John Nelson Darby

“ 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;” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Is there that which, calling itself a church, exercises authority over the mind of man according to the mind of God? We are forced to look the whole question in the face: is the existing professing church, whatever shape it may assume, a thing which God owns? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The water is clearly baptism; the builders are angels. Faith is one of seven virtues, only the first; and those that hold fast to their works shall have a place in the tower. In fourth command (iii.) we are forgiven by baptism; then he hath one repentance granted him, if he sins more he shall hardly live; man has two angels, one suggests evil, the other good. If a man is sad in an evil sort, this vexes the Holy Spirit who dwells in him, and the Spirit entreats God, and leaves him. All this part is wholly of works and man’s will, listening to the good Spirit in him. ”

“ There was no trace of any full justification by faith, though, of course, Christ is owned as having come and having died as the Saviour, along with a mass of strange allegorical interpretations.
He calls Christianity a new law; we have a very meagre reference to His dying for the forgiveness of our sins (chap. v.) , but he insists on the cross and water going together (chap. xi.) , that is, baptism, putting their trust in the cross, descend into the water; we go down into the water full of sins and pollutions, but come up again bringing forth fruit. ”

“ So the poor woman in the city that was a sinner drawn in deep humiliation to His person receives the answer, “thy sins are forgiven thee, thy faith bath saved thee, go in peace;” the thief who owned Him Lord and the Man who had done nothing amiss, and looked for the kingdom received the blessed answer “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
The other great truth which constitutes Christianity is, the presence of the Holy Ghost; that the believer receives, so that he is sealed with it and that the Spirit dwells in him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Let us speak of man. What is man before our eyes and the subject of history and of God’s dealings? Is he, was he ever, in his actual history, God’s creature as He set him up? Never! He is the corruption of what God set up and nothing else, save that one blessed One who came to save. Let me draw attention to a great principle running through scripture, that surprise may be less at my assertion, which may naturally astound many, so much do we cling to tradition ”

“ CHRISTIANITY NOT CHRISTENDOM.
The times in which we are, the question in every serious man’s mind is, “Are we to go back to popery or not?” the fears of surprised protestants; and the insolent pretensions of papists and puseyites; while the only thing that has courage by their side is infidelity, and indifference to truth, which rather favours error than truth because truth is truth, and insists on itself; the heart-sickening imbecility of those who govern, or rather, who are afraid to govern ”

“ Now I have quoted all this because, while the epistle is so full of absurdities, that people have denied that it is of Barnabas, and one sees how one falls down a precipice after we leave inspiration, yet it has by far the most truth of any of these old writings. His attributing forgiveness of sins to baptism is very natural; for when a heathen or a Jew became professedly a Christian by baptism, he did administratively enter into the privileges belonging to Christianity, though this became soon the doctrine of the efficiency of the sacrament. ”

“ The Father sending the Son was the grand and mighty basis of Christianity, and the sending of the Spirit, by both the Father and a glorified Christ, was a witness of His Lordship and exaltation, and the great testimony in the world, and that by which we know the value of the work and exaltation of One, and our relationship with the other, as sons, by grace with Him ”

“ The master is the Creator, and the son is the Holy Ghost; the stakes, those set over His people to support them; the friends called to counsel are the angels; the servant is Christ, who was set to have their messengers to support the people, but of His own mind suffered to blot out their offences. God placed in a chosen body, in which God should dwell, the Holy Spirit, which was created first of all. This body, therefore, into which the Holy Spirit was brought served that Spirit, walking rightly and purely in modesty, nor ever defiled that Spirit ”

“ But the church system was founded on an ordained clergy, with whom rested all ministry, and the sacraments as that which incorporated the laity under them, and thereby the establishment of the church on earth, not waiting for God’s Son from heaven.
I am not denying the existence of elders, or of baptism and the Lord’s supper; what I insist on is, that what has taken place is the substitution of these for the principles on which God founded His assembly in the world, and that this was immediate. The historical church is man’s system, from the beginning, in contrast with God’s ”

“ The law was given when God called out a people for Himself, the world being gone into idolatry, worshipping stocks and stones and given up to a reprobate mind: before Moses comes down from the mount with the two tables of the law, the people have made a golden calf and have cast off God altogether. ”

“ The tares which the devil sowed in the field were to remain till harvest; the mystery of iniquity already working in the apostle’s days would go on and ripen into the man of sin, and end in judgment; when the message comes from Christ, through John, to the churches, they have no authority, but are judged, and the Christian is called upon to hear what the Spirit says to them ”

“ The conscience of half Europe rose against the open, flagrant, impious iniquity of what they call the church; nay, take it altogether, the change of system shews, at the rate it has gone on, that the boasted church could not take care of its children, was incompetent to prevent the mischief. All we simple people know is, that Quiequid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi. The church cannot be trusted, it has not been able somehow to take care of itself. ”

“ He loves many strange women, turns to idolatry and the kingdom is ruined. God afterwards transfers power to the Gentiles, sets up the head of gold, leaving Jerusalem, casting down David’s throne; and men often think, if despotic, they would do all manner of wise and good things, but Nebuchadnezzar casts the faithful into the fire and gets in every sense a beast’s heart; Gentile power is corrupt, ambitious and violent; cannot, as scripture speaks, stay at home, what it describes by likening them to ravening beasts. ”

“ The epistle is found attached to the New Testament in the MSS, as in Sinaiticus, along with Hermas; he distinctly substitutes (ii.) men’s offering themselves for the burnt-offerings, and quotes the prophets as putting man’s conduct in the place of sacrifices. It is an utter departure from the gospel as found in scripture, with happy signs that he did not intend to deny it.
In Polycarp we have one of the best of these epistles, and he quotes Paul to the Ephesians: “Knowing that by grace ye are saved, not by works, but by the faith of God, through Jesus Christ,” again making it vague. ”

“ It is hard to prove a negative; but it is quite certain that neither a full redemption, nor, though the words be used once or twice, a complete possessed justification by faith, as Paul teaches it, a perfecting for ever by its one offering, a known personal acceptance in Christ, is ever found in any ecclesiastical writings after the canonical scriptures for long centuries. We have Barnabas saying they had forgiveness of sins by baptism (chap. xi.) ”

“ Peter, that delay was not “slackness concerning promise, but the long-suffering of God, not willing that any should perish;” the Lord Himself, hanging all in suspense over them, saying words, already then misinterpreted, “If I will that he tarry till I come;” but all marking the decay and ruin, and teaching to look forward to the coming of the Lord. ”

“ Men may be high church or broad church, Roman or Greek, but they are all church of some kind, or would be. They may have altars instead of tables, or cry establishments down, but if they do, they will dignify the once modest chapel with the name of church. ”

“ Christ granted to it certain remedial sacraments, to the end that it might acknowledge the difference between what is merited by nature and what it received by grace, and that as nature could bring punishment only, grace, not called grace if granted to merit, might furnish whatever appertains to salvation. ”

“ As to sacraments, I am not aware that he speaks of baptism; a passage in the Epistle to the Romans may refer to the Lord’s supper, or not. In Syriac, “I do not desire the food of corruption, neither the desires of this world; the bread of God I seek, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, and His blood I seek, which is love incorruptible;” in Greek, “I delight not in the food of corruption, nor in the pleasures of this life ”