formula, and what it was therefore that he affirmed to be ruined. Then he accepts his adversary’s definition as conveying his own thought throughout: “The Church on earth, at each successive period, is thus the aggregate of the elect who are then manifested”. In reply to Olivier, Darby admits that he had “sometimes, perhaps, because every one does it, called the Church, that which is not really the Church,” and claims that in doing so he “was much better understood”. I should rather have said that he had made himself quite unintelligible. But it is satisfactory to reach relatively firm ground at last, and to understand that it was of the Church as the company of the elect that Darby predicated the ruin. Whether this was right or wrong, it was at least startling, and it is no wonder that so strenuous and pertinacious a contention arose over it.
Of course a good deal still depends on the definition of the term “ruin”. No Protestant can dispute that the Church viewed as a single visible organisation[1] has collapsed; and even a very high Anglican, regarding the Church as conterminous with Episcopal communion, can scarcely ignore the fact that deep lines of cleavage are driven through and through it by mutual excommunications and anathemas. It does not follow, however, that Darby could speak with propriety of the ruin of the Church on the ground of the breaches in its outward frame, unless he considered that the outward frame was of the essence of the Church. If on the other hand he did so consider it, he was bound to explain in what sense he understood the Saviour’s promise that the gates of
- ↑ Some would deny that there existed such a solid and undivided organisation in apostolic days; but this I pass over, since no such question was raised on either side in the controversy that we are now considering.
