he thinks of it; he thinks it is the truth and souls get into it. Well, we refused those who were not willing to break with this system, and I bless God for it. There is a fine field of labor ruined precisely by the system Mr. O. extols. Neutral meetings, taking advantage of the absence of “absolute exclusiveness,” and approved in that by Bethesda and by the Neutrals, and by such as Mr. O., are traps for simple souls who go to New York and to Philadelphia. The question is no longer Bethesda, but Can an assembly which knowingly admits grave errors be recognized as an assembly of God? and can those who are accomplices in the matter be regarded as innocent, although they support evil, because they are not themselves blasphemers? In 2 Tim. 2 we are charged to purge ourselves from vessels to dishonor. Do we purge ourselves if we are in full communion with them? 1 Cor. 5 and 2 Cor. 7 decide the question for me as to the condition of those who support evil without being personally guilty.
There are many things I might lay hold of in Mr. O.'s pamphlet, but that is not my object. When it is said (page 2), “the Church is begotten of God;” none of the passages quoted speak of the Church: it is not begotten of God. Individuals are. It is not being begotten that makes them members of the Church, but the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I do not know in what sense Mr. O. thinks the apostle said to the church at Corinth: “Ye are the body of Christ.” But I do not occupy myself with these things. My only object is to prove that the tract is a program of adhesion to a system which denies the true unity of the Church, which establishes independent churches, and which justifies a discipline, or rather a want of faithfulness to Christ, which turns what are called holy assemblies into a snare for the simple to entangle them in false and injurious doctrines and to destroy the integrity of their conscience—the certain result of all false doctrine.
I do not think that the open apostasy has arrived, but I believe that in the spirit of the thing it has existed for a long time, as there were many antichrists, although the Antichrist was not there. Now, the Antichrist, at least the man of sin, is connected with the apostasy. Mr. O. wishes for dismemberment. It would be impertinence on my part to contend with Mr. O. about the value of French words, but in the things of God there is more than words. I find the word that he has chosen the most unfortunate possible. The proper meaning of that term is the act of plucking oft a member from a body. It is used for the division of a state, of a kingdom, &c. But, figuratively used, something of the original meaning always remains. It is superior strength, coming from without, which divides. Poland and Bavaria have been dismembered, and if one speaks of the dismemberment of a society so that it is divided into several parties, still the idea always remains of an effect produced upon the society. It is of little consequence that the members understand one another about it; the society suffers violence through it: something of the original idea always remains. Now I admit that the apostasy in the full and entire sense of the word is not come, and that the application of this term to the Romish system, an application made by the mass of Protestant writers, went beyond the true force of the word. But observe that the apostasy is the fault of the church on earth. It had lost its first love; it had had time to repent, and had not repented; it had a name to live, and was dead; it was about to be spewed out of the Savior's mouth. This was a moral condition for which the church was responsible, and if the apostasy has not arrived, things have gone so far in that direction, that the distance which separates us from it is scarcely appreciable; only the Spirit of God is acting in a remarkable manner. Finally, Mr. O. admits now the fall of the church which is the important thing.
But the dismemberment, a terrible word when it is a question of the body of Christ, and one which Mr. O. can make use of, because the true idea of the body has no place in his thoughts—the dismemberment is only a fact. The apostasy, or the tendency to apostasy, expresses the thought—crushing if the grace of the Lord were not revealed—of the unfaithfulness of the Church to the one who has so loved it. But there is another thing. If it is a question of the body of Christ and of members united to the Head in heaven, the dismemberment of the Church is a dreadful thing. If the church on earth be simply a society, then it may become dismembered, or divided, or dissolved. Now Mr. O. has not the least idea of the unity of the body, nor of the responsibility of the Church to maintain that position which it has never had in his eyes. It was a society composed of several local societies. To divide was perhaps an evil, but an evil which happened to an earthly society. The church at Corinth, in spite of its disorders, was not dismembered in the time of Paul and be could still say to them, “Ye are the body of Christ.” (Page 3.) If Mr. O. had the least idea of the body of Christ, this sentence would have been impossible. It has no meaning for any one who understands what the body is.
