of humility,” “the Lord’s presence at the table violated,” but we will ask all who read these London proceedings to judge where the self-will seems most to be—who have the greatest need to be humbled—who have violated the sacred name, presence, and blood of Jesus, and the consciences of the blood-bought people? Who? The excommunicators or the excommunicated? What, we most solemnly ask, is the ground of offence and cause of these wholesale excommunications? There is no false doctrine charged, and those concerned are not even accused of a laxity of discipline, as falsely charged against Bethesda; but there lies at the bottom of all these actings, the same spring, whether the case of Peckham, Sheffield, or Bristol, be considered, and that charge is the one twice given by the Priory rulers connected with these excommunications (pp. 15-30), the charge of “Independency ,” though used by them in a different sense, no doubt. The aim of “The One Assembly” under the leadership of Mr. Darby and his friends is to establish a church authority of their own, of which they are to form the centre; and, in order to maintain it, this wholesale discipline is necessary, and we are told that “to ignore the discipline of the assembly in London,” is “virtually to deny the unity of the body.” These monstrous theories as here explained and acted on, hang together—the ungodly discipline springing out of an unscriptural notion of what the unity of the body of Christ implies.
The Church of God, the one Bride of Christ, is confounded with the thousands of churches that have occupied their places on earth, from whom whenever the life and power of the Spirit is gone, the candlestick is removed, leaving untouched and untarnished the glory of the Lamb’s Wife. The individual assemblies which compose that part of the Church which is militant, be they small or large, are called to live and walk in the power of the grace of the Bride of Christ, which is subject unto Him in all things. The Church of the first -born written in heaven is our ensample in our church capacity and order, standing in direct responsibility to the Church’s Head alone; involving to us here a church responsibility that is limited in its extent, not extending beyond the few gathered together in the name of the Lord in any one place, but unlimited in its loyalty and allegiance to the Head, which never can allow of any interfering power, or any intervening principle; which, if recognized, will be found subversive of His place who is the one Head and the one Centre; for as nothing either ecclesiastical or personal must ever be allowed to come between the soul and Jesus, so must nothing come between the assembly and Jesus; for, if it does, it at once makes the Church the servant of man in the things of
