John Nelson Darby

“ I do not question fruits of a new nature would follow demonstrating that the faith is real, and that the Christian has to shew his faith by his works, but never by works of law, the works which God delights in are alone those which are the fruit of faith; the christian is bound, and disposed if he is one, to do good works; you do right to claim them from him, but why? because he is a Christian first. People have forgotten the simple principle that duties flow from the relationships we are already in, and cannot exist for us till we are in those relationships. ”

“ In fine, when finesse and untruthfulness, when flattery of the rich and contempt and neglect of the poor, and then caresses and threatenings and appeals to their gratitude, attract the Spirit of Christ, then while under its influence I may return. Or when avowed Sectarianism and union in testimony against brethren is that to which I wish to be a party. Till then I can have no such thought. There are saints of God there who ought to be, and I can boldly say, are very dear to me, I would do all there, every good I could. Nor have I the conscience of an unkindly feeling toward one. ”

“ I speak of this incapacity in true saints. The truth is, the soul is not, where under this influence, (for it may be upright in other things) at all in the presence of God, and sees every thing in the light of the object which governs it; and, as to these things, the influence of the enemy has supplanted and taken the place of conscience. The moral marks will be found to attach to every case of evil power.
I am satisfied that I have seen these principles distinctly at work in what has produced the system established at Plymouth. ”

“ Then we have the revelation to one cast out into the wilderness, the depository of the sorrows of the Church, and so of the providence of God—but in the Spirit, on the day typical of the rest of glory which remains. He sees Christ in the midst of the seven candlesticks; not as a servant, with his loins girt, but in holy execution of judgment as Priest, the symbols of the Ancient of Days being withal upon Him. It is not Christ on high. It is not Christ the head of one body. ”

“ Was ever such nonsense palmed on people? And yet one of my reasons is because they do not judge evil nor exercise discipline, as it is as to Ebrington Street. Mr. Newton’s alleged evil, and to my mind proved evil, deserved to be judged, and so did other evil, and it was not, but was avoided and refused to be judged. When the brethren, who certainly treated me with very little concern, whatever they did Mr. Newton, said I must be judged too, I made no difficulty: but nothing could induce Mr. Newton to allow it, and they had no courage to go any further. ”

“ True holy liberty, true divine knowledge, all and every enjoyment of blessings, and abounding in hope, and help in our infirmities, are attributed to the Holy Ghost; our good fruits are the fruits of the Spirit; our joy is joy in the Holy Ghost; our love, love in the Spirit; it is by one Spirit through Christ we have access to the Father; “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his;” ”

“ Satan is cast down from heaven; but here, all that he raises on earth against the Lamb, is cast into the lake of fire and Satan himself is bound in the bottomless pit, the history of the earth not being yet finished. The coming of Jesus, whose judgment acts on the beast and false prophet, is not the same as the angel of God’s providence and power, casting Satan into the pit. The glory and reigning of the Son of man seems to vindicate God as regards the failure of the Noah world. ”

“ We have seen that it is by faith that we are justified, redemption is through His blood, and hence the believer's being justified through faith, reconciled to God, having peace with God, is one great pillar of Christianity, Christianity itself as a foundation including the blessed revelation of the Father in the Son: for it is not as slighting His blessed person that I speak of His work, but when grace has drawn the heart to own His person, the gospel is the answer to the need the revelation of His person has created. ”

“ Nor shall I say a word of the meanness of courting the pity of strangers, by publishing every word they can scrape together, out of its context, when for years they have been calumniating their brethren, and undermining them everywhere as subverting Christianity, and it has been borne with. And when resisted openly and honestly, crying out as if they were persecuted and oppressed. Does any one believe that they have not accused of falsehood, for example, myself, Wigram, Sir A. Campbell, over and over again. ”

“ Far other is the minister of strict earthly righteousness, the earthly Jerusalem—“the people and nations that will not serve thee shall utterly perish.” Now this heavenly rule, withal, is recognized as the source of power. The kings of the earth bring their glory to it, not to corrupt Babylon, to their disgrace and ruin. ”

“ I should rejoice with unfeigned joy were every statement I have made proved to be wrong to my own shame. But, without pretending to apportion blame, to say who originated it, or helped it on, supposing it possible, and I would hope true, that all have been only led in it ignorantly; I believe that there has been a direct work of the enemy, and that to subvert the blessed truth that brethren were specially trusted with. A work which has shewn itself in doctrine, principle, and practice, as is always the case very subtily and very gradually, but surely and constantly. ”

