As to the principle of Jerusalem worship, it is simply this: the Lord had recorded His name there, according to His promise in Deut. 12 and other places, and there He had promised to meet them, and there to bless them. The place where He has promised now to meet them is, wherever two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is in the midst of them. (Matt. 18) This is the constituent difference of the dispensation, the Lord taking care first to show the order of discipline, by which a wrong-doer is to be regarded as a heathen man and a publican. This then is the promise of the dispensation, that on which it hangs—the presence of the Lord “wherever two or three are gathered in his name.” So, even while the temple was standing, the apostles went up there to teach, and broke bread (Acts 2:4646And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, (Acts 2:46)) from house to house, or at home. The Lord has provided comfort for His poor saints, seeking holiness in these promises against the haughty scorn of the sanctioners of corruption, of wickedness in the place of judgment: they know that however weak, yea, or failing in particular instances, it may be through their foolishness, gracious as the Lord is, adversaries, upon the corruption of its principle and there they rest upon the basis of the whole dispensation; alliance with evil and the world, which the Lord will judge. We would meet then in the Lord's name, and hail every one, even though not perfectly one in opinion, who loved the Lord Jesus and was led by grace in truth and righteousness, resting in His atonement and resurrection, and subject to His will.
I do not believe that in any church of the English Establishment, although I freely admit there are individual worshippers, they meet as two or three gathered in the Lord's name at all, or that His name consequently is recorded there to bless. The sermon may be blessed, or the individual may very humbly intend to worship God, but there is no blessed common spiritual worship. They are not met at all according to the Lord's commandment as Christian believers, nor are they addressed as such when the clergyman speaks for himself, though he may do so when the prayer-book speaks for him, thus making the whole thing a sort of mockery, in which the Spirit of Christ speaks one thing in the minister, and the form he reads another thing in the congregation.
And now to turn to the parts of scripture which do apply, that is, subsequent to our Lord's ascension.
“We find,” the editor says, “the apostles and all the Christian Jews observing them with scrupulous exactness.” I do not see any such thing. I see considerable and natural slowness in dropping what had ceased to be obligatory on those who had been brought up amongst them, and difficulties arising in the Church in consequence of their adherence to them—the attempt to maintain what had nothing to do with Christianity, and impose it, as the editor and his friends would now, but strenuously and steadfastly resisted by the apostle of the Gentiles, as marring the progress of the gospel, with one exception, which we shall see just now. First, Peter did not observe them, though he dissembled evilly about it, just showing the effect of such things. Let us turn to Galatians: “But when some sought to spy out our liberty,” says the apostle, “which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour, that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.”
This was the apostle's way of dealing with what was sought to be imposed, and we say, We cannot be subject to nor worship your golden calves, though you may call it Bethel, and it may be set up where the pilgrim of God once was, with his staff in his hand, and God the portion of his inheritance, a wanderer for the sake of the inheritance and promise; yea, though it be the king's chapel and the king's court. Again, “when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself” [here is another sort of separation—separation from saints, not from evil] “fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him, insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.”
Well it was for the church of God that there was one even then to stand out against these imposers of Jewish observances, that the truth of the gospel might continue with them. But what a picture of the effect of this continuance in the church ceremonies; dissimulation that jeoparded the truth of the gospel. But where was all the exactness of their observance? Not at all, till the fear of man and dissimulation came in; the two things which ever go together, and of which human ordinances, assumed to be divine or obligatory, are ever the instrument. Are there no Peters at Antioch now? Paul was a foolish man not to conform to harmless ceremonies! He knew they were the parent of dissimulation and the destruction of the truth of the gospel the moment they were made obligatory. And he withstood it to the face, and would not be in subjection for an hour. But it is clear that the Christian Jews did not observe them with a scrupulous exactness. Hear the bold apostle: “But when I saw that they walked not uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?”
