Page:Darby - Christianity Not Christendom.djvu/35

 clergy, and the Spirit being with them; and so of the sacramental system as the channels of special grace. We may now see what light the New Testament throws on this subject; but history and the writings of the apostolic fathers, so called, from Clement to Hermas, shew us plainly that the doctrine of the Christian’s place in Christ, and of the Holy Ghost, present and active in all saints, as also freely distributing His gifts as He will, was totally lost at once by Christians after the apostles were gone. I am not denying that there was a set of people gathered, which gathering, in fact, continued, and was corrupted gradually; that is clear, but that from the outset this gathered body of men lost the place, position, and power of that in which they had been established, and that the principles on which the gathering stood and was held to exist were, as soon as placed on their own responsibility, the contrary of what God had set them on. That it was not a body of persons knowing themselves to be in Christ, exalted as man at the right hand of God, consequent upon His having redeemed them, and perfected them for ever, for whom there was no condemnation, every one of whom was anointed and sealed by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, the earnest of the inheritance which they had not yet, which Holy Ghost, uniting them into one body, and distributing to every man severally as He would, made each servants of Christ in his place and gift, and responsible to trade with the talent confided to him; and as every man had received the gift so to minister the same; but a body of persons who were viewed as connected with a clergy, who might or might not be gifted, but their connection with whom formed them into one corporation, of which the administration of the