Is There Not a Cause? Evidence of the Departure From the Principles of Truth
Alexander Craven Ord
Table of Contents
"Is There Not a Cause?"
A. I am glad we have met, for I have long wished to have some conversation with you on your exclusive position, and to learn what reasons you can offer from Scripture on behalf of it. You certainly ought to have very good ground for maintaining it, for you represent an unpopular cause and one that, by its unamiable features, has little attraction for Christians in general, however valuable may be the truth that you hold.
B. I am thankful to hear what you say; were it otherwise, I should fear something wrong; you remember the words of the hymn:
God’s glory is a wondrous thing,
Most strange in all its ways
And of all else on earth least like
What men agree to praise.
As He can endless glory weave
From time’s misjudging shame,
In His own world He is content
To play a losing game.
How could the path of Christ and the exclusion of all that is contrary to Christ at all costs, be popular in an ease-loving generation? Was Christ Himself popular (I do not mean in His grace but) in the self-denying way He trod, and in His separation from, and judgment of, the evil that surrounded him? Let me add, that, you seem to me, on the other hand, to represent the latitudinarianism of the day, which sacrifices all principle to persons –God to man – and His rights and truth and glory – to mere human considerations, liberality of mind, and charity (falsely so called) towards His creatures.
A. Is there, then, any real difference of principle between us? I have been accustomed to consider, and have been often told, that we are kept apart by diversity of judgment respecting a practical detail; though, perhaps, one of a serious nature.
B. Novices are easily imposed upon. Knowing only half the truth, they are apt to fancy that they are acquainted with the whole, and that their opponents can easily be shown to be in the wrong. “He that is first in his own cause seemeth just, but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him.” You have, doubtless, been told many things which, upon full enquiry, you will find to be without foundation. I hope to be able to show you that important principles are at stake, by means of tracts printed by your friends, advocating sentiments (in justification, of course, of the practice pursued) that undermine the very nature and existence of the Church of God. I think you will find upon examination, that the acceptance of the false position you occupy arises from want of apprehension of the relationship of the church to Christ as its Head and Lord, and of its being the dwelling-place of God by the Spirit, whose presence and character form the standard by which its government and conduct should be regulated.
A. I confess, if that is what you mean, that we meet simply as Christians; which seems to me all that is right and desirable.
B. Perhaps it does, but there is no such expression or idea to be found in Scripture, and it discloses the secret of your looseness of practice. To meet in the name of Christ is a very different thing, for that supposes the recognition of His character, His title as Head and Lord, and the claim of His authority over those that are His. What you call meeting “simply,” I fear, is just without having any fixed or defined principles, in ignorance that the word of God supplies such as necessarily characterizing the house of God.
A. But is that sufficient reason for cutting off or excommunicating whole bodies of Christians for evils with which they have no tangible connection, whilst admitting members of the Church of England and other sects?
B. That is a misrepresentation, as you ought to know. When were you excommunicated? For my own part I have left (not excommunicated) those you are now united to, because I could not recognize as the Lord’s table, that which did not maintain His glory, or regard the rights of His Person as paramount to all other considerations; but I am not aware that by doing so I excommunicated anybody. To this path of separation we have been driven, in order to keep our consciences clear, and the principle is the same whether applied to one or many. We withdraw when evil is admitted, as the Scripture directs, where it has carried the day: “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” {2 Tim. 2:19}. Refusing to receive those whom we have been obliged to leave is not excommunication, just as it is not the same thing to decline a person’s visit as to turn him out of your house. I do not regard the Establishment as an assembly of Christians at all, but as the world, and therefore not on the same ground as yourselves and others, who are professedly associated as Christians. But I know of a recent instance in which persons who desired to break bread with us were refused, because they came from an Independent Chapel where false doctrine was sheltered; so that the measure we mete is not so uneven as you imagine.
A. You admit, then, that you would not allow me to break bread with you next Lord’s day, which, as far as I am concerned, I could freely do.
B. You astonish me! Do you wish to convince me of your own inconsistency and to show what has been too evident in others – that you are not acting before God, from any real principle, or from conscience either? You charge us with behavior which, if it were true, would render us nothing but a set of violent schismatics, acting in direct contravention of the word of God, and then profess, in the same breath, your readiness to unite with us in such wicked conduct! Alas! what laxity the least abandonment of right principle leads to.
A. But keep to the point, and explain how you can justify what you call separation, and refuse us a place at what, at any rate, you regard as the Lord’s table?
B. All in good time; but it is no departure from our subject that I should point out to you to what your principles lead; and, I may add, that some have gone much further than you – and made meeting in the holy, blessed name of Christ and the remembrance of His death, a pretext for publicly disturbing the worship and order of His saints.
A. I was not aware of any such conduct, for I thought this sort of unhappy opposition was all on your side; but I suppose they thought your proceedings unscriptural and contrary to love and unity.
B. That is, “doing evil that good may come.” Love and unity seem a mere pretense when used by persons for violating the consciences and feelings of others whose principles of meeting are diametrically opposed to their own; and a shameful desecration of the Lord’s table, though there might possibly be some persons present of similar sentiments. Do you think that self-will, and violence, and false pleas have a claim at the Lord’s table, not to speak of other things which will appear presently?
A. Certainly not; but how can you reject Christians, if you profess to meet in the name of Christ? Will you not meet them in heaven?
B. It is because they are Christians I am bound to judge them: “Do not ye judge them that are within, them that are without God judgeth,” says the Apostle Paul, so that I am forced, in obedience to the word of God, to disallow all that is contrary to God in my fellow Christians, and to call upon them to do the same in themselves, and certainly not to admit it “within” if they persevere in it. You are greatly in error in thinking that meeting in the name of Christ is to be a cover for evil conduct; it involves the rejection of everything inconsistent with His name and the upholding of all the truth, glory, and holiness of that name. Look at the same chapter already referred to (1 Cor. 5:4), and you will see that, “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” the Corinthians were to deliver to Satan the man who had offended, who was, moreover, evidently a converted person, for the apostle wrote to them in his second epistle to restore him on his repentance. Think of degrading the name of Christ so as to make it a reason for passing over evil, because those who are guilty of it are Christians, instead of using that name as the highest contradiction of, and warrant against, all evil! It is because a man is a Christian or “within,” that the apostle holds him to be a subject of discipline, and under the judgment of the house of God. In heaven there will (blessed be God!) be no flesh to judge or false principle to watch against, nor Satan’s power and deception to beguile the mind; so that a man’s being in heaven by and by, has nothing whatever to do with his not being dealt with in discipline when on earth, and only shows a perversion of thought in those who can make use of such an argument. The same principle of judgment of evil being indispensable at the Lord’s table, is applied in 1 Cor. 11:30-32 to individuals, and to the Lord’s dealing with them; where the assembly had failed in its duty He had to judge them Himself.
A. But let me hear more particularly: first, how you could leave what you once owned to be the Lord’s table; and next, however inconsistent in us, how you can refuse us a place where you break bread, whilst we ourselves do not hold false doctrine.
B. To those points I am coming. With reference to the first enquiry, I may say briefly that I cannot own that to be the table of the Lord which in principle or practice admits of His dishonor, and yours does both; but the principle I hold to be the most important, for it is a denial of the essential character of the Lord’s table, to make it the sanction for that which destroys the true glory of His blessed Person.
A. Your statement seems to me extravagant: I suppose that you allude to Bethesda Chapel, Bristol, and to the fact that we receive persons coming from that meeting; but surely that does not warrant such a sweeping condemnation of us all. For my own part, I would not go to Bethesda, but there are many dear Christians there, and I could not treat them as you do.