I must add a few words with regard to the two points of view, in which the word looks at the house. Christ (Matt. 16) builds the house, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. It is Christ who builds, the house is not yet finished. In 1 Peter 2 living stones are added, there is no human architect. In Eph. 2 “the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.” But in 1 Cor. 3 we find another thing altogether. Paul is a wise architect. Every man must take heed how he builds. This is man's responsibility, although the building may be called the building of God. He who, being a Christian, builds well has a reward; he who, being a Christian upon the foundation, builds badly will lose his labor, but he himself is saved. There is a third class. He who corrupts will himself be destroyed. Now popery and the ritualistic system have confounded the temple that Jesus Christ builds, which is growing into a temple, with that which depends on man's responsibility—a grave and fatal error. They do the same as to the body. But there was the responsibility to maintain the unity of the Spirit and thus the manifestation of the unity of the body, and the church has failed in it; then it confounded the body with that which man has built. The unity of John 17 is not the unity of the body. John never speaks of the Church. It is a question there of a unity of brethren or of disciples, which would in fact manifest the power of the Spirit of God.
Mr. O. refers us to another pamphlet on elders, &c. He wished to appoint some when the minds of brethren should be prepared to receive them. As an authority for this, having rejected the old dissenting principles, only this argument remains to him, namely, that the apostles must of necessity have provided for the future of the Church, a point already discussed with M. de Gasparin. It is nothing but reasoning and a false reasoning, for it supposes that God meant Christians to know that the Church would continue for a long time on earth; that is to say, to destroy the present expectation of the Lord, which His word avoids in the most remarkable manner, insisting upon such expectation. I believe with many Christians that the seven churches give a history of Christianity; but God chose churches which were then existing in order not to take Christians out of this continual expectation. The virgins who go to sleep are the same as those who awake. The servants who receive the talents on their master's departure are those who are judged at his return. The duration of the delay does not go beyond a man's lifetime. “If I will that he tarry till I come,” says the Lord. “We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord,” says the apostle; and, “Ye yourselves as men that wait for their lord,” says the Lord again. An expectation of every day was not merely an idea, but what characterized the first disciples. They were converted to wait for His Son from heaven, and God is not slack concerning His promise. But as to any arrangement which supposes a long continuance of the Church on earth, there is not a trace of it in the word.
To support this false idea Mr. O. has recourse to a passage from Clement of Borne, a fatal sign when one must go outside the word to support one's thesis. But the sentence by which Clement seeks to explain his views on this point is most obscure. One of the terms employed is an unknown word, except in quite another sense in Plutarch, and is not found at all in the dictionary of Alexandre. The force even of the phrase is disputed. In general it is applied to the death of the elders appointed by the apostles; but there are grave theologians who apply the words “when they should have fallen asleep” to the apostles and insist upon the passage as a proof of episcopacy, admitting there is nothing of that in the word, but that the apostles in view of their departure arranged that other proved men should succeed them in their authority, a position which Mr. O., if I have rightly understood arrogates to himself, by putting himself among the number of those who have replaced the apostle as ἐλλόγιμοι ἄμδρες. I do not accept this interpretation of the passage from Clement which they support by the δεὑτεραι διατάξεις of a passage in Irenaeus (if indeed the fragment is his), and of the nomination of Simeon as the successor of James by an assembly of the apostles who were still living, of which Eusebius and other authorities from among the fathers speak. But what a poor foundation is all this in comparison of the word of God given for all times by God Himself, the divine light in the midst of the darkness of this world!
This then is the main point of the question. What gave rise to the so-called Plymouth Brethren is the great truth, the great fact of the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost to form the body of Christ into one; then the coming of the Savior as the continual expectation of the Christian. Mr. O.'s pamphlet denies these two truths. There are three prominent positions of Christ as Savior: on the cross, accomplishing redemption; at the right hand of God, whence He sends the Holy Spirit; returning to fetch us and to judge the world. The first truth is the gospel that is proclaimed to man as a sinner. The two latter have been brought out again in these last times; and it is these which arrested attention and which placed the so-called Plymouth Brethren in the position they now occupy. They also throw immense light on the first truth. The evangelical world will not receive them. From that time there has been conflict and shame, as is always the case with truths newly brought to light. Mr. O. admits many consequences of detail, but his pamphlet completely denies the ground of the truth on these points. He wishes for a unity formed by local and independent churches, having one and the same faith and one and the same worship, and he wishes to prove by arguments, or rather to suppose, that the apostle taught Christians to expect a long continuance of centuries before the Lord should come. That is to say, he again denies the great truths necessary for Christians in these times. I state the fact because I believe it to be important for Christians, begging Mr. O. to be assured that there is no trace of enmity in my heart. When the tide of evil rises high, it is not the moment for Christians to tear one another, however firm one may be in maintaining the principles one is sure of having drawn from the word.