wished that the ungodly false teachers might be even cut off for their sakes. The spirit at work now was that which virtually said, “If it cannot be mine let it be broken in pieces.” Oh! the sin, the awful sin, of schism! but the sin is ours—a brother’s sin is our own, to bear in priestly power before the altar. Let this be remembered, and a brother’s sin will cause grief and not bitterness: when our brethren have sinned, then the dishonour to God and the shame to ourselves we have all to bear in tears before our God, as Daniel and Jeremiah did, who felt the sin of the daughter of their people as their own—to bear, to confess, to seek to wash away, in the power of the precept contained in John xiii. How clearly these actings prove, that real love to the Lord and value for the unity of his body had declined; that leaders wanted to maintain their own opinions and keep their own followers; and that these followers had made their leaders and their opinions the real bond of their union, instead of Christ himself, who in his blessed person binds all the holy and beloved ones of God, into the same bundle of Eternal Life with Himself, the Lord and Master of them all. Alas! how had the fine gold thus early become dim, and the silver turned to dross; and to us belongs shame and confusion of face.
It is painful to dwell on these sorrowful events in Plymouth, and to contemplate the terrible sin that sought to justify the course taken, by calumny and slander. Of all this the Lord be judge. As if however, the more a recognized principle is set aside, the greater the necessity of making a boast of it, we find Mr. Darby, on the 5th of February, 1846, writing apparently from Plymouth as follows:
“What I felt from the beginning and began with was this: the Holy Ghost remains, and therefore the essential principle of unity with his presence; for ‘whenever two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them.’****We are not stronger, nor better than others, Dissenters, &c., but we only own our bad and lost estate, and therefore can find blessing. I do not limit what the Spirit can do for us in our low estate, but I take this place where He can do it. Hence government of bodies in an authorized way I believe there is none : where this is assumed there will be confusion. It was so here, (that is in Plymouth) and it was constantly and openly said, that this was to be a model, so that all in distant places might refer to it. My thorough conviction is, that conscience was utterly gone, save in those who were utterly miserable.
“I only therefore so far seek the original standing of the church, as to believe that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, Christ will be, and that the Spirit of God is necessarily the only source of power, and that what he does will be blessing through the Lordship of Jesus. These provide for all times. If more be attempted now, it will be confusion only. If men set up to imitate the administration of the body, it will be Popery or dissent at once.”