B. If the dearest Christian on earth treats Christ badly, in faithfulness to such an one and to the Lord Himself, I cannot suffer it or allow him a place at the Lord’s table. Even the Old Testament lays it down as a principle, – “Thou shalt in anywise rebuke thy brother, and not suffer sin upon him” (Lev. 19:17).
A. But explain your strong language and how persons communing at Bethesda can involve us in such sin.
B. I do not by any means allude exclusively to Bethesda, though what has happened there illustrates the ground which has been taken generally. You have doubtless heard of the “Letter of the Ten,” so called because it was signed by the ten leaders at Bethesda. This letter was twice read over to the whole assembly of those who were in communion there, and they were all required – to justify the course which had been pursued, – to accept the principles contained in this letter – and show that they did so, by rising from their seats, under pain of their two pastors, Muller and Craik, withdrawing from them, as they insisted upon being cleared in this manner. This letter was a defense of what had been done, in receiving into communion well-instructed followers of Mr. Newton, and propagators of his doctrines, after the remonstrance and the entreaty of many that they would forbear to do so, and that at least they would examine and see for themselves the dangerous tendency of his heresies before committing themselves, and those sheep of Christ they professed to watch over, to association with his followers.
A. You mean that every member of Bethesda who was present on the occasion referred to, has bound himself –
B. To this treasonable declaration of indifference to the person of Christ, for I can call it no less.
A. What are the sentiments contained in it which will bear out such an appellation?
B. In its general statements it disclaims all responsibility, as an assembly, to maintain the truth of Christ’s blessed person, which had been called in question, refusing to investigate and judge the matter; and after giving certain specious and dishonorable reasons for thus declining to obey the Scriptures which exhort us to “try the spirits whether they are of God,” and “earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), it declares, that though Mr. Newton be fundamentally heretical, those coming from under his teaching are not to be rejected on that account; that the requirement that they should judge this question is the introduction of a new test of communion; and that the “examining a work of fifty pages” is too much to be required of them, lest it should be construed into an evil (!) precedent, and so involve too great an expenditure of time.Thus, before God, His Church, and the elect angels, this assembly has formally and publicly and in the most offensive way, proclaimed its neutrality to the defamation of the person of the adorable Son of God; for the honor of His person is not of sufficient importance to them to induce the reading of fifty pages, lest it should be used as an evil precedent; weighed in this balance, the Son of God is not worth so much time and trouble!
A. But, perhaps, they did not know to what these errors related, and conceived them to be different in their nature to what you represent them to be.
B. That cannot be; for in the commencement of the letter they disclaim holding Mr. Newton’s views in the following terms, which show that they are fully aware of their serious character, and that they altogether affect the integrity of the person of Christ:
We add, for the further satisfaction of any who may have had their minds disturbed, that we utterly disclaim the assertion that the blessed Son of God was involved in the guilt of the first Adam; or that He was born under the curse of the broken law, because of His connection with Israel. We hold Him to have been always the Holy One of God, in whom the Father was ever well pleased. We know of no curse which the Savior bore, except that which He endured as the surety, for sinners, according to that Scripture, “He was made a curse for us.” We utterly reject the thought of His ever having had the experiences of an unconverted person; but maintain that while He suffered outwardly the trials connected with His being a man and an Israelite, – still in His feelings and experiences, as well as in his external character, He was entirely separate from sinners.
A. But there has been some change subsequent to all this at Bethesda; for I have heard that Mr. Muller has himself denounced these doctrines?
B. Mr. Muller did so as an individual, and declared that any one who “maintained, upheld, and defended” them should not be received. But the position of the assembly has never been altered, nor has it been allowed to judge the errors in question. Mr. Muller’s declaration would still admit of any being received who concealed or even did not prominently bring forward these errors, and the artifice which persons under the influence of such doctrines make use of, is only too well known. That Mr. Muller’s personal statement, however inconsistent with his previous or subsequent conduct, was not intended to alter the course of action laid down in the “Letter of the Ten,” Mr. Craik himself declares in a letter of his, printed in Mr. Trotter’s tract, entitled, “Bethesda in 1857,” in these words, “The judgment expressed in the ‘Letter’ has never been repudiated so far as I am aware by any of us.” This letter of Mr. Craik, he says, was read by him to the other laboring brethren, who allowed it to pass as an expression of their sentiments. It would be impossible, however, that any mere change of action, or anything short of the fullest repentance and confession before the whole Church of God, would purge away the sin of which Mr. Muller and his coadjutors have been guilty in putting their names to such a document, and in inducing their followers to give their adhesion to it. The division and scandal which they have been the cause of among their fellow-Christians, are irreparable; but no trace of sorrow for this has ever appeared, nor anything else but regard for their own credit and character. When, in order to stay this evil, they were appealed to in a formal request, made by brethren in London, that a solemn meeting might be held, open to all who were concerned or troubled in conscience about these things, in order that whatever was wrong in their accusers or their own course might be judged, they refused; nothing but what was one-sided would suit them. They were as careless of the evil consequences that might ensue among their brethren, as they had been of the feelings and entreaties of the little godly company driven out from among them by their declining to listen to their remonstrance respecting the “Letter of the Ten.”
A. You said just now that the conduct of Bethesda was not the only reason for your separation from us.
B. Because, as might be expected from the want of faithfulness regarding that meeting, the same principles in reality prevail generally more or less amongst your party; for this I can refer to the tracts printed and circulated by your friends, or to facts which have come under my own knowledge.
A. Let me have a few of the latter first.
B. You have heard of Mr. Morris, who denied the eternity of punishment, and spread this false doctrine at Brixham, Exmouth, and elsewhere. This serious error, involving the nature of the sufferings of Christ, the judgment of sin, the character of God, and the integrity of His word in its statements concerning the punishment of the sinner, when it broke out awakened earnest resistance in those who felt the truth of God was undermined by it. Persons holding this doctrine were allowed to break bread at Dartmouth, and when their doing so occasioned trouble at Torquay, brethren there found, that notwithstanding the sorrow and distress it had caused them, not only their request that such persons should be refused a place at the table was disregarded, but that no remonstrance or warning would be addressed to any in this error, for those meeting at Dartmouth would take no action at all in the matter. This meeting, as far as I am aware, has stood on the same ground ever since, and in the same association with you. At a place called Venton, about four miles from Totness, a meeting was formed in connection with Mr. Morris, who used to go there from Plymouth, and after he left it was supplied by preachers of his connection. A leading brother, who lived there, himself informed me that Mr. Morris had preached his false doctrines there, as his followers did after him; Mrs. –– received these doctrines, and sought to make proselytes to them, as two persons assured me whom she tried to convince; this meeting was subsequently taken into communion with you just as it stood, without any repudiation of Mr. Morris or his doctrine, or exclusion of any persons who had imbibed them. Mrs. –– I have recently seen when staying in Torquay, breaking bread at your meeting there, who owned to me she had not given up this false doctrine, nor in a long conversation could I succeed in inducing her to renounce it. Another man, an American, a Mr. P., I also found breaking bread at Torquay, and seeking to make converts to this doctrine; at Edinburgh also there were similar instances of this laxity.
A. That is all very loose, I admit, but I should like to hear something more respecting the reception of Mr. Newton’s followers, and I imagine some of those things you speak of are not recent.
B. Whether recent or not they equally show the principles acted on among you, and I must give you such cases as have come under my notice. Though I am not now in the way of hearing of them frequently, I can tell you the names of several associated with Mr. Newton who were allowed to break bread in Welbeck Street, in London, on the mistaken plea that they were such “nice” Christians. In Torquay also I know of four similar instances occurring at different times, the particulars of which I could give. Some places, doubtless, may be slightly more lax than others, and where attention has been awakened there may have been an effort for a moment to avert the scandal occasioned, but that is no proof of decision for Christ. I think I have now brought forward facts sufficient to substantiate what I have said; and if you choose to enquire, instead of trusting mere general denials too lightly given, you may discover many more, and so at least prove your sincerity and honesty, though you may find it more painful and more serious than you are inclined to think, if you really have the glory of Christ at heart. You will not be surprised that I cannot own that to be the table of the Lord where these things are suffered.
