any departure from truth, either in doctrine or in practice. It may be truly said that each church maintains its own standing before the Lord, as if besides there is no other. There is no charge laid to the door of one church for not having gone into the concerns of another: there is not the slightest appearance of any metropolitan relationship—the metropolitan centre was above in the glory, and all catholic claims rested there. Metropolitanism and catholicism have over been the rocks on which, through the pride of man and the working of the flesh in the church, the brightest hopes of the children of God in church matters, have made shipwreck. The want of this metropolitan centre as a universal controlling power, has been that which on every side man has sought to compensate for, by some contrivance of his own. It has led the church to feel the weakness of her position in the earth, as Israel felt the comparative weakness of their position among the nations, which led them to ask a king, who should go before them. This source of outward weakness in Israel and in the church, was the divinely appointed means for keeping ever alive that sense of weakness in themselves, and of strength alone in God, which was to produce dependence on God Himself. This is just that which it is so hard for man to be content with, in consequence of which the spirit of confederacy has been everywhere fostered, in one way or other. God’s purpose appears to have been, to keep every assembly as much dependent on Himself alone, as every individual is; each assembly having its own prescribed responsibility exclusively to the Lord, and standing or falling—not by reason of the standing or falling of others—but as it held fast, or otherwise, the Head, from whom all the joints and bands proceed. None of these Apocalyptic churches are blamed for each other’s faults. The fact of a universal fellowship in Christ was never brought in to instigate or to set aside matters of discipline in individual churches, either in doctrine or in practice. In all such matters each assembly was to be individually accountable to the Lord: they were spoken to separately, and the warning was addressed to each separately, telling the fallen or falling church that the candlestick would be removed from amongst them unless they repented.
God’s principle of independency, as illustrated in these divinely instructive epistles, is opposed to man’s principle of confederacy, wherein he seeks his escape from his weakness and want of spiritual power. It is man’s tower, which he is ever building, that his weakness be not seen: it is his covering, wherewith he seeks to hide his poverty and nakedness. These epistles seem written by the Lord of grace, as if to meet the very
