Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/216

 formula. The following is one of his most interesting attempts. It occurs in his controversy in Switzerland with R. W. Monsell.

"“I do not contest the point, that in Congregationalism there was at first liberty of ministry, but that had scarcely any duration. That liberty has existed and still exists among Quakers; but whilst admitting the liberty of ministry, the work of the [Plymouth] brethren rests on much broader foundations. While taking as a foundation the great truths of the gospel, here are the principles which distinguish it: the unity of the Church by the power of the Holy Spirit come down from above, the witness of a perfect redemption, accomplished by Him who is seated there at the right hand of the Father. It is by reason of the presence of this Spirit, acting in the members, that there is liberty of ministry according to the measure of His energy and of His gifts (a liberty regulated by the word).

“This is the first principle. … It is on this foundation that we meet, admitting in consequence every Christian.”"

I do not stop to enquire in what purely conventional sense the claim contained in the last clause can have been made in the year 1849. But it is to our present purpose to observe that the “distinguishing” principles that Darby specifies were, as a matter of fact, the common possession of Protestants before the Brethren were thought of, and that therefore this formal declaration by the greatest of the Brethren leaves us absolutely where we were before.

At any rate, the Brethren regarded liberty of ministry as the central feature of primitive practice; deeming it bound up, not so much with the prerogatives of every Christian man, as with the rights of the Holy Spirit “within the assembly”. It was exclusively His to guide to the moment for the exercise of any kind of ministry, down to the giving out of a hymn ; and except in the