of the church’s standing and glory. But it is hard to hold a truth when pride has to be crucified, and self put into the dust, in order to maintain it. It is kept as long as it calls for no sacrifice, and too often given to the winds, when it thwarts the heart’s self-will. It proved, however, how little the truth of the unity of the Spirit in the body of Christ was practically held, among those who boasted that they had come out of all sects, and left sectarianism all behind them. Let us remember that schism, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, &c., are among the elements of our fallen nature from which, whenever the proud heart boasts itself free, God will plunge it again in the mire of that out of which it had made its boast to have been set at liberty; for he who glories must ever glory in the Lord, seeking to walk humbly and softly before God and man.
Whenever the enemy has work to be done, he will, if possible, employ the Lord’s people to do it, thereby increasing its power for mischief. Those ever do the greatest mischief to any truth, who vehemently defend it, unless the heart and the word, the theory and the practice, go hand in hand. It is for those who hold truth to hold it in godly fear, to watch and to pray lest Satan find them unprepared, and lead them to belie in the hour of trial, what was loudly proclaimed before. The object of Satan, in the present state of things in Plymouth, was to bring into disgrace those precious truths of the heavenly calling—the unity of the Church, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit—which had formed so prominent a feature in the teaching of “the Brethren.” For some time (upwards of a year) God gave opportunity for repentance; but, instead of humiliation, there was pride; and instead of confession of sin, the justification of evil; and God again allowed the occasion to arise that should still further develop the evil that remained unconfessed and unforsaken. The seeds sown by his hand who “soweth discord among brethren” in 1845, were not slow to bear fruit. In 1847, Mr. Newton, and others with him, were accused of teaching that in connexion with the Lord, which was derogatory to his character, tending to that which would be subversive of the efficacy of the Atonement.
This led to the second Plymouth controversy, and, in the present instance, not as in the former, touching matters of prophecy and church order, but of doctrines touching the person of our Lord. There had been much taught on all sides on the experiences of the Lord as gathered from interpretations of the Psalms, that went beyond the statements and the truth of God; and unsound statements had been current for years in Plymouth, before the year in which Mr. Newton was charged with heresy. As schism had developed itself in Mr. Darby, heresy had developed in Mr.
