Page:Darby - A narratives of the facts.djvu/13

 subversive of the power of what the Spirit taught, and making the authority of this teaching sectarian, or superstitious, or both, though they will not last together. I am not speaking here of Satan’s work in open infidelity. Now, many may be quite unable to detect Satan working in this way, but there will be always enough, through the faithfulness of God, to guard souls really waiting on Him from falling in; or if listened to, through grace to bring them out. But then it will be and must be judged as evil; not dealt with as a mere measure of better and worse. There is a distinction which may yet be made. There are two distinct characters of work which Satan does, which may nevertheless merge one in the other. Of these however, one, if alone, will be ephemeral, the other lasting. First, where power is not, the true power of the Spirit, so as to detect and judge Satan’s imitation, there he can easily set up the imitation of power, and that even where there is a measure of true faith and owning of God, but subjection, intelligent subjection, by the Spirit, to the word as of the Spirit is not found. Where this is connected with the establishment of arranged human authority, this latter may subsist, but the work itself is ephemeral. Such a work as this will probably be connected with some of the most right- feeling, if not right-judging, persons amongst Christians, who have the strongest feeling of the decay which occasions it, but there will be generally shipwreck of the faith in some point or other. Yet it will afford exceeding difficulty to those who cannot discern the work of the enemy in the midst of this right feeling. I would instance as examples of this kind of evil work of the enemy, the Montanists, the Irvingites, and in some respects, the Quakers, or Friends. As to these last it is well known that what I now refer to has passed away, and that they remain amongst men a most quiet, and in many respects, most estimable body of persons. I speak of their early history. What remains is the authority that was settled among them, though with the old Friends, very much defect in doctrine.

I have no doubt that this work began in a right