Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/110

98 of liberty of ministry, and with more plausibility to the “undue stress” that had been laid on “believers’ baptism” and “separation from State churches”.

"“Baptism and separation from the State Church had at last become almost everything to these dear brethren. ‘We are the Church. Truth is only to be found among us. All others are in error and in Babylon.’ These were the phrases used again and again by our brother ― … This spiritual pride had led from one error to another.

“Another thing on account of which the Church at Stuttgart is a warning is this: When these dear brethren left the State Church of the Kingdom of Wirtemberg, on account of which they had many trials, they did not meet together in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, but they took some Baptist church … for a model. … Brother — becomes their teaching elder, and … he alone speaks at all the meetings (with few exceptions). Now, as his own mind laid such an undue stress upon baptism, and as there was no free working of the Holy Spirit, so that any other brother might have brought out at their meetings what the Lord might have laid upon his heart, what could there have been expected otherwise than that after a time the whole noble little band of disciples, who had taken so trying a stand as to be separated from the State Church, should become unsound in the faith. May God grant unto us to be profited by it, dear believing reader, so that in our own church position we do our utmost to give to the Holy Spirit free and unhindered opportunity to work by whom He will!”"

This is surely thorough-going Brethrenism; but when Müller was surrounded by the little company that clave to him after his rejection by the Baptist elders, he judged it needful to proceed cautiously in the application of the principle. Yet his account makes it only more and more plain that at that date he held views of ministry scarcely distinguishable from the “impulsive” theory against which Groves waged ineffectual warfare.

“As I had known enough of painful consequences when brethren began to meet professedly in dependence upon the Holy Spirit without knowing what was meant by it, and thus meetings