A. But that does not make it evident why you reject us all, which was the second point we spoke of.
B. As regards Bethesda, I look upon every Christian coming from thence and cognizant of what has taken place as identified with the principles of the “Letter of the Ten,” and therefore as one who has defaced his Christian title; and with respect to yourselves, I cannot own your right to the Lord’s table, whilst you are associated with others upon the principle that the glory of Christ may be sullied provided Christians are the parties concerned in it. It is practical indifference to Christ; you do not do the wrong to Him yourself, but you suffer others to do it, which is rather the worse action of the two. They may be deceived in what they hold or have fellowship with, but you know it to be evil and allow them to go on in it though ruinous to the soul and withering to its apprehension of the glorious person of Christ, on which alone all our knowledge of and communion with God depend. What would you think of a soldier’s loyalty or even sense of duty who could quietly sit and tolerate in others treasonable language, practices and associations against his rightful sovereign?
A. But does Scripture warrant your treating others in this way, because they are linked with evil, if they are personally sound in the faith?
B. It is perfectly clear on that point, and this is one of the differences of principle I spoke of. You, to justify yourselves, deny that association with evil defiles. Let us hear what the word of God says to the contrary. He that receives a heretic into his house and bids him God speed “is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 John 10). “Be not partakers of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure” (1 Tim.5:22). Again we have the allusion to, and application of, the laws of defilement laid down in the Old Testament in the words, “For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them and I will walk in them; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:17, 18). If contact with evil does not defile, why are we told not to touch it? and is not fellowship at the Lord’s table the closest moral and spiritual association or contact that can exist amongst Christians? In 1 Cor. 10:16-22, we have the principle clearly laid down that association at the Lord’s table involves unity and partnership or participation in whatever takes place there – that we cease to be isolated individuals whose acts do not affect each other, becoming by the fellowship of the Lord’s table where we partake of the same bread – “one body, one loaf.”
A. But this notion has been quite scoffed at amongst us, and you surely do not mean that defilement can now be contracted by physical contact, as it was in Old Testament times. The passage in John relates merely to social intercourse.
B. Alas for those that despise the word of God, instead of taking heed to it, as a humble, obedient soul will ever do, however absurd men may deem such a course. Do you think the house of God is to be kept less pure than that of the elect lady, whom the Apostle John addresses? I know well that every effort has been made to get rid of this passage, because the edge of it is felt. It too plainly condemns the person who sanctions evil doctrine, and that in the smallest degree, even to an ordinary salutation, as a participator in the sin of it. It unequivocally establishes the principle that a man may “partake” in the guilt of evil doctrine, which he does not personally accept. Persisting in doing so, we are bound by it to treat him as a “partaker.” Of course contamination in this dispensation is moral, not physical. We have so regarded it throughout. The apostle’s quotation from the Levitical law shows, however, that the principle holds good (indeed it is that which the ceremonial defilement was intended to teach) that any sort of communion with evil in the least degree unfits for God’s presence and the place where God dwells, which the Church is. For my own part, I have always found moral deterioration to be the result of corrupt association. Is not the idea that evil may be tolerated in the house of God, a most evident proof that the soul has practically got away from God, and is itself becoming leavened? The leaven is to be excluded or “purged out,” as the apostle says to the Corinthians, “that ye may be a new lump as (in principle, or nature, or calling, not in the actual condition of the Corinthians) ye are unleavened.” “A little leaven,” he adds, “leaveneth the whole lump” (1 Cor. 5:6, 7). Is not that the effect of association? and, remember, though it be but a little, it will effect the corruption of the whole. Let no one, therefore, think lightly of a little evil; if at all allowed, it will soon gain ground imperceptibly; and when you have relaxed upon one point, the natural heart will soon take leave to do the same in others.
A. But does it seem Christ-like to exclude so many for the faults of a few?
B. It is for their own sin they are excluded; but you are also seriously wrong in your ideas of our blessed Lord, and abusing His blessed character in His personal grace to sinners, to make Him tolerant of evil in His Church, which He never is and never could be, for He would deny His own nature were He to be so. Have you forgotten the scourge of small cords with which He drove the intruders out of the temple? Was that grace? Surely something else was required when the condition of God’s house and the “holiness which becomes it for ever” were at stake. Again, what is His sentence upon the Church at Pergamos? Does He not condemn the whole body for the selfsame conduct for which you are now arraigned, because they had those among them who held (He does not say taught) the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes? They allowed these persons among them though they did not accept their evil doctrines as a body, and the Lord calls on them to repent of their indifference, threatening that otherwise He will come to them quickly in judgment, besides fighting against the individuals in question. They did not hate the evil, but He did, and “the fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” Did you hate these things as you ought, you never could allow such connection with them or plead for it.
A. But I have always taken the addresses to the seven churches as showing how much evil could exist in a church; for the Lord does not disown them or call upon the saints to leave any of the seven He addresses.
B. The Lord calls to repentance, and whilst that call sounds and until it is rejected, of course, it would not be the moment to quit them. But if that word is unheeded, what then? Would you stay to be spued out of Christ’s mouth? For that is what He threatens in one case – to take away the candlestick in another. Is not that disowning their church position and relationship, and their consequent claim to recognition by the faithful? Your argument is precisely what I have just seen in a letter from a clergyman, addressed to one who was uneasy about her position in the Establishment, in order to induce her to remain in it. You do not seem to understand the posture the Lord here assumes, which is that of Judge, passing sentence, not that of a Lawgiver, framing laws or explaining details of conduct for individual guidance, though He adds, “He that hath an ear let him hear”; so that the individual is to bow to the word of Christ and be faithful to it at all costs, when the body fails to listen to the call. You will forgive me for saying, your use of this passage reminds me of Satan’s use of the Psalm in the temptation in the wilderness, for the Lord makes His glory the standard and judges everything by it that does not come up to that standard or is inconsistent with it, and you turn it into a reason for bearing with what He condemns, and inciting others to do the same; thus you are exactly in opposition to the Lord in the solemn judgment He here passes.
A. You do not surely mean that any practical evil which may exist in a body of Christians, destroys their title as a part of the Church of God?
B. Only where it is known and sanctioned, for then the fundamental principles and essential nature of the Church of God are denied. God cannot and will not sanction sin where He dwells. When the evil committed by Achan was pointed out, and thus became known to the children of Israel, then it was that God said He would not be among them any more except they destroyed the accursed thing from among them.
Previous to this, its existence produced weakness and defeat, “they could not stand before their enemies,” for God could not put forth His strength amongst them on account of it. Has God changed His own eternal nature and become tolerant of evil? Or is it the society of Christians that has become all-important, so that we are to sacrifice His presence to theirs? Impossible that He can abide what denies His very being and glory, and is the cause in those who know Him not, of everlasting exclusion from His presence. He declares He “will be sanctified in those that come nigh Him.” “He is greatly to be feared in the assembly of his saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are round about him” (Psa. 89:7). The moment sin in principle is admitted, or the truth denied, or false doctrine acquiesced in, it is no longer the “house of God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” Even leaving their first love, the Lord calls on the Church at Ephesus to repent of, or He would take away the candlestick, which would be to disown them as His light or witness – the sole end of the Church’s existence as a body on earth – and it would then cease to have any claim as such. Let me read you a passage from a tract of great value, entitled, Separation from Evil, God’s Principle of Unity”:
If the body refuse to answer to the very nature and character of God, and the incompatibility of that nature with evil, so that it becomes really a false witness for God, then the first and immutable principle recurs – the evil must be separated from. Further, the unity which is maintained after such separation, becomes a testimony to the compatibility of the Holy Ghost and evil, that is, it is in its nature, apostasy; it maintains the name and authority of God in His Church and associates it with evil.