“ Saints, beloved of God, I do not doubt were and are in it, but it was a corruption offensive to God from the beginning of its history; take a history, any history, of the church, it is a history, not of God’s institution, but of man’s corruption. History and scripture both testify of this, and no man can speak of the church of ecclesiastical history, if he be an honest man, without admitting, that it was man’s corruption, not God’s institution, or denying history and scripture alike ”

“ Living water is the Spirit; but as this acts by the word, water (not exactly living water) is doctrine, and in a good sense the word; but waters are peoples, tongues, nations and languages, and the sea the unformed mass of them. Hence rivers seem the different compartments of them, as “whose land the rivers have spoiled.” But I take it, water is always viewed as under active moral influences of some sort, when living (it may be) in power; when the sea, it may be acted on merely; when fountains, it may be the spring of their influences, as the rivers would be their course ”

“ No doubt God had gathered the first materials into unity, but the principles on the which He founded His assembly resisted, specially by Judaism, during the life of the apostles, were given up when they were gone; and the system they had resisted became that which stood before men’s eyes as the church. The free power of the Spirit, and known acceptance in an exalted Christ, ceased to be the constituent principles of those gathered; the clerical principle denying the Spirit, making elders the ministry as a clergy, that is, ordained teachers, not the gift and power of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ He can originate nothing, but he can build up with vast sagacity an immense system, out of the corruption, suited to the evil which is in us; yea, and stamped with the character of the evil in us to which it is so suited. What would money be without avarice? Or worldly power without ambition? Superstition without a natural principle of religiousness in the heart of man? Such a system may be a vast fact in the economy of divine government considered as a judgment, as Mahommedanism: or a subtler corruption, as Popery, pregnant with greater mischiefs ”

“ The dragon has now lost his place in heaven. He cannot rule the world, as thence, as the prince and god of it: but he comes as a woe and judgment from God, upon those whose end is to be destruction, and so has unlimited power over them ”

“ Now let us see what is said as to the Holy Spirit. This is directly everywhere connected with the exaltation of Christ as man to the right hand of God; that when man in the person of the Lord Jesus was exalted to the right hand of God, in virtue of His perfectly glorifying God on the cross, the Holy Ghost was sent down here to dwell in them that believe, and that this made the distinctive difference of Christians and Christianity: divine righteousness having placed man on high as the result of a work done for man’s salvation and blessing, the Holy Ghost was given to those that believed. ”

“ Truly godly people may be the instruments of helping on a system which is truly Satan’s. No one can doubt that Cyprian, who laid down his life for Christ’s name, that Augustine, that Bernard, were godly men. Yet, though one opposed Rome episcopally, and the last declared Antichrist was risen there, no one can doubt that they helped on most eminently Satan’s work in Popery. They did not perceive the bearing of certain points on the meaning and testimony of the Spirit of God.
Further, I do not call every evil I find a direct and posi­tive work of Satan. ”

“ These angels had the character of perfect righteousness both Divine and human—the golden girdle in which the certain energy and pure power of Divine righteousness is maintained and vindicated—and white robes, in which the spotlessness of human sanctity and faultlessness, as of God, is expressed. One of these now comes to shew the prophet the judgment of the great whore that is seated, in her malignant influence, on the masses of peoples. ”

“ I think it still sadder if the person in question be one who has been looked up to in the Church. It tends to shake confidence in all. But judgment has been refused in every shape to save character. If it be said that I, after the April meeting, when Sectarianism was avowed before fourteen of us, ought to have brought it before the body; I have indeed nothing to reply, but that I refrained at the instance of others, particularly Mr. Rhind, to spare Mr. Newton. Here I have always felt I may have been wrong. Further, I still state that unity has been denied, practically denied. ”

“ All this shews to an attentive mind that it is distinctive of the Christian, but though it be the bright and blessed side I must not dwell on this further, but cite what formally shews it to be distinctive of the Christian; it is, “If we are led of the Spirit, we are not under law;” our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost which we have of God; we are not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by which we are sealed for the day of redemption. What is the appeal of the apostle to the Galatians connected with justification by faith? ”

“ When we have ascertained, by the aid of the Spirit of Christ, the mind of God, we have, as far as it be history, God’s estimate of events and their explanation. But history is man’s estimate of events, and he has no right to assume that these are in prophecy at all; and it is clear that he must understand prophecy, before he can apply it to any. When he understands it, he has what God meant to give him without going farther, I do not admit history to be, in any sense, necessary to the understanding of prophecy. ”