What does the editor mean by scrupulous exactness, except in the way of dissimulation? But let him hear the same Peter again, and he might learn a wise lesson about what creates separation. In the chapter be has referred us to I read this: “God,” says the apostle, now unburdened by his fears, “which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness giving them the Holy Ghost even as to us: and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore, why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? But we believe that, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved even as they.” And it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to them to lay no greater burthen than certain necessary things, from which I suppose few separating brethren, led of God, would be anxious to be free. Would (but God is wise) it had seemed good to others to observe the apostolic rule! To us indeed, save in love, it matters little, but we should have heard little of separating brethren.
The editor states it was decided that the Jewish ceremonies were obligatory on Jewish Christians. This is quite untrue: there was no such decision whatever; if so, Peter was wrong at Antioch in eating with Gentiles, and Paul and Barnabas, and all. Indeed, so far from being true, it would have been destructive of the whole order and unity of the church, and is merely ignorance of the progressive actual freedom to say so, as it is contrary to the matter of fact in the scriptures.
But there is an instance of Paul's acquiescence in their prejudices, which the editor refers to. Not acting from the guidance of God's Spirit to himself, he takes counsel with flesh and blood. James and the elders advise him to volunteer in spewing conformity to the customs of the Jews, who were all zealous of the law of which, it is clear, Christ had been the end as to this. However (whatever Paul's full concurrence was with their counsel, which does not appear) he acted on it, acted on conference with flesh and blood deliberately for the first time. But what was the consequence? It brought him into all the difficulties from which he had been praying and begging the church's prayers to be delivered. If Rom. 15:30, 3130Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me; 31That I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judea; and that my service which I have for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints; (Romans 15:30‑31) be compared with Acts 21, it will be found that this very act was the source of all the difficulties which he had foreseen and deprecated, and besought them to deprecate so earnestly. God in His overruling mercy might turn it to good, as ever He will with His children. But it is a remarkable instance of the danger of temporizing with fleshly conformity to prejudices, and not acting from the simple guidance of God's Spirit and word. They caught him in the temple where he, the apostle Paul, went to purify himself with the men, as if God had hot accomplished these things, building again the things destroyed, tending to make Christ the minister of sin. Two year's removal from all ministry, and deliverance to the will of the Gentiles, under God, was the fruit of his acquiescence in the advice of conformity to the Jews. It is wonderful, while they so often deny Jewish hopes, how fond churchmen are of Jewish manners and the rudiments of this world, which is all their ways are now. The apostle teaches in Gal. 4:8-108Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. 9But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? 10Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. (Galatians 4:8‑10) that for Gentiles to return to Jewish ordinances, habits and observances (now that God's sanction has been removed from that system, and it is consequently merely the world), is to go back to heathen idolatry and evil. They were desiring to be again in bondage to the weak and beggarly elements, from which, as idolatrous Gentiles, they had been delivered; for Jewish ordinances without divine sanction were the same thing, human inventions sought out and the principle of heathenism and idolatry in the sight of God. For the rest, we have seen, it clearly was not Paul's habit among Jews; for it was Peter's dissembling led to it in Antioch, and to it Paul would not yield. As to “imposed to the time of reformation,” we shall see its use just now. Only meanwhile we would recommend the editor's reading Col. 2.
Now as to the Corinthians: the apostle's command was to come out from the midst of evil in the world; our word is the same now to Christians mixed with the world in what is called the Church of England; because there can be no communion between Christ and Belial, and till the church had proved itself clear in this matter, the apostle would not go at all, but sent Titus to see how it was, and—when he proved their entire subjection in the matter, and that they were clear—went then, for he wished to spare them; but he would not hear of what the editor now defends, nor go to the place till it was remedied. This is the instruction we have from the Corinthians—the instruction expressly that we are never to bear the mixture of known evil in the church (which is the horrible lie of the possibility of the communion of Christ and Belial), that they must separate from the world, and not touch the unclean thing, and then God would receive them, and they should be His sons and daughters. “He would walk in them and dwell in them.” “The old leaven being purged out,” the apostle separated between the guilty and not guilty, and kept the church pure. He did make separation, but it was by turning out the evil which the Establishment keeps and clings to. “If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said No:— “If one that is unclean by a dead body, touch any of them shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean. So, saith the Lord, is this nation, and so is this people before me and so is every work of their hands, and that which they offer there is unclean.” As to the Galatians there was nothing corrupt in the church at all, they received false doctrine from others teachers which the apostle corrected; so of the other evils which arose in the churches. The apostle corrected them, and so held them together—an example in the matter of course. When corrected, they had no need to separate. It would have been sheer madness to have corrected the evil, and told them to separate at the same time: a provision for separation, while the church was planting in holiness, would have been simply denying His apostolic work, which was to form the churches on those principles which they have now departed from, so that what is called the church is nothing but another aspect of the state.
