William Blair Neatby

“ With every desire to enter sympathetically into the point of view of the Brethren, it can scarcely be denied that in this respect they are hopelessly inconsistent. If it be presumption to recognise elders without apostolic ratification (direct or indirect) , why should it not be presumption to hold an open meeting without miraculous gifts? Indeed it would seem to most people that miraculous gifts have a much closer connexion with liberty of ministry than apostolic ratification with the office of the eldership. ”

“ Otherwise, the spectacle would never have been witnessed of good men dreading the discipline of an “assembly” that they knew beyond a doubt to be scandalously in the wrong. Amongst Open Brethren there is probably very little of such a feeling. Darbyism, profoundly wise in its generation, knew the value of mysterious and awful claims. ”

“ No chill doubt seems ever to have struck to their hearts upon the recollection that we have no instance in Scripture of ecclesiastical excommunication without apostolic ratification.
But the Darbyites have always wielded the weapon of excommunication with all the assumption of the Church of Rome itself, and within their little sphere, marvellous as the statement may seem, they have inspired hardly less terror. A young man, just “received into fellowship,” once observed to me that if he were ever “put out” he would never lift up his head again. ”

“ Yet it is extraordinary that the Brethren, whose views are so high and peculiar with regard to the Holy Spirit’s present energy within the special sphere of the Church, should think that the Church lacks the means of distinguishing men accredited of God as elders or pastors; or that, distinguishing them, the Church is incompetent to give them such recognition as would ensure to them authority over all loyal members. ”

“ But in truth neither Darby nor his leading associates would have consented to any formal recognition, even though it were entirely severed from so much as the semblance of ordination. Their jus divinum would have at least retreated into the background, since undoubtedly the ordinary congregationalist principle practically tends, be the theory what it may, to democratic authority. Now the leaders of Darbyism were High Churchmen to the core, and the last thing they would have tolerated would have been even a thin end of the wedge of democracy. ”

“ But according to the theory of Darbyism all Christians, whether they respond to this duty or not, are already, by the very fact of their being Christians, in fellowship with the Brethren. Were it otherwise, they say, the Brethren would themselves be only a sect. Though Christians may not prize or even know their privileges, yet every acknowledged Christian has the same right to sit at the Table of the Lord as the most venerable Plymouth Brother. The leaders insisted strenuously that there could be no membership with “Brethren” other than membership in the Church of God. ”

“ In addition to all that might very reasonably be urged against it by practical men, it has laboured under the more fatal drawback of a certain speculative sublimity that estranges ordinary minds. So effectually have these disadvantages operated that that principle, which may fairly be called the most fundamental that the Brethren professed, is now but little known among themselves, and seldom so much as guessed at by even well-informed outsiders. ”

“ The assembly in London have weighed, and I with them, the case, and counted him as either excommunicated or in schism. I put the two cases, for I only speak of the principle. I take part in this act, and hold him to be outside the Church of God on earth, being outside (in either case) what represents it in London; I am bound by Scripture to count them [sic] so. I come to Sheffield; there he breaks bread, and is—in what? Not in the Church of God on earth, for he is out of it in London, and there are not two churches on earth, cannot be, so as to be in one and out of another. ”

“ Darby’s language, if it were the only evidence before us, would justify the conclusion that the Brethren claimed inspiration. “This is the real question, ... whether I am to look to God or to man—to God’s presence in the assembly, or to man’s competency by acquired attainments. Can I be satisfied with the latter without some very clear proof that the former is not to be sought—that God has abandoned the assembly of His saints? For if there, is He not to make His presence known? If He do, it is a manifestation of the Spirit in the individual who acts ”

“ The Brethren have of course always been thorough believers in the practicability of a “pure communion,”—that is to say, of a Church embracing all converted people, and to all intents and purposes containing none besides. If they speak of a Christian, they understand a person that can make a profession that is satisfactory to them of having been converted to God. ”

“ But only when the kind of tribunal that wielded this power is considered does the dramatic character of the situation fully disclose itself. It might be a very small and unlettered company, composed of individuals little fitted to inspire awe by any personal qualifications. Such a company could pronounce against a man who might have made his mark on the great world without, a sentence of excommunication that would blast his reputation where alone he had troubled to possess one, deprive him of almost all his friends, and well-nigh make (to outward seeming) an end of his usefulness ”

“ The extent to which the Brethren carried the principle of liberty of ministry was rather arbitrarily fixed. Most of them (the very few exceptions were strictly confined to the Open Brethren) set apart the entire morning meeting every Sunday for the Lord’s Supper. On this occasion absolute liberty was considered essential; though a person who took unsuitable part might possibly incur subsequent rebuke, and might even, if he persisted in ministering, be told that his “ministry was not acceptable to the brethren”. ”

“ A censorious person would doubtless lay the blame on his rival. A humble-minded person would be grievously distressed in his conscience lest it should be he that had marred the harmony of “the Spirit’s action in the assembly”.
Moreover, the Brethren had a horror of discourses prepared beforehand for delivery at an open meeting; and even extended their dislike of premeditation to the case of sermons and lectures previously announced. ”

“ Throughout his protracted and painful illness, his frame of mind was singularly peaceful and triumphant. Subjected as he had been to a most unworthy persecution, his friends might well be pardoned if they attached to the fact even more than its real importance. ”

“ And further, in order to cast a rope, in default of a bridge, over the gulf that separated them from the primitive and supernaturally gifted churches, they adopted a vague theory of a Spirit-given ministry, and insisted still on their Christian brethren in every place following suit.
Their claim to be exclusively the recipients of the promised blessing of Matthew xviii. 20 will now be readily understood. No people could be said to meet in Christ’s Name who set Christ’s law aside in His own Church. ”

“ The force of this spiritual terrorism was felt by people who might well seem to have been fortified against it by every kind of prophylactic,—by high intelligence, great force of character, liberal culture, and not least by eminent social advantages, with all their power to exempt from servile terrors. ”

“ To him it stood for the policy that withdrew the administration from the hands of “leading brethren,” to vest it in the assembled church. ↑ “Believe, and thou hast eaten.” ↑ “When a person breaks bread, they [sic] are in the only fellowship I know—owned members of the body of Christ. The moment you make another full fellowship, you make people members of your assembly, and the whole principle of meeting is falsified. The assembly has to be satisfied as to the persons, but ... ”