“ The universal confession, Greek rejecting Rome, puseyites coyly flirting with it, protestants abhorring it, dissenters seeking to pull down what exists, because it stands in their way, joining Rome for this purpose, episcopalians trying to keep it together, truth or no truth, Rome itself divided through idolatry of the Virgin, and infallibility of the pope, which notoriously contradicts all history, yet increasing her sway in the world, all in confusion as all admit from the pope to dissenters, all wanting to have the church right, though all for very different reasons thinking its state wrong ”

“ Good works will be found generally much pressed, and that in a systematic way in which it works for and into the system. Truth, I mean truthfulness, will ever be wanting. This I have always found where the work of the enemy is. Connected with this is the pressing much certain doctrines, when it is safe, which form the bond of the institution, and denying them in the alleged meaning, or explaining them away, when they are pressed on them by those who detect the evil. ”

“ I have no doubt the principles of Babylon were manifested in her,—not royal power. Though Babylon was the beginning of his power in whom royal power was first displayed, yet it was specially what the confederate will of man had done; its first form was confederate will in independence of God. This is shewn in the character which constituted the whore, yet had its development by her corruption and fornication: and the effects of this are supplanted by another confederacy, which is not only apostasy, as all human will apart from God is, but active war against God’s king, the Lamb. ”

“ If he had two talents or five talents, he was to trade with them—a wicked and slothful servant if he did not; as every man had received the gift, he was so to minister the same, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God; women were to keep silence in the assemblies; men were to exercise their gifts according to prescribed order; these gifts were set in the whole church at large, and exercised according to God’s will, as a distinct member of the one whole body. ”

“ The denial of the doctrine positively stated where the influence exists, as held in any such sense, or its explanation, is the very thing that marks the power of evil. With this will be found the attributing to those who hold the truth, every kind of doctrine they abhor, where there is influence enough to have their statements believed. Popery is the plain example of this. Another mark, whatever the apparent devotedness, yea, and real devotedness sometimes, is that the spirit of the world is acquiesced in. ”

“ Thus, it was power of calling in judgment suited to the respective position of the two; one, acting on the world out of which God’s people were called; the other, judging the people which had become the world, by arresting their enjoyment of blessings from heaven; both have their application to the state of things alluded to in this short but comprehensive prophecy.
At the close of the three years and a half, their sackcloth testimony ceased by their death, through the hands of the beast of the bottomless pit; when they shall have fulfilled their testimony. ”

“ But history shews it to have been the most unholy thing that ever existed. Apostolic succession? A man must be a learned man to know if it exist, and if he is, he will know it did not; that nothing is more uncertain, if not certain that it is broken; besides, to make my salvation depend on the right succession of a set of wicked men, who put down one another in the dark ages, is rather too strong. Then, unity? The oldest churches, the Greek, counting by millions, reject and denounce it. Unity, holiness, catholicity, are a fable as regards the church ”

“ The system which so judges is alleged to maintain the unity of the Church. This may exist in different degrees, and in different circumstances. But it always attaches divine authority more or less to official position, and thus puts man in the place of God by attaching His name to man. It is not spiritual energy in man putting souls through Christ in direct relation with God, with the Father. There spiritual affections are happy and blessed. It is man eclipsing God, getting between Him and the soul. Not man revealing God, but the authority of God attached to man. ”

“ Thus, in Babylon we have wealth, corruption, sorceries, arts, luxuries, bodies and souls of men sold, fornication committed with the kings and dwellers upon earth, and they made drunk with it: [4] the principle of confederate will, but the corruption not the exercise of royal secular power as of God though it might, by seduction, rule and govern this power, and thus separate it from its Divine source, and actually set aside and hinder the unqualified assertion of its supremacy, as of God over all. ”

“ I say this much to avoid mistakes, but it is not my subject; man had duties as man, but he has failed in them; he is a sinner, and is lost, according to Christianity. The full exposition given in the Romans on this great point is, that Gentiles were lawless, the Jews law-breakers; that there was none righteous, no, not one; that every mouth was stopped and all the world guilty before God; all had sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that was in Christ Jesus. ”

“ I do not think a mind for which holiness has any charm at all, will ever love the detailing or publishing evil: and, if one has any heart, most surely not what has passed among those he loves: but God’s truth and his Church are sacred things. ”

“ It was the judgment of the word which proceeded out of his mouth: they died by that. The proper application of this is, to those who were against Him, as coming from heaven to judge those who were directly under the influence and power of apostasy. Still, the kings of the earth is wider than the ten kings, and left general: I doubt, however, whether it includes Gog, whose aim is against the land rather than the Lamb, or even the Prince of princes. With Gog, it is the gratification of covetousness—the lust of possessing. ”