Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/218

206 blame for not being “in the Spirit”. A censorious person would doubtless lay the blame on his rival. A humble-minded person would be grievously distressed in his conscience lest it should be he that had marred the harmony of “the Spirit’s action in the assembly”.

Moreover, the Brethren had a horror of discourses prepared beforehand for delivery at an open meeting; and even extended their dislike of premeditation to the case of sermons and lectures previously announced. An ex-Newtonian, T. P. Haffner, issued a “confession” about the same time as the other penitents of the same school. In this document he justified Darby’s charge of “the practical denial of the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church,” alleging that Newton had said to him that “before coming to the Lord’s Table, he [Newton] did not see it at all wrong to be prepared with what he had to say to the saints”. “This, beloved friends,” proceeds the repentant Haffner, “shocked me much, very much, at the time, and shook my confidence: but oh! with what humiliation do I now appear in the presence of God, for having so long retained in my bosom the knowledge that our poor brother did thus practically deny the present leadings and guidance of the Spirit of God, (however much it might have been held theoretically), without having ever called on others to join with me in prayer for him, etc.”

I myself well remember a brother, who had been publicly corrected for a preposterous exposition, consoling himself afterwards by the assurance that “the Spirit had given him the word”. His critic’s comment was that “the Spirit did not give erroneous expositions”. That is to say, the plea of the discomfited teacher was ruled out on merely à posteriori grounds, and not as being untenable in principle.