Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/246



This was altered to the following single stanza:

Surely nothing could be more significant; and this instance does not stand alone. At the same time such circumstances must be traced to unhealthy habits or instincts, for the theological position of Darbyism did not require them.

Closely related to this subject is the alleged antinomianism of the Brethren. This charge has been based on the tenet that Christians are not under the moral law; but those who have brought the charge have not sufficiently attended to the ambiguity of the incriminated expression. They have inferred that the Brethren did not consider it a binding duty to observe the moral precepts of the law. Now if there were foundation for this charge at all, it lay only in random and irresponsible utterances which Darby and other accredited teachers would have repudiated. They would indeed have affirmed that when St. Paul says that Christians are not under the law but under grace, he cannot exclusively refer to the ceremonial law; and that the same holds good with regard to his statement that through the law we are dead to the law. They rejected as an unwarranted gloss the explanation that we are dead to the law only as to a covenant of works, and interpreted the verse in the light of the principle that we serve now “in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter”. They were far from denying that the duties of the moral law are duties now and for ever, but they maintained the insufficiency of the law as a guide to a life lived in