A. But the Lord does not hold one Church responsible for the rest, and it does not seem to me that we are at all involved in what is done elsewhere.
B. You forget that the Church is not seen here at all in its unity, or as the body of Christ, of which He is the Head, for He is outside it, judging of its state as His candlestick or light-bearer on earth, which it was set to be. Your reasoning betrays your ignorance of what the Church of God is, in its nature and constitution. The moment the existence of a divine person, the Holy Ghost here on earth, is understood as the essential characteristic of the Church, its unity, fellowship, and the judgment of evil necessarily follow. The Holy Ghost cannot act differently in different places, for He is ever one and the same, and forming the body of Christ, produces by His presence a unity such as subsists in the natural body; thus and thus only do the epistles ever treat of the Church of God. “There is one body and one Spirit” (cp. Eph. 4:3, 15, 16; 1 Cor. 12:12, 13). The presence of God necessarily gives unity, and the corporate responsibility we have been speaking of. It was so in a lower sense even in Israel of old in the passage to which we have referred, so that God said after the sin of Achan, “Israel hath sinned and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them; for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen and dissembled, and they have put it even among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, because they were accursed; neither will I be with you any more except ye destroy the accursed from among you” (Josh. 7:11, 12). The whole nation was charged with the guilt which existed among them; the whole nation suffered for it, and was held responsible for its extermination. The unity which the Holy Ghost produces now in the Church of God – though flowing from the same cause – the presence of God – is not national as it then was, but of a much deeper and closer character. It is threefold: we are living stones of the temple in which God dwells, as the Apostle Paul says, builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit,” and thus the whole building grows unto an “holy temple in the Lord;” secondly, there is the unity of the body of Christ, which also results from the presence of the Holy Ghost, forming the one body united to its Head in heaven; this, unity is still closer and more intimate, as my body is much nearer to me than the house I live in; and, lastly, that which flows from connection or association at the Lord’s table, and fellowship in His death, and being united in His name, so that what is done in that Name in one place, is done as to the principle of it for all, and is binding on all; reception, discipline, and other acts done in any given place are valid for the whole, and gifts are common to the whole. If this is not recognized, the unity of the Church of God is denied and the presence of a divine person in it is entirely disowned.
A. We do not profess to be “the Church of God; we believe the Church to be in ruins, and have never claimed to be the “one assembly of God.”
B. It is evident that the Lord gives the sanction of His presence and authority, to even two or three met in His name (Matt. 18:17-20), and to their acts, for they are in His place and represent Him in what they do. Solemn and blessed thought! Though the Church is in ruins, this principle remains ever true to faith, for Christ cannot fail in what He has promised, whatever the ruin; so that the essential privileges, action, and discipline of the Church of God remain untouched, though but two or three are there to enjoy or carry them out, and though apostolic authority, appointment, and office, as well as the (so-called) sign-gifts are wanting. It is a wretched plea, that the ruin of the Church is a reason for submission to evil, and subversive of all moral principle and sense of what is due to Christ. Scripture, when contemplating the disorder and confusion that would ensue in the Church, says, “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). Besides, if you are not upon the true ground of the Church of God, you are a sect, the word of God ceases to be applicable, and you have no direction to guide you as to discipline or anything else; without pretending in any exclusive sense to be the Church of God, we can meet together as forming a part of it and acting in the unity of the body of Christ, seeking to carry out the principles laid down in Scripture for its guidance; whilst the Holy Ghost remains on earth, it would be impossible to do otherwise, notwithstanding the ruin, without ignoring His presence. The expression you allude to, viz., “the one assembly of God,” I have been positively assured by the person who used it, was intended to indicate that the meetings in London were in reality one, though locally distinct. If you allow your mind to be diverted from the real point at issue by such idle or wicked misconstruction, you will never get into the right track. It is the object of the enemy to mislead by throwing dust into the eyes in this way.
A. I have told you I would not go to Bethesda; ought you not, therefore, to make a difference between me and others?
B. Of what avail is this practically, if you are united to a body which has formally refused to be dissociated from it – if others of your community do go there – and some even glory in doing so? Let me ask you why you would not go there? Is it not because you suppose you would by so doing be sanctioning evil, and it would be sin to do so? You allow others to sin, but you will not do so yourself. Where is the consistency of such a course, and of what worth is such a principle in the Church of God? If you would not go there and believe in the unity which the Holy Ghost produces, you ought to associate yourself with the company who were excluded by the adoption of the “Letter of the Ten.” You promised to give some evidence from certain writings which you said showed unsoundness of principle in the formation of our assemblies.
B. I did and this is most important, for were there no such facts as I have stated, your principles alone would keep me entirely apart from you. You will however perceive what is historically true, that these principles were and are brought forward, as a defense for the course pursued in reference to Bethesda and Mr. Newton’s doctrine in general, at the same time they throw additional light upon the value of the facts themselves, so that it is vain to attempt to gainsay their double testimony. I will first quote the statements of their principles put forth by corporate bodies and afterwards those made by individuals.
“The Tottenham Statement, adopted by Brethren at Tottenham, the 4th of March, 1849,” contains four resolutions, of which the third and fourth are as follows:
3. We welcome to the table, on individual grounds, each saint, not because he or she is a member of this or that gathering or denomination of Christians, nor because they are followers of any particular leader; but on such testimony as commends itself to us as being sufficient.
4. We distinctly refuse to be parties to any exclusion of those who we are satisfied are believers, except on grounds personally applying to their individual faith and conduct.
The Scarborough Statement, Article 5, runs thus
We do not think it right to exclude Christians from communion because they have happened to belong to gatherings in which there may have been persons of unsound opinions; but we think that every Christian ought, in any case requiring examination, to stand or fall by his own personal innocence, or his own personal offence.
The statement of certain Christians meeting for worship in Union Street, Torquay:
3. We cannot refuse to receive any person, except on individual grounds, that is, on grounds that reflect on that person’s individual faith or walk.
In the Statement from Torquay, where the whole of these declarations were printed, is added the following reasons for publishing them, showing distinctly their object:
Statements of certain Brethren in other localities (besides Torquay), drawn up with the view of resisting the pressure of a certain sectarian movement, whereby whole communions, sound in doctrine, are corporately cut off, and persons presenting themselves are refused, not because of any defect in their own individual faith or walk, but because they belong to such communities.
It is plain that these Statements are intended to avow the determination to admit persons to communion from bodies tolerating those holding false doctrine, that the Scripture principle that association with evil at the Lord’s table contaminates or defiles, is entirely denied, and that any corporate connection with others in the unity of the body of Christ is disowned. I will now give you specimens of publications which have been mostly sent me by post, the object of which is to show the principles publicly taught amongst you. They contain the following conclusions:
1st. That in the days of the apostles one church was not held responsible for the decisions of another, although fellowship and sympathy were in exercise.
2ndly. That no individual in any church was held responsible for evil existing in it, either doctrinal or practical, simply because he was one of the worshipers. A Drop of Oil on Troubled Waters, p. 11, Caswell, Birmingham.
You teach that partaking of the Lord’s Supper at the same place and time with a defiled person defiles . . . I do not of course speak of cases in which association at the Lord’s table or elsewhere leads to the actual imbibing of the heresy, because then the heresy, being in the man, defiles him. St. Paul does not tell the Corinthians that they are defiled because a fornicator breaks bread with them. He warns them against the leavening effect of evil communications. They had broken bread with him, but they were yet unleavened; but if they continued to countenance the evil doer, they would themselves be corrupted.
