Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/220

 Christ’s Name who set Christ’s law aside in His own Church. It never seems to have occurred to them that to confine the Scripture in question to meetings of an ecclesiastical character is a very bold exegetical expedient. They sought, indeed, to help out their interpretation by a quite unwarrantable change in the translation of the words εις το ονομα, which they rendered “unto my name,” and took to import a gathering to Christ’s Name as to a rallying point. Correspondingly, as we have seen, they held that all other Christians gathered to a denominational designation as a rallying point. It was a fine instance of the sovereign efficacy of words.

The extent to which the Brethren carried the principle of liberty of ministry was rather arbitrarily fixed. Most of them (the very few exceptions were strictly confined to the Open Brethren) set apart the entire morning meeting every Sunday for the Lord’s Supper. On this occasion absolute liberty was considered essential; though a person who took unsuitable part might possibly incur subsequent rebuke, and might even, if he persisted in ministering, be told that his “ministry was not acceptable to the brethren”.

As it might be supposed that Scripture is almost ostentatiously silent as to the conduct (from the point of view of ministry) of a communion service, the intensity of the Brethren’s convictions on this subject may well excite surprise. They reached their conclusion in this way. The Lord’s Supper is the witness and bond of Church union, and is thus in a peculiar sense a “Church occasion”. Correspondingly, the Church is the peculiar sphere of the Holy Spirit’s action in ministry. Hence the obligation of associating liberty of ministry with the breaking of bread.

Whether this argumentation be cogent or not, it is