severally, and distinctly. Further, when intelligent Christians began to be exercised about it, and referred to the teachers at Plymouth, to clear their minds, not believing what I and others affirmed, from what we had heard and read, they were in explanation distinctly taught the same thing, and it was stated by some that none at Plymouth, had ever taught or held any thing else, I among them. Now, if public and private teaching, deliberate argument on the question, and explanation to clear the minds of those exercised, does not prove what men hold, what will? This second paragraph is then a fraud on the reader; because it conceals the fact that it only means a common unity in heaven, and has nothing to do with the Church now, more than with Abel, that is, that an individual now will be finally a member of the whole assembly of God. That is, it denies any special unity now by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Hence we have a second paragraph for unity of the saints on earth, as by one spirit baptized into one body. Here, however, Church is not used. But of this just now. There is another circumstance connected with this, I may here record. Mr. Newton has publicly taught, (strange for one who complains of Matt. xxiv. not being considered to be exclusively the Church), and taught, after being remonstrated with by Mr. Harris, when he taught it in private, that John xvii. has no application now till you come to verse 22; which I beg the reader to note. Mr. Harris urged the verse, “Sanctify them through thy truth.” Mr. Newton replied, that a saint might appropriate it individually by special faith, but that it had no application to the present time. Evidently verse 22 applies to the future, and is absolute in its form, so that the denial of the unity of the Church of God down here was confirmed in every way.[1] Indeed,
- ↑ Mr. Newton has also distinctly stated, as is well known to many resident at Plymouth, that, as to the heavenly calling, or the unity of the Church, no new light whatever had been developed from the word amongst brethren. That others, before the present movement, had held it just as clearly. The only fresh light given was to be found in the prophetic views he insisted on.