R. Howard’s recent Letter to G. V. W., p. 10.
From these notices we learn, first, that believers ought not to have fellowship with the defiled; and, secondly, that they do not become defiled by such fellowship, but only by receiving and holding, or practicing that which defiles. Hence it follows, that under no pretense of defilement are believers to be rejected who have been in contact with false teachers without imbibing their doctrine . . . It also follows, a fortiori, that meetings of believers cannot be defiled by the allowance of false teaching in them.
The Church of God According to Scripture, Yapp, Welbeck Street, 1861.
A. What is the meaning of the words repeated in each of the public statements, that they will only receive on “individual grounds,” or “grounds that affect persons’ individual faith and walk,” words which I see the writers have put in italics?
B. It is intended to show that whatever evil such persons may be sanctioning, to whatever extent, they will not hold them in any way responsible for it or defiled by it. We have seen how different is the Lord’s sentence upon the Church of Pergamos. It also disowns any position in practical recognition of the unity of the body of Christ, and in principle takes the ground of independency, for they do not allow that the action of any other gathering of Christians gives a title to recognition, or involves the duty of exclusion, at their table. The Tottenham circular distinctly affirms this, the others imply it. Mr. Robert Howard declares that the Corinthians were not defiled by the evils amongst them, not even by the horrible crime of incest, which he calls fornication; and that to suffer false doctrine to any extent does not corrupt morally, unless the false doctrine be imbibed; nor, according to his argument, would any toleration of sin to any amount defile, unless the parties themselves became fornicators or drunkards, and this the last extract declares in so many words {cp. 1 Cor. 5}. In dealing with Scripture, however, these writers are quite at variance with the apostle, who would not go to Corinth because of the state of the Corinthians, and who tells them to purge out the leaven that they “may be a new lump as they are unleavened,” that is, in the principle of the new nature which was born of God, to which their practical condition ought to correspond. It is on the same ground that he addresses them as “saints” in chapter 1, though so deeply failing in holiness of conduct. They were to act according to this divine nature and calling in purging out the leaven, which, indeed, as the apostle puts it, was leavening the whole lump, that they might be a new lump, fit for being presented to God. It is evident the apostle did hold them responsible for the evil – till they had so acted, and not only this, but had repented of their former guilty indifference to it, with the most thorough manifestation of deep and godly contrition. “For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter” (2 Cor. 7:11). They were not till now, that their decision and repentance had been evidenced, clear in the apostle’s eyes. Besides this, far from allowing the evil that remained amongst them, as has been falsely stated, he declares that he “has in readiness to revenge all disobedience when their obedience is fulfilled” (2 Cor. 10:6); that is, that when the spirit of obedience had been thoroughly wrought in them, he will insist upon the judgment of everything wrong amongst them. He further declares to all, but especially to those that had sinned, that if he comes again, he “will not spare.” It is remarkable how totally opposed is the spirit of these writers, in persisting that such disobedience ought to be tolerated, to that of the apostle. And his pronouncing them clear, upon this obedience and rejection of the evil demolishes at one blow the entire host of sophistical conclusions they indulge in. The Corinthians, clearing themselves thus by what they had done, and their thorough change of feeling from their former complicity with the sin for which they had now been so deeply humbled, is very fully dwelt upon by the apostle (2 Cor. 7:8-12). No one can read this passage, in which their repentance is declared, and the apostle’s confidence again restored to them on account of it, without being shocked at the hardihood with which such senseless and unholy arguments are brought forward traversing the apostle’s treatment of the subject from first to last, and that in the face of the effect produced upon the Corinthians by his first epistle, which he also records.
A. There is no good in using such strong language.
B. I speak with truth and soberness. Read the whole passage for yourself to which I have alluded, and then contrast such statements as that they were not responsible for or defiled by the presence of fornicators, and tell me if such reasoning does not deserve to be stigmatized as unholy because calculated to make souls insensible to the presence of sin, and as senseless and degrading: for even worldly men in only human societies, know very well, that their moral support and sanction is given to evil and the tone of their society lowered, if they admit or allow of unworthy members, and that they are disgraced by so doing. Thus the Church is sunk, by these arguments, below the level of the world’s morality. But I can show you statements stronger than these, which adopt the very principle which has been already referred to, as the essence of apostasy.
A. Let me hear what they are.
B. In a tract entitled, Uncleanness: Leaven, we find as follows
When once the tabernacle had been consecrated with blood its place was thenceforward in the midst of the camp. The blood of the day of atonement was sprinkled there. “And so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness.” No holy man after this set up a rival center of worship, on the plea that there was uncleanness in the camp. Jehovah had said, “I will dwell among the children of Israel”; and the blood which provided for His presence availed for every clean Israelite, however many unclean ones might be there (p. 2).
A willfully defiled Israelite defiled the tabernacle, but it is not said that he defiled the congregation (p. 4).
This last point recalls the answer of the Lord to those who made a similar statement: “Ye fools and blind, whether is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?” for the holiness of the congregation or camp consisted in this –that God’s dwelling-place was in the midst of it; now they are identical, for the congregation is God’s dwelling-place (Eph. 2), so that this argument is as fallacious as it is mistaken; and the total ignorance of Scripture it displays may be seen by reference to Num. 5:2, 3, “Command the children of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead. Both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them, that they defile not their camps in the midst whereof I dwell” (cp. Deut. 23:10, 11, 14). The words addressed to Joshua with reference to the children of Israel on account of the sin of Achan, also flatly contradict this statement. “And ye in anywise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse and trouble it” (Josh. 6:18). “Therefore, the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies because they were accursed. Up, sanctify the people” (Josh. 7:12, 13).
The idea that the provision made by sprinkling the tabernacle with blood allowed of sin amongst them is most wicked, for it was the very means of the maintenance of holiness provision being made in connection with the tabernacle for putting away sin and defilement of every hind, instead of dealing with it in simple judgment as must have been otherwise the case; but all this is the very reverse of the toleration of evil and of the notion that defilement of the camp or congregation was rendered impossible because the tabernacle was there (see Num. 19:13, 20).That such is the meaning of the writer is undeniable; for he adds further on
What as to a faithful saint, whose lot is cast in the midst of individual or corporate unfaithfulness . . . whether the evil be individual or whether it prevails amongst many . . . In all this there is no defilement, no uncleanness, which should trouble his conscience for a moment; nothing to hinder his communion with God.
He who asserts to the contrary, obviously does not believe in the holy catholic Church . . . He joins the Pharisees against Christ. He forgets the great value of the blood and knows not the meaning of the day of atonement. He does his best to render service to failing saints impossible. The place of service to such . . .being within, he insists on standing without (p. 12).
These principles identify the holiness of the Church and of God Himself, and even of the blood with allowed evil and forced connivance at it; of course, if God Himself could be so indifferent to it, the individual saint need not be troubled in conscience about it; he may be “humbled and strive for the removal of these things,” but if he does more and departs from the evil when the rest persist in it, he joins the Pharisees against Christ; in other words, Christ has become the minister of sin; for he who departs from it sins against Him, and allies Himself with Pharisees.
Nothing can be worse than this or more revolting; it is the surrender of holiness as an eternal principle of God’s nature, and using His name and that of Christ to bind the saint to avowed iniquity. How striking is the contrast between this and the plain and pointed injunction of the apostle (2 Tim. 2:17-22), in connection with these very circumstances, “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity”; and he adds the special direction that the faithful disciple should purge himself from vessels to dishonor, and associate himself “with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart.”