But the seven churches “furnish cases exactly in point.” They do no such thing. The seven churches exhibited churches formed thoroughly on sound principles—principles of not allowing evil; and because they did not act upon them, they were to be judicially removed out of their place, which they were accordingly. They formed the step in church history next to the epistles of the apostles—the parting warning from the Lord. The epistles afford the example of apostolic energy, in maintaining churches rightly planted in their right position of separation from evil (the apostle warning that he knew that after his decease things would go wrong, and evil arise). The seven churches' epistles are the judgment of Christ on this subsequent state of things—the Son of man, but judging in the midst of the candlesticks—churches rightly founded, having generally ceased to be rightly ordered, and therefore removed out of their place by the Lord's judgment, making way for the apostacy as “things that should be.” Removal for practical corruption of a holy thing is the tenor of these epistles, the setting aside the church as standing in its first planting. But they were “things that are.” As prophecies, if such, they have nothing to do with this question.
The English Establishment never stood on such ground at all—never was the subject of such judgment; it never was planted as a colony of believers in the midst of the world—removed when it ceased to act on the principles of separate holiness. It was the result of the union of the church and the world in the outset; or rather the church never came out of the apostate world at all, and therefore there were no principles on which to judge it, except general professed principles in Christendom. It never reached the point, nor sought it, nor understood it, in which these churches began, and on which therefore Christ judged them for their departure from them. It never stood on their ground as to moral position at all. It is a perverted attempt to apply “things that are,” as if they applied to “the things that shall be,” which is a perversion of scripture. Christ's judgment was on “the things that are:” His prophecy of “the things that should be.” If the churches be taken prophetically, I may apply the Philadelphian to the separate saints, and Laodicean to those who are not. On the other hand, if this be set aside, on which I do not now rest, then I say it was the Lord's judgment on the things that were, and the removal of them, because they did not conform to the principles on which the Spirit of God in the apostles &c. had founded them, and which thereupon ceased to exist and made room for the apostacy: and that no subsisting church rests, or can pretend to rest, on the ground on which this judgment rests at all, for they are founded on the union of the church and the world, which is the moral principle of apostacy, which resulted from the failure of the judged churches to maintain the principles on which they were founded. It was the warning of what led to the consequences which follow since, under which we are now suffering. In the Acts of the Apostles we have the founding of the church on the principles on which Christ established it; in the epistles, the sustaining it by the apostolic energy of the Spirit; in the epistles to the seven churches, the judgment of Christ upon their subsisting state, as not continuing upon the ground on which they were planted; and, consequent upon that, the apostacy out of which we are commanded to come, from which it is our clear business to keep separate. Separation from evil—a peculiar people—the gathering together in one the children of God which were scattered abroad, are the meaning and purpose of God in the church: in its institution, separated from evil, and secured by the energy of that preached; and death, or immediate rejection for inconsistency by the presence of the instantaneously detecting power of the Holy Ghost, that its meaning and character might be adequately exhibited as a pattern in the outset; then the apostles, watching, guarding, preserving, judging, and calling them effectually to correct themselves, as we see in the epistles. Thus evil was separate from them, when manifested among them. Then, this being inadequately performed, the judgment of the Son of man rejecting the churches, and threatening their removal if not corrected, which happened; and then the whole being in a fallen evil state, in which it was not only evil, but in the world (during which God has ever maintained a separating witnessing people, that it might be seen He gave no sanction to evil); and, when fully discovered, the actual command, “come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and receive not of her plagues.” Separation then is so far from wrong, that it becomes the test of obedience and faithfulness. And now as to separating from the Jewish system, and the adherence of Christian Jews to it, we have seen the practice not to have been at all what the editor states it; but this is not all.
