Page:Groves - Darbyism - Its Rise and Development and a Review of the Bethesda Question.djvu/66

 gatherings acting in unison with Mr. Darby. It is not an expression used once accidentally, it occurs reiteratedly in the ecclesiastical documents of the party, and hence deserves our consideration. It does not appear with whom this presumptuous title originated, but probably it did not originate with Mr. Darby; for it is not likely, deep and grievous as his departure from God’s principle of Church fellowship has been, that he would have been the first to give currency to an expression which he could not but have been wise enough to perceive, would tell more against the catholicity he claims for his party, than any other that could well have been used ; recalling so powerfully to mind other similar titles assumed by those with whom he would seek no particular connexion, and may henceforth be ranked with “The one Holy and Catholic Church” of Rome, or “The Catholic and Apostolic Church” of the Irvingites. The title as assumed, however, can but give to others a clear insight into the workings of the system—a title, that is treason to those whose names are in the Book of Life; to those who “everywhere call on the name of the Lord, theirs and ours; to those who still remain by the grace of God outside this “one assembly.” Mr. Darby, however, who has all along held the position claimed, endorses the expression, and gives additional meaning to it, when in a letter written a little later, speaking of one excluded from the Darbyite assemblies in London, he writes, “I hold him to be outside the Church of God on earth, being outside what represents it in London.” Beyond the pale of an anti-christian communion no such arrogant assumption was ever made, in open violation of all the blessed statements in the Word concerning the mutual fellowship and responsibilities of the brother hood of the family of God. It has been reserved for Darbyism to develop a system which upon the smallest basis should erect the most tremendous superstrueture—a superstructure which in the intolerance of its claim, and the boldness of its assertion, reminds us of the days of Papal power in the middle ages. How has the humble gathering of the two or three in the name of Jesus been forgotten and set aside, by this new dogma? and instead of it a position taken, which is destructive of everything in Church standing, but the narrowest sectarianism. Can it be believed possible that those who started with the acknowledgment of the individual responsibility of all saints to Christ, should dwindle down into the position here taken, so as to assert that being outside their small assemblies in London, is out side the Church of God upon earth? Is it possible that original principles could be so openly repudiated, and former testimony so entirely forgotten? but so it is, and these progressive steps in ecclesiasticism it is important to