A. I do not fully understand the following enquiries?
14. The grounds of expulsion from the ostensible household of faith?
15. Whether Scripture ever contemplates expulsion for errors merely in opinion or judgment?
16. Whether distinct and open violations of the commands of our Lord are of less importance than mistaken views on abstract points of doctrine?
17. Whether Scripture contemplates the breaking up the ostensible household of faith?
18. “Remove thy candlestick” (Rev. 2). What?(Subjects Regarding which the Children of God are Earnestly Entreated to Search the Holy Scriptures, London, November 18, 1850).
B. They are a further practical proof of what this indifference to evil comes to, and how much it subverts right feeling in the heart towards Christ, making His beloved and glorious person an abstract point of doctrine of little importance – an error of opinion or judgment which is no ground for exclusion. In other words, if Christians will only love one another and be united together like good children it is no matter what they think about Christ. They may give Him up as of little consequence. He is only a matter of opinion; the Christian is a great deal more. This is denying the foundation of Christianity for the sake of the superstructure. I do not know that you can have a more definite justification of the ground I have taken than such a statement supplies; viz., that it is a question of maintaining or sacrificing the glory of the person of Christ.
A. The difference between us respecting unity, does not seem to me of great importance.
B. There is a unity which God has established, and if you have not that, you become a human confederacy, instead of the Church of God. The Statements already quoted may serve to show my meaning, but if you require further evidence how entirely the unity of the body is denied, you may refer to Christian Unity Contrasted with its Counterfeitsalso published by Mr. Yapp, which contains the following statements
But it formed no part of the commission which the risen Savior gave the apostles to execute, that they should form all those of whom by the preaching of the gospel they made disciples, into one “visibly connected community” . . . So soon as there were other churches planted in addition to the first church formed at Jerusalem, believers ceased to form in all respects one community. We read afterwards accordingly not of one church or religious community, but of numerous distinct religious communities, independent of each other (p. 3).
The body of Christ is, no doubt, one, and so is the human race one; but not as a society or community on earth (p. 21).
The apostles . . . being led to form an indefinite number of distinct and independent churches instead of one community under one government on earth (p. 26).
We read in The Church of God, a tract already quoted:
We own no other body of any kind or description, nor is there any unity of meetings in the name of the Lord only, and under the rule of the Spirit only . . . We must carefully distinguish between a recognition of the obedience of certain believers to the scriptural rule of meeting, and a recognition of the meeting as having any distinct standing before God or relation to us . . . Thus if there be no corporate relation, there can be no corporate action of the churches. Each has its distinct organizations, functions, and actions . . . God (?) has therefore limited the action of our judgment to our immediate sphere in order that we may not be continually clashing and striving with one another (!!!).
He would have us attend to our own concerns, not indeed without constant interest in those of other churches and readiness to interchange brotherly intercourse and counsel with them, but without supposing that we have any right or duty of interference with those who are accountable to the Lord alone and who cannot admit such interference consistently with their own duty to Him.
These statements are unmistakable and very serious in their nature; for they disclaim that unity which flows from – the essential nature of the Church – the headship of Christ over His own body, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the Church. Every one admits that Churches are spoken of in the New Testament, each of which included all the saints in a given locality, because here on earth the distinctions of time and place with relative responsibility must exist, but to use this fact, to deny the unity which the Lord most emphatically prays for in John 17, which was to be palpable to all – a special testimony, by which the world was to believe – and to declare that the unity of the Church was not to be visible and that believers ceased in all respects to form one community is a most barefaced contradiction of, and implies shameful indifference to, the divine purpose and glory in the Church, whilst it tends also to make men satisfied with the consequences of their sin in what they have reduced it to.
Observe that the author remarks that the body of Christ is one and so is the human race; that is, we have the unity of a common race of separate individuals distinctly put in the place of that of the human body, by which Scripture invariably represents the unity of the Church, the body of Christ. “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (Rom. 12:4, 5). Thus the principle of divine unity has been lost and that of the body of Christ deliberately broken up into detached, independent fragments which have no corporate unity at all – no longer one community under one government. All that is left is to have “fellowship or sympathy,” as they say, amongst different bodies. What a miserable substitute for the unity which, while necessarily including truth, principles, feelings, interests, and hopes as common to all, flows from the power of life, organization and headship, such as subsists in the human body. “From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love (Eph. 4:16; see also Col. 3:19). And still more, this unity is produced by the divine presence pervading and filling every part with its own blessedness (Eph. 1:23; 2:22; 4:4, 6). Wherever the Church is spoken of in the word of God and the unity which God has formed, viz., that of the body of Christ, it is treated, not as an impracticable theory or mystical idea, nor as something that will be true of it only in heavenly glory, but as a present, practical reality. There are gifts and ministries which are exercised in this body of Christ. There is constant growth as well as supplies by joints and bands which contribute nourishment and produce compactness; and these are common to the whole body (1 Cor. 3; Eph. 4; Rom. 12; Col. 2), and evidently only exist here on earth, for they will not be needed above. The writers in The Church of God, who talk about a unity of churches, have not even understood the question at issue, for that would only be a congregational unity, or unity of separate and distinct bodies, not that of the body of Christ, such as the Epistles and Acts exhibit, and which may be acted on, and realized in measure as long as the Holy Ghost is on earth. These writers have not even a conception of anything beyond independency; and instead of “one body and one Spirit,” and the endeavor to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” they plead for many bodies wholly separate and independent, and who are by this means preserved from interference and falling out with each other – a striking proof of the degradation of their own ideas of the Church of God and of the level to which it would bring it. It is not surprising after this, that they should come to the conclusion that unscriptural principles, or the recognized admission of the world, are no hindrance to the blessing of saints meeting together (p. 6). The wonder is, that they should ever have left such associations.
A. But why bring forward such a number of passages?
B. I have done it purposely that you may see how generally I had almost said universally, prevalent these corrupt principles are amongst your community. I own I am surprised and grieved to find that some I have known in years gone by should have allowed themselves to be thus drifted away from truth they once held so precious, because practically connecting the soul with God, and carried down the current of a common degeneracy. But such is the consequence of having become involved in a false position and association with others, who, like those to whom we have just referred, never enjoyed the same advantages, or accepted in their hearts the true ground of the Church of God. Indeed the more deeply I love and honor, as I am sure I do, some who are committed to these principles, the more imperative the duty seems for love as well as for truth’s sake of giving them no sanction whatever in a course so injurious to themselves and which has such serious consequences to the Church of God, in misleading others, so far as their example and influence extend.
A. To revert to the subject of discipline, What reply would you give to the enquiry, “Is it right to look at Christians apart from Christ; are we not always to consider them as one?”
B. Certainly not, in doing what is wrong or in being corrected for it, which is what is in question, though we surely even then regard them as belonging to Him. Do you let me ask, worship Christians when you kneel before that blessed One; are they the foundation or the object of faith?
The Scripture says, “If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?” The Church is built upon the person of Christ, as He Himself says, “Upon this rock will I build my Church.” Whatever does not own His person, and maintain the integrity of His person, has no right in it. What sort of building can you have if the foundations be undermined? Is He not the Head, to whom all allegiance honor, and obedience are due? The apostle says, “As the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything”; that is, he makes what is due to Christ paramount to anything else, or our relationship to Christ is denied; for a wife’s first duty is to her husband and to require that his personal rights should be respected.
A. But we meet in the name of Christ.
B. Or, rather in the name of Christians; for your principle of association is your own estimate of a man’s Christianity not Christ Himself, and the truth of His person, what is worthy of Him and suitable for His presence. Thus you lower down your unity to whatever Christians are capable of instead of bringing them up to what accords with His name and glory.
