It would seem that Darby thought that the conditions of Christian fellowship were to be investigated by methods appropriate to the exact sciences; but even from this point of view some of the links in the chain were weak enough. First of all, it was necessary to show that St. John’s injunction had anything to do with ecclesiastical procedure; and this being impossible Darby’s case broke down irreparably at the very first stage. But this, though enough, is by no means all. A further demonstration was needed that Newton had taught, and still persisted in teaching, a doctrine that denied the Apostolic “doctrine of Christ”; and this also was out of the question, for Newton’s errors were not concerned with the Person of Christ, but with certain relations in which He stood.[1] And again, even if this difficulty could have been surmounted, it was further needful to prove that all who became partakers in Newton’s evil deeds were to be considered equal partners, so as to ultimately compromise people who had never heard either of Newton or of his heresies;[2] and yet again that,
- ↑ Tregelles pointed this out at the time, in his Three Letters. His authority has obtained recent confirmation from the most perspicacious of all the divines of Brethrenism. Mr. Wm. Kelly wrote in 1890, with palpable reference to Newton: “A prophetic theory drew its devotee into anti-christian error, without any direct assault on the truth of the Person; for it was rather an overthrow of Christ’s true relation to God”. The admission is a serious one for Mr. Kelly as a leader of Exclusivism; but it is all the more significant on that account.
- ↑ Such persons might be received provisionally, with a “warning”; but if they returned afterwards to their former meeting, either as considering the “warning” to be based on unauthentic information, or as considering that such remote quarrels were no business of theirs and no ground of practical church action, the lull rigour of the law was to be put in force against them; that is to say, they had no escape unless they accepted any local exclusive brother that might warn them as an ultimate court of appeal in the history of the case. I therefore judge that the statement in the text does not require qualification.
