conclusion come to, to admit nene holding Mr. Newton’s views. The ostensible object had been gained; the real object had not, and that was submission, submission it was said to the church, but in reality to a party. This was avowedly stated at a public meeting in connexion with the Letter of the Ten, when these questions were under discussion. It was asked by one of the Bethesda brethren, “Why should we judge a matter that has taken place at Plymouth?” It was replied, “Because the church has judged it.” “And what is the Church?” asked Mr. Müller. The answer given was, “Those who meet as we do.” Mr. Müller replied, “That is not my view of the church,” and Mr. Meredith further remarked, “I should consider, holding such a view of the church, as going completely back to Popery.” Bethesda had acted for themselves in the matter before God, and sought to obey His word, but they had not obeyed “the voice of the church!” and Mr. Wigram writes,[1] Feb. 2nd, 1849, “You may depend upon it that the aim of Bethesda is, to make a party positively apart from us all, and apart, I judge, too, from Mr. Newton.” He was quite prepared to allow that they aimed at keeping aloof from Mr. Newton, and his charge against Bethesda resolves itself into a wish on their part to act apart and stand apart from those to whom he belonged; and if this implied the rejection of the assumed exclusive place of the church on which they were taking their stand, and by means of which they sought to enforce their decrees on all those with whom they consented to hold fellowship, it must be acknowledged Mr. Wigram was right. That which was demanded in June would not satisfy in December. That spirit of despotism which had been so painfully prominent, had grown with its exercise; and the sectarianism which might have been the exception, had become the rule. It was not, therefore, to be anticipated, that any other result would follow this step, taken by Bethesda, than a more vehement determination to maintain in act, the principle of an ecclesiastical subjection of a body to a control, that assumed on the lofty claim of the presence of the Spirit in the assembly, a right to judge all saints and all assemblies, and that, on the same claim, submitted to be judged by none. Thus the clericalism and popery, as it was freely called by Mr. Darby when it was in antagonism to himself, became a clericalism submitted to unhesitatingly in connexion with himself, the moment it assumed to itself the exclusive guidance of the Holy Ghost,—of that Spirit of which it is written that “the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy, in the Holy Ghost.”
- ↑ See “The Bath Case,” p. 10.