A. In John 17, to which we have referred, our Lord prays for unity among His disciples, and is not your mode of action calculated to produce the very reverse?
B. Your remark is founded on a very superficial view of the passage. Jesus prays indeed that they all may be one “as we”; that is, as the Father and the Son are one; and again “that they all may be one in us.” Is this a unity which admits of evil and its constant toleration? Does it not, on the contrary, involve the absolute exclusion of everything that does not harmonize with the divine nature? No doubt it includes practical external unity, for the Lord says” that the world may believe,” so that it must be visible; but it goes much deeper than that, and if it is this which you would aim at, you must seek to draw Christians into closer fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ; for if they were to come together in their present state, mixed up as they are with all sorts of evil, it would be anything but a realization or fulfillment of this blessed unity, in the Father and the Son.
The Scripture speaks also of our fellow ship one with another but it lays the basis of it in divine fellowship; i.e., “Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ,” which must be according to the character of God who is not only love, but light, and “in whom is no darkness at all”; and then it adds, “if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.”
It must begin with God and be maintained according to His nature, or it degenerates into the intercourse of mere human kindness and sociality, amiability of nature, &c., and pleasing each other, whilst its true character is gradually lost.
A. I was told you had no Scripture to support your view of the subject, but I shall feel inclined for the future to disregard such representations.
B. It is evident that there are many who have an interest in giving such an impression to their followers, which may have, perhaps, unintentionally occasioned this; and you may have heard that we have departed from the original principles on which saints were first gathered, whereas, in truth, the departure is with those who have evidently ceased to hold the unity of the body of Christ, or the assembly of saints to be the house of God. You may search in vain amongst the earlier writings valued among brethren for the loose principles now advocated. In their early days, when Christ was everything to them, and when they had not learnt to prefer their own ease and credit, and the society of their fellow-Christians to decision for Him, they would have been indignantly repudiated. Those who were the earliest leaders amongst them, and whom God specially used to bring out the truth, which has distinguished the teaching of brethren, and which other Christians are now learning to value, have all rejected these false ideas and practices.
A. It does seem to me now more like a question of principles.
B. Of far more than principles – of God Himself and His presence; of the headship of Christ in His own Church; of the value of His person, and of the Holy Ghost abiding in the Church, and the unity and holiness He produces and maintains, so that under the specious form of charity for Christians, every blessing essential to the existence of the Church here and characteristic of this dispensation has been sacrificed. When I quitted human systems, the thought of the divine presence was what was dearest to me, making me feel their emptiness. If this presence of God was to be found anywhere on earth, and was recognized as the object to be sought after, there I desired to be, and that seemed everything to me. With whatever sense of weakness and failure, my heart clings to the same now; I cannot afford to give it up, whatever advantages of Christian intercourse and usefulness you may hold out as an inducement. You remember the feeling of Moses when God said He could not go up in the midst of Israel, nothing else could compensate all was gone if that blessed presence which he loved was wanting, “If thy presence go not (with us), carry us not up hence, for wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? Is it not in that thou goest with us? So shall we be separated, I and thy people from all the people that are upon the face of the earth” (Ex.33:15, 16). It is this separation to God that must characterize His people, where His presence is known and prized as the alone secret of blessing.
A. I confess I am rather tired of defending evil.
B. And well you may be; but it is forced upon you by the position and principles of those you are in union with. They would not effectually resist evil, nor allow us to do it either and thus their association has, after earnest remonstrance and knowing what it would cost, been definitely committed to the indignity or wrong done to the person of Christ at Bethesda and elsewhere; along with this the principles avowed, which I have cited, both from public documents and individual statements, combine to show that your community is virtually “a Society for the toleration of evil in saints.”
A. Do you think that this conflict will always continue?
B. God alone knows. He may give in His mercy clearer light to many who are now in the wrong path, but who once were foremost in their adherence to the blessed name of Christ alone, in the face of all opposition and evil. I cannot but trust that He will restore some of them at least to the place of true testimony again and I wait on Him for it. But whilst principles of truth remain the same, there can be no change of action, though there may be more grace, patience and tenderness shown to individuals, in explaining these things to them. We all must learn practically our dependence on God to this end; but I can never consent to surrender one of the precious and sacred rights of Christ the Head of the Church, and the Savior of the body, redeemed by His precious blood, for all the saints in Christendom or for teachers however otherwise respected and honorable. The saints are not called now to martyrdom or the sufferings endured by some in earlier ages, but in a day of general laxity as regards truth, its claims, and those of God Himself He is testing His people, their faith, single-heartedness, and discernment, so as to prove their respect for Him and His glory at whatever cost to themselves. God must be everything to us and sufficient for us, and man and his worth and influence naught. As for continuance, it is only to be found in God’s ways; and results, where there is faith to wait on Him and keep His way, may safely be left in His hands.
For right is right since God is God, and right the day must win To doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would be sin.
Appendix: a Summary of Mr. B. W. Newton’s Doctrines on the Person of Christ, With Extracts From His Writings.
Mr. Newton, whilst denying that there was sin in the human nature of Christ, put our blessed Lord under the consequences of the sin of others, in two ways first, as to His soul – in its relationship with God; and secondly, as to His body – in making Him subject to death.
Both these he stated to be the result of His being a man and an Israelite, or born of a woman, that is, that the condition of His birth entailed these things as a consequence of association. This principle is the opposite of substitution, or His taking sin upon Himself in grace for us, as He did upon the cross. He was thus, according to Mr. Newton, associated with the inconceivably fearful distance of man from God, and dealt with by God accordingly; and had the experiences which we ought to have had in our unconverted state, through rightly apprehending the wretchedness of this distance from God – the sense of wrath and judicial visitation. He formed “a part of that which was exposed to the judgments of God’s heavy hand,” and was “obnoxious to all the penalties due to man as man, and Israel as Israel,” and “to the sentence of death which had fallen on man because of Adam’s transgression.” It is no wonder that some have said that Mr. Newton’s Christ must want a Savior for Himself! Indeed Mr. Newton made John the Baptist Christ’s deliverer, who brought relief and the sound of grace to His ears, though it is not apparent how he could deliver Him from such partnership in the ruin of man, when once involved in it, or how He could otherwise escape from it, as Mr. Newton, of course, says He did.
Mr. Newton is said to have renounced these doctrines but this is not the case, for his Acknowledgment only admits that he was mistaken in placing our Lord under Adam as a federal head, but that is all. He says in it
I should have stated that the connection of the Lord Jesus with the consequences of Adam’s transgression was in virtue of His having been “made of a woman,” and thus having brought Himself into association with a race on whom those penalties were resting.
[He adds] I was right in stating that the Lord Jesus partook of certain consequences of Adam’s sin, of which the being possessed of a mortal body was one.
since his Acknowledgment, elaborately attempting to prove, not only that our blessed Lord was able to die, but mortal and corruptible, as we are; and as man (in the form He adopts), under the same “necessity of dying.”
For our own part, we have reason to know from private sources that Mr. Newton entirely denies “that he ever taught anything that could be called heresy,” and that not long since he propounded the same sentiments which are contained in his tracts in his own chapel; but public attention having been called to them, and great scandal having been occasioned to the minds of many Christians, especially by the first part of this false doctrine, that has been for the most part dropped out of sight. Nor could we believe that if Mr. Newton had been convinced of the deep dishonor and injury which he has done to the person of the Son of God by promulgating these views that he could be so inconceivably base as not to make the only reparation in his power, however insufficient, viz., a full frank, and heartbroken confession.
Extracts From Mr. Newton’s Writings Touching the Soul of Our Lord, and Its Relation to God.
Sinai marked the relation of God to Israel when Jesus came, and the worship of the golden calf may be taken as marking their relationship to God . . . The Lord Jesus was caused to appreciate to the full the relation in which Israel (and Himself because of Israel) was standing before God.
