Henry Groves

“ Here again we would remind all, that at this time there was no charge whatever made of heresy or false doctrine,—nothing had been brought forward against those separated from, touching even remotely the foundation 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. ”

“ When I reflect that I am a poor sinner, saved by mere mercy, standing only in Jesus Christ for acceptance, in myself vile, it is, evidently, an awful thing, to take discipline into my own hands. Who can judge, save God? This is my first thought.”
“Man’s will is that which brings in everlasting destruction. It may be modified, but the principle is altogether false. There is no such thing as voluntary action, on man’s part, in the things of God: it is acting under Christ, by the Spirit. The moment I get man’s will, I get the devil’s service, and not Christ’s. ”

“ What means the allusion made to the non-atoning character of the sufferings of others? It is as if it were altogether forgotten that the atonement of the Cross of Christ was not the result of death in the abstract, but the result of the victim being what he was, the Anointed One of God, the Only-begotten of the Father. It is hard to conceive where the heart and conscience of any one could be, who could pen the last sentences in the quotation we have made; as if all the merits of the Cross arose not out of the wonderful fact that it was God who was making the propitiation. ”

“ The unwary, the uninstructed, the fascinated, seeing the beauty of the garb in which error is thus dressed up, call it “precious truth”—precious only because they have not dug down to its foundation. This led many godly and devoted saints in 1848, to follow the false teachings of one teacher, and the same has led many since with far less excuse to follow the false teachings of another, and the result has been the same; and the ultimate tendency of the doctrines will have to be learnt in the teachings of those who have not the power to cover over the nakedness of the error. ”

“ Individual acts of evil, while involving those who are guilty of them in the punishment that is due, pass away and often ultimately lead to a restoration in grace, and to a strengthening of the fallen in the ways of holiness and peace; but it is otherwise when a “law” of wickedness becomes dominant, or when a principle of evil takes possession of the mind; it grows, it ripens, it brings forth fruit, and sows itself wider and wider, and in the end becomes a devastating torrent, whose course is marked by the destruction and the misery that it causes. ”

“ To some these years may appear fraught with evil, but when looked at from within the veil, in the higher light of God’s wisdom and mercy, and when over the havoc and the storm the guiding star of infinite love is seen, the clouds are found big with blessing, even though human pretensions have been unmasked, high sounding words sifted, and lofty claims brought down. ”

“ We could make godly hearts shudder in the recital of much, that in the utterance bespeaks the most heavenly realizations of that which is the most intensely spiritual, uttered by those in bondage to some of the darkest delusions that have darkened the checkered history of the professing church. God teaches us, by permitting such things to arise, that we must cultivate not an ideal and pictorial christianity, but one that makes all the lovely pictures living figures. ”

“ In the rise and progress of those fatal principles of which we have been writing, we have seen how the holier the truth, and the more heavenly the doctrine, the more terrible is the delusion to which those who maintain them are exposed if they cease to abide in humble dependence on Christ and His word. The magnitude of the evils developed will always be in proportion to the greatness of the truths professed; for the higher the pinnacle the greater the fall. ”

“ As we have already noticed, each church occupies a place of its own, having an individual responsibility to the Son of Man, who upholdeth them all, unseen by man, witnessing all that goes wrong, and with his eyes of fire not overlooking any departure from truth, either in doctrine or in practice. It may be truly said that each church maintains its own standing before the Lord, as if besides there is no other. ”

“ This is, alas, no uncommon thing, for when the freshness of a new found principle has passed away, when the joy of a recently discovered truth fades, when numbers increase who come into truth neither in its original love nor power, but who hold it in deference to a favourite teacher, rather than in allegiance to the Lord, and maintain it rather for its own sake than for Christ’s, the result inevitably is, that holding the truth out of its life-giving centre, Jesus, all ends in confusion, man, ultimately, taking the place of God. ”

“ The rule here laid down is virtually this, that every act of discipline is the act of the Holy Ghost. Let it be asked, if there is difference of judgment in any cases under consideration, which way does the Spirit side? The majority are not always in the right, and the strongest have not always most of the Spirit. But what if there has come in that incapacity to judge of which Mr. Darby has cautioned so wisely? What if “an incapacity of conscience to discern right and wrong,” has come in upon the rulers of a Church? ”

“ The Spirit of God has not failed; the Comforter, the Advocate, the Interpreter, remains still the witness of an ever-faithful God, who, although much of His truth is again and again lost sight of in the rubbish that man accumulates over it, yet does He bring again the forgotten truth to the surface, making it—so to say—a new life to those who lay hold on it, and thereby introducing a fresh element of power, and in the direction most needed. Truth quickened by the Holy Ghost in the heart, is the power of God ”

“ The days of our earthly pilgrimage are gliding away; we profess not to be superior in light and attainment to other believers. We know ourselves to be weak. We confess it to God; we do not desire needlessly to talk about it. We seek to enjoy the truth in secret, and to serve Him in conscious weakness: to avoid all heartless, thorny, and unprofitable controversy; to be in fellowship with all who love our Lord Jesus, and who do not require anything which we cannot grant as the price of that fellowship. ”

