selves at a distance have repudiated this new assumption, but we ask them whether the evil of this new overbearing ecclesiasticism has been judged according to the theory of discipline acknowledged and acted on by them in reference to others; and whether, if true to the actings that they have held up for universal imitation, they ought not to have treated the new church system advocated by the Darby party in London as they treated what they called “a new church system” in Ebrington Street? But in all these matters, the different measure measured out to themselves and to others, is but too painfully manifest.
There is another point in the present exhibition of Darbyism, and that is, the substitution of conscience for the written Word; and this is a matter of vital importance. It seems strange that those who began with the Word as their rule of life and their guide in church order, should in their church actings speak of the “consciences of godly saints violated,” rather than the precepts of the written Word broken. Need brethren in Christ be reminded, that a conscience unguided by, or going beyond the Word, is the worst of all tyrants, the most unprincipled of all guides; yet direct appeal to the Word and to the testimony is often entirely set aside, by the declaration that these are matters in which conscience alone is to be the guide, and acts of discipline as we have seen performed, on charges of which avowedly the Word takes no cognizance whatever. Conscience unguided by the Word, ever has and ever will lead its votaries to ruin. It is as if a pilot were to use a compass in an iron-built ship without the power of adjustment, which influenced by that of which the vessel is com posed, will not more certainly strand it in some unexpected hour, than will the consciences of those who trust to them, strand them on some shore for which they never intended to make sail, and toward which they never dreamt they were hastening. If the compass be wrong, what, though the chart be right; destruction will inevitably follow.
The infidel sets aside the Word of God because his “verifying faculty” cannot receive it; and the Darbyite rejects simple reference to the Word, because “a godly conscience” is to be trusted, the godliness of which the man himself is to be the judge! This may be but the small end of the wedge, but it will sooner or later undermine reverence for the written Word in those who hold it, as certainly as the setting up of the “verifying principle” in the heart of the unbeliever does. The principles are identical. But has this sprung out of the teaching and guidance of one who has so well warned us against the treachery of conscience in the saints? It may be well to ask the question; but truths advocated when