There is, upon the very ground of the church being of a heavenly character, and having no portion in this world, a direct summons to go forth out of its now unacknowledged sanctity. “Christ, therefore,” “(as the sin-offering was burnt without the camp of God) that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate” —of what?—the world? nay, of the holy city. “Let us therefore go forth to him without the camp bearing his reproach.” It is, when the church thus is worldly and not heavenly, bearing Christ's reproach to go forth without the camp. The camp was not Egypt nor the city the world in form, but it was in character; and they, being heavenly, “partakers of the heavenly calling,” could have no more to say to it. This then was the positive direction to the Hebrews. Separation from evil—separation from the world, both which are “enmity against God” (but we “reconciled to God”)—is the essential character and meaning of the church. It was for this Jesus suffered. “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth.” It is in this character He is our risen head and priest, “separate from sinners, no more in the world.” It is in this His people walk, for this the martyrs suffered—it was for this John Huss was burned and Wickliffe was persecuted. When it was removed by apostolic discipline, the church was kept separate from evil; when not, it was judged. When the church coalesced with the world, it ceased to have any such character, and separation from it was separation from the world and, where this is not, righteousness cannot be. It must be maintained at all cost.
As to Jude, the editor's professed love to his separating brethren proves that he does not himself believe in its application to them; but our answer is this—separation from the church of God we admit to be not only an evil, but a totally ruinous evil. It is a leaving the only holy sanctuary of God in the world; and it is the reckless doing and blasphemy of this of which Jude speaks. Does the editor really believe that the passages in Jude or Peter apply to his “separating brethren"? If he does not, why does he quote them? If he does, let him fairly state so. Either we are not Christians but totally lost persons; or Jude and Peter do not apply at all. These are the passages he quotes to condemn separation. They condemn separation from the church of God to mock and walk after their own ungodly lusts and speak hard words against Christ. Does this apply to the guileless active Israelites? If not, another conclusion entirely must be drawn from it; that the English Establishment is not the church of God at all: if it were, the consequences in Jude would follow; but if not, separation from it, so far from being evil, is but a bounden testimony against the pretense to be such by which the saints of God are so deceived. The editor has spoken a bold word in saying that all who separate from the English Establishment “are sensual, not having the Spirit.” Is this his opinion of many of them? If not, is he not blaspheming them? much rather, incurring the charge of hard things spoken against Christ and His people? I count him much more a separatist in truth, who, when saints are trying to walk orderly, devotedly, and in grace, separates himself from them or them from him, because of lying and worldly ceremonies, most of which had long had the sanction of Satan in an evil world, but never, that I could learn, of God.
As to the only remaining passage which he could cull from all scripture against his separating brethren, (besides these, which do but fully ascertain that the English Establishment is not the church of God at all, and which he knows are not applicable,) to that from 1 John 2:1919They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. (1 John 2:19) they plead or I plead entirely guilty. “They went out from” the English Establishment, because they were not of it—they have not left off being Christians, but, though once many of them were in the English Establishment, they were not of it. They did not really in spirit belong to “a hierarchical system, inconsistent with the progress of the gospel,” and consequently sooner or later they went out of it—a system where practical abuses (as the editor has taught us in a previous number) flow not from casualty, but from the source of all its appointments being corrupt and worldly. I repeat, they have agreed with him, and they have acted on it in humble trial and sorrow; he has not—he, perhaps, may be of what he has thus designated, and therefore has not gone out from it—they were not and consequently have. Whether they are “sensual, not having the Spirit,” God and not the editor must judge. If not, the editor has not a single text of scripture to plead against it, nor could be (while the holiness of God remains) find from. His word a sanction for continuance in known evil. The editor may speak of remedies, and mend the church in connection with the world. His separating brethren will seek by grace to have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man, and to keep themselves, waiting for His appearing, unspotted from the world. They rejoice that in all the word of God the anxious care of the editor can find nothing to charge them with but these passages in Jude and Peter, the application of which may prove apostacy in the church, but not in those who separate from it. We would recommend to the editor 1 Sam. 22 and he may see, though unowned, where God's king, God's prophet, and God's priest may sometimes be found, and what sort of people are around the king. What a judgment would have been formed of David's cause by the world then!