“ No sooner is the name of “a body” assumed, and “a corporate action” maintained, outside the limited sphere of the two or three, who are gathered in the name of Jesus; than those, so taking to themselves such corporate responsibilities and powers, become virtually a confederacy, a sect, a body of their own, be the name by which they are called what it may. The leader of the party is never the leader in everything. ”

“ Metropolitanism and catholicism have over been the rocks on which, through the pride of man and the working of the flesh in the church, the brightest hopes of the children of God in church matters, have made shipwreck. The want of this metropolitan centre as a universal controlling power, has been that which on every side man has sought to compensate for, by some contrivance of his own. It has led the church to feel the weakness of her position in the earth, as Israel felt the comparative weakness of their position among the nations, which led them to ask a king, who should go before them. ”

“ Truth fears no error, and light dreads no darkness: this it is needful to remember, or man will come to fight the Lord’s battles with an arm of flesh. Had the truth been the only thing to have been defended in the present conflict, the antagonists of error would have been content with the armour of light;” they would not have gone to buckle on Saul’s armour, or to use his sword and his bow; they would have been content with the five smooth stones from the brook of the water of life, and have met the evil in faith, with the sling and with the stone. ”

“ Had this stupendous thought been pervading the writer’s thoughts, could he have written that saints who suffered for Christ would “abhor the falsehood that their sufferings atoned.” Truth has lost its power when such truisms are uttered, as that a sinner cannot by suffering atone for a sinner. The heresies of 1848 left the cross very much untouched—the precious blood remained still the simple and single ground of atonement before God, and the only power of cleansing for the conscience to the sinner. ”

“ We meddle not with things too high for us; as in ourselves lost and guilty, we make Jesus our only refuge. We meet to exhort one another, and to wait patiently on God; we publish the glad tidings to the world, and the Lord gives testimony to the word of His grace. Far removed from strife and contentions, we are not over anxious what man may think of us, so long as we can walk in spiritual comfort, and promote the cause of Jesus. ”

“ None can take a place of independency as if he had nothing to do with another’s fall, but all are called to realize that if one member suffer, all suffer, and if one sin all need to confess; let the faithful, therefore, amidst their sorrows and their tears, think of and pray for those who occupy so sorrowful a place in the church of God, and unfeignedly thank God, that the evil he saw as a secret poison working within, he has brought to light, in which the church shall know that He searcheth the hearts and trieth the reins. ”

“ But if light is made to consist in knowledge rather than in holiness, this will ever be the case; for knowledge, at best, is but in part, and that part driven to an extreme, as it ever will be, unless love hold the helm, and holiness guide the vessel, will end in nothing better than the clang of the sounding brass and the tinkling cymbals, pleasant to the ear of the carnal it may be, but hateful to God, and profitless to the Christian’s great end and aim—God Himself and His glory. ”

“ We here bring our relation of matters as they occurred in Plymouth, in the first and in the second stage of its history, to a close, on which God in letters of fire had written Ichabod; wherein original principles of truth had been violated, and the command to walk in brotherly love, trampled in the dust. Still God is true, though every man be found a liar, and his revealed truths are none the less our guide, because man in his pride has become a fool in his attempt to carry out God’s purposes by his own plans carried out in his own wisdom. ”

“ This, the day of Pentecost brought down to the church, when, endued with power from on high, the risen church—risen from the grave of Jesus, and standing as those who had been “quickened together,” and “raised up together” with Him—bore witness that the old was passing away, and that in Christ must all things now be made new.
Had sin not marred and apostacy not corrupted the simplicity of truth in man’s hand, the pathway of the church would have shone brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. But notwithstanding man’s failures, God has not failed ”

“ God’s principle of independency, as illustrated in these divinely instructive epistles, is opposed to man’s principle of confederacy, wherein he seeks his escape from his weakness and want of spiritual power. It is man’s tower, which he is ever building, that his weakness be not seen: it is his covering, wherewith he seeks to hide his poverty and nakedness. These epistles seem written by the Lord of grace, as if to meet the very circumstances in which we find ourselves placed, when the pure gold has been dimmed, and the silver mixed with dross. ”

“ It is a terrible thing to charge saints with blasphemy, and to call those differed from, blasphemers, even when the charge can be substantiated by the most clear demonstration; but when with lightness and levity such solemn awful words are thrown at those eminently godly; when men owned and honoured of God are thus stigmatised, because they bow not to the idol set up, what remains but to carry out the Apostolic command, and have nothing to say to him, “Who is called a brother, if he be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner.” ”

“ We know that we have been misrepresented, evil spoken of, unjustly condemned. The day will declare it; but oh! when the soul is really conscious that accusations are false, they are harmless as the roar of the distant thunder. ”