Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/247

 the energy and illumination of the indwelling Spirit of God.

On the other hand, there was a certain tendency to lapse into an antinomian habit of mind. It was so to speak the “mission” of the Brethren to emphasise the contrast between law and gospel, to insist on the freedom of Christian service, and to disparage the conception of duty in favour of the conception of privilege. The danger was that duty might slip into a somewhat obscure background of thought, and that people might forget that if a sense of privilege proved an insufficient motive to a right act the obligation to it remained unimpaired. I once heard a local teacher observe in one of their assemblies that it was “better to do wrong than to do right merely from a sense of duty”; but this sentiment elicited on the spot the most determined opposition from his own flock, and would have done the same, I have no doubt, in almost any of the meetings of the Brethren. Yet I would hesitate to say that even so extreme a view may not have been the index of a real peril arising from the general tone of the teaching of the sect. The first three chapters of the Ephesians were far more prominent in their ministry than the last three, and as time went on practical exhortations of a homely and pointed kind were liable to be almost resented in their meetings. Nevertheless it is not fair to call their theology antinomian.

Marsden refers to yet another charge against the Brethren, that they did not pray for “the presence and influence of the Holy Ghost”. The truth of the matter is very simple. They did not pray that they might receive the Holy Ghost, because they had no misgiving that they had already received Him. On the other hand, that they ever questioned the propriety of praying for