Page:Darby - Christianity Not Christendom.djvu/21

 way local. Besides this, and baptism and the Lord’s supper, by one of which they were received into God's house, and by the other both the unity of the body and Christ’s death were symbolized, there were local officers,  elders appointed in every city. They were local offices, not gifts, though gifts they might have, and one was  desirable to make their service in their office more effectual; but these were local, the gifts were not.

The church, as understood in modern times in all its compartments, is constituted, has its existence by, and is based upon, the clergy and its sacraments, not an accomplished redemption and the presence and power of the Holy Ghost; a clergy, which is called the ministry, and even the church. I take as a plain, popular proof of the truth of this, the Evangelical Alliance; it abhors the corruption that has entered into the church, but it would not admit Quakers and Plymouth Brethren: the former reject clergy and sacraments, the latter clergy only, holding baptism and the Lord’s supper, both insisting on ministry by the Spirit. I am not insisting now on their being right or wrong, I merely take it as a popular proof of the basis of the universal system, even where gross corruptions are resisted. It results in this, that the recognition of a clergy is the basis of the church, the sine quâ non, the essential condition.

I am not, remark here, speaking of the corruption of the church; this was so great, that Nicholas Clemangis, the greatest man of his age in the middle ages, declares that putting a girl into a convent was making her a prostitute; unnatural crimes were usual with the clergy, and Baronius declares that for a hundred years he cannot recognize the popes as legitimate popes at all, save for dates. They were not elected by the clergy, nor