As to things imposed till the time of reformation, it is hardly worth while for any Christian acquainted with scripture to refer to it. But I need only remark that, instead of sanctioning the Jewish Christians in the exact observance of their ordinances, the apostle (as is the tenor of the whole epistle) is pressing on them that they had no obligation on them at all, now Christ was come, their calling being heavenly, in union with Him; as their High Priest not in this world at all: that they were merely carnal ordinances imposed on them till the time of reformation, figures for the time then present, and that they were identified with the way into the holiest not being yet manifested, but that, Christ being come, they had passed away. He having entered not into holy places made with hands, figures of the true, but into heaven, they had no longer anything to say to Him. The English Establishment, by the editor's confession, just returns to and imposes them, witnessing that to her the holiest is not made manifest, and that, in lieu thereof, she is imposing carnal ordinances, not having come to that “time of reformation,” in which the glory and high priesthood of Christ took the place in the church of these things. This is exactly our complaint against her; and we do not wish to be bound down in this confessedly evil bondage. It is exactly the editor's confession; she has not entered into the heavenly calling, and priesthood of Christ. Her services are bondage her ordinances carnal; the time of reformation in a heavenly calling has not reached her soul; she is still seeking a priesthood on earth, not a portion in heaven; she was founded on what was earthly, and never got out of it.
As to the degeneracy of the age which is noticed and denied in this number, we believe the editor is most awfully and guiltily misleading the church. As to Ireland; We have noticed the inconsistency of his statements, and (while it is against the direct testimony of scripture, declaring that things shall go on, as in Noah's days and Lot's days till the Son of man come—days in which men despised warnings as much as the editor does now) nothing but the grossest ignorance of the state of England could lead him to such a statement. He confesses that crime is largely increased, but he says it is among the rabble. But how comes wickedness to have increased so much among them? But, in truth, this is the least part of the evil: the universal degeneracy of principle with much profession, and the great progress of infidelity, of atheistical principles, and the spirit of rebellion against lawful power, which is identified with these principles, and the slight of testimony and judgment, the “where is the promise of his coming,” in which the editor takes his part, are far worse signs of apostacy and judgment than the petty acts of evil which are but accompanying results.
The editor makes it his business to prove the world better—the world that rejected Christ. In this we believe he is most ruinously and desperately deceiving the church of God; it is this which would make us decided. He rejoices in the increasing circulation of his “Journal;” I fear, and I say so sincerely, in proportion as it is of the world, the world will love its own. The editor rejects and slights (in ignorance we are assured) the warnings and judgments of the Lord, and therefore recommends continuance in evil. He denies, as a thing in which the church of Christ has any present concern, the coming of the Lord, and therefore must be the instrument of darkness and of error. I do not doubt his desire to serve the Lord generally. In this point he is surely in utter and mischief-working blindness; and his labors can but serve to bind the blind in the error they are in.
Separation from godly persons I deprecate as much as he; I desire union with them as earnestly, perhaps more earnestly than any one I know; but to go into ungodliness to be one with them is impossible for the saints of God.
I look for better things for Ireland than I do for England as to its state, but not by the saints continuing to sanction and be mixed with evil, as he would advise.
If they do not discern “this time,” let them at least of their own selves judge the things that are right. We would just refer those who have the “Christian Journal” to the “Ten Bishoprics,” in No. 14 of the “Christian Journal:” leading article on Church Reform in No. 6; the two leading articles in No. 10; and compare the petition with the “Ten Bishoprics” in No. 14.