(Observations, p. 29).
The thing more than any else distinctive of these sufferings of Jesus of which I speak, that God pressed the . . . terrors of that mountain with the fire and darkness and tempest . . . upon the apprehension of His soul, according to His own power and holiness, and caused Him to feel as a part of that which was exposed to the judgments of His heavy band.
(Remarks, p. 14).
He was made to feel that His association with those thus standing in the fearfulness of their distance from God was a real thing, and that it was so regarded by God.
(Observations, p. 36).
The exercises of soul which His elect, in their unconverted state, ought to have, and which they would have, if it were possible for them to know and feel everything rightly according to God, such exercises, yet without sin, Jesus had.
(Observations, p. 26).
Jesus as man was associated with this place of distance in which man in the flesh was, and He had, through obedience, to find His way to that point where God could meet Him.
He stood in a place dispensationally lower than that into which He has now brought us His Church.
(Remarks, p. 31).
If, then, the soul of Jesus realized – experimentally realized, and that too under the hand of God, and to a degree we little think of – the fearful condition of Israel [and as we have seen Himself because of Israel]. . . How joyful to His soul the sense of the introduction of new things and new everlasting blessings [in baptism] (p. 22).
The difference between Sinai the mountain of blackness, and Zion the place of light and grace and blessing, the place of the Church of the firstborn, might be used to illustrate the difference between the two dispensational positions held by the Lord Jesus in the midst of Israel previous to His baptism and that which He dispensationally and ministerially took when anointed by the Holy Ghost.
And if it be asked, “Was, then, the Lord Jesus subjected during His life to all the inflictions that were due to man as man, and to Israel as Israel,” I answer No . . . His faith, His prayer, His obedience, all contributed to preserve Him from many things to which He was by His relative position exposed, and by which He was threatened.
(Remarks, p. 8).
Since He was not, until the cross, punished substitutionally, why was it that He was chastened at all? How could it be but because He was made experimentally to prove the reality of that condition into which others, but more especially Israel, had sunk themselves by their disobedience to God’s holy law, a condition out of which He was able to extricate Himself and from which He proved that He could extricate Himself by His own perfect obedience.
(Remarks, p. 12).
There are only three ways in which suffering from God can reach any of His servants here . . . either because of personal transgression – or substitutionally – or because of association with others who are under chastisement, can we be at any loss to say to which of these classes we assign the living sufferings of the Lord Jesus? We agree (?) in saying they were not substitutional, neither were they because of personal sin; if therefore they existed at all, and the scripture I have just quoted proves that they did exist, it must have been because of association or connection with others.
These afflictions were not vicarious.
(Observations, pp. 22, 23).
Extracts From Mr. Newton’s Writings Relative to the Body of Our Blessed Lord and His Asserted Natural Subjection to Death.
He was exposed for example because of His relation to Adam, to that sentence of death that had been pronounced on the whole family of man . . . And if He was exposed to the doom of man, was He not equally exposed to all the sinless penalties that had fallen upon Israel as dwelling under Sinai?
(Observations, p. 9).
All that pertained to man’s nature in Mary pertained to Jesus – its weakness, its dishonor – sin only was excepted. He was in the likeness of sinful flesh penalties therefore of the fall were connected even with the constitution of His human nature.
(Observations, p. 34, note).
My loins thou hast filled with burning heat or dryness would show that in body as well as in soul He felt Himself as the green ear scorched by the fire.
(Remarks, p. 17, note).
He had in His nature not only a possibility and aptitude, but even a necessity of dying.
So that the two main branches of false doctrine are adhered to in the only concession he has ever made; and this latter point has formed the subject of a series of tracts published (A Letter on Subjects adopted from another writer, p. 19).
The characteristics of the humanity of Adam after he had fallen, were, through His mother, transmitted to the Lord Jesus, but without sin, either communicated or imputed.
(Letter, p. 33).
It was determined . . . that He should commence His course of suffering by taking (not in Paradise) a weak humanity, like in everything excepting sin, the humanity of Mary His mother, and exposed to ALL the sinless consequences of Adam’s sin.
(p. 9).
All His sufferings were in consequence of His having assumed a relative position, that is one in which He consented to forego that which was due to His own individual position and to subject Himself to sufferings due to the position of those to whom He stood related by voluntary association.
(Brief Statements by Mr. Newton).
And even as His humanity had all sinless infirmities, so also was it mortal.
(Ancient Truths, by Mr. Newton, p. 10).
We mean by ascribing mortality to Him that His humanity was so constituted, that the vital conjunctions of His soul with His body would, under certain supposed circumstances [which we omit because the supposition is so painfully irreverent], necessarily cease, unless a miracle was wrought to prevent it.
(Ancient Truths, p. 15).
It should be remarked that the expression “sinless penalties” is illusive, for no penalties inflicted by the hand of God could be anything but righteous, whether temporal wrath death, or final damnation; also, that whilst every Christian believes that Christ was mortal, in the sense of being able to die, the idea of inherent mortality is entirely subversive of the glory of His person, opposed to the statements of Scripture, and unfits Him for dying as a sacrifice, for a life already attainted {tainted} could not be offered to the justice of God for others. The word of God tells us expressly that death can only come by sin, either inherited or imputed (Rom. 5:12; 6:23); and the miraculous action of the Holy Ghost in the conception of our Lord, removed not only the sinfulness of nature, but the seed of physical corruption and decay which exists in all others, so that in this sense we can discern the meaning of the words “that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”
Various old writers, such as Hawker, &c., have regarded our blessed Lord as suffering penally before the cross, but however mistaken in this, they looked upon Him as a substitute throughout, and never as a part, by birth or association, of that which was exposed to the judgments of God.
As space does not admit, and it is not our object to enlarge upon these doctrines, that having been done by others at the time they were first published. we only subjoin a few passages showing the true position of our Lord.
1. In the nation of Israel, as heir of the promises made to Abraham and David, and King of the Jews: Matt. 1:1 Luke 1:32, 68, 69, 72, 73; Matt. 2:2, 6, 9; Isa. 9:7.
2. As bringing relief, light, and salvation, to deliver them out of their wretched condition, instead of being identified with it: Luke 2:77-79; 2:11, 30-32.
3. The relation of His birth to man and to the Gentiles Luke 2:14, 32.
4. His relation as man to God: Luke 2:40-52; John 8:29 1:41, 42; 15:10, 11; Psa. 22:9, 10.
5. His relation to John the Baptist: Luke 1:17; 3:16, 17 John 1:7, 27, 29.
6. His position relative to death: John 10:17, 18; 12:24 6:47-51; 11:25; Heb. 2:9.
List of Mr. Newton’s Tracts Here Quoted.
1. Remarks on the Sufferings of the Lord Jesus, B. W.
Newton, Campbell, 1, Warwick Square, London Tract Depot, Cornwall Street, Plymouth, 1847.
2. Observations on a Tract Entitled, The Sufferings of Christ, &c. B. W. Newton, same publisher, 1847.
3. A Statement and Acknowledgment respecting certain doctrinal errors, B. W. Newton, Plymouth, November 26, 1847.
4. Brief Statements, B. W. Newton, July 11, 1848.
5. A Letter on Subjects Connected with the Lord’s Humanity, B. W. Newton, Jenkyn Thomas, 9 Cornwall Street, Plymouth.
6. A Letter to a Friend on a Tract Recently Published at Cork, B. W. Newton, Houlston and Stoneman Paternoster Row, London, August, 1850.
7. Ancient Truths Respecting the Deity and True Humanity of the Lord Jesus, B. W. Newton, Houlston and Wright, Paternoster Row, London, 1857.