THE DOCTRINE OF
CHRIST,
AND BETHESDAISM
We are bound to receive one another, but only, as Christ
received us, to the glory of God. Rom. 15: 7. Does this mean to receive one who
brings not the doctrine of Christ, or those that receive such an one to the
dishonour of the Father and the Son?
The principle of welcoming every
Christian, walking as such, is consistent with the resolute refusal of all who
dishonour His name, whether morally, doctrinally, or by association. 1 Cor. 5
is no plainer for rejecting an immoral professor, than 2 John is for refusing
those that do not hold a true Christ. Their alleged good qualities ought not to
accredit them: the word of God as clearly bars it, as Christ's person and work
demand our subjection. To be neutral where the truth is at stake is to partake
of the evil deeds of His adversaries.
2 John is decisive that it is
not enough to be sound personally in the faith. Even a woman, the elect lady,
and her children, are carefully warned by the apostle of their direct
responsibility, if they received one who did not bring the doctrine of Christ.
"If any one cometh unto you, and bringeth not this teaching, receive him not
into your house, and give him no greeting; for he that giveth him greeting
partaketh in his evil works" (ver. 10, 11, R.V). Thus distinctly is the
principle laid down by the Holy Ghost, that the simplest saints who countenance
the confessor of a false Christ partake of his evil deeds, even without
imbibing the evil doctrine. A spiritual mind would feel that, dreadful as it is
to fall into such heterodoxy, in a certain sense more guilty is he who,
professing the truth of Christ, consents to fellowship with one that denies it.
"Now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth." Neutrality in such case is
heinous sin, and this proportionate to knowledge.
Thus 2 John proves
that absolute refusal of this worst evil is due to the Son of God. The evil
admits of no hesitation or compromise. Had the elect lady, spite of the
apostolic warning, obstinately received into her house one who brought not the
truth of Christ, she must have identified herself with the deceiver and its
consequences. Vain the plea that she had been a dear child of God, both in
faith and walk: the written word nevertheless pronounces her a "partaker of his
evil deeds;" and God's word is better than all our reasonings and all our
feelings. Whatever the motive, she had knowingly disobeyed and committed
herself and her house to high treason against Christ. She had more or less
sanctioned that which to the last degree denied and dishonoured the Lord of
glory. Hence, till she cleared herself from the sin, in the sight of God and
His saints, she had sunk morally into complicity with it. The better her light,
the worse to behave as if she had none. To receive her in such circumstances
would be to participate in similar wickedness, however men may ridicule it to
their own foul shame. Indeed to receive her thus would be receiving her not to
God's glory but to His shame, because it is barefaced indifference to the
affront put on His Son. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the
Father." "He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which sent
Him."
From the first those called "Brethren" have proved that they do
not make light of ecclesiastical evil, by separating from all unscriptural
associations, even if Christians join. But they have hitherto refused to put
indifference to the Christ of God in the same category with offences against
the unity or the discipline of the assembly. Party spirit on either hand may
seek to class all together. But it is as unscriptural as it is unholy so to
exaggerate ecclesiastical offences (of which all sects are guilty), or so to
extenuate deep and damnable denial of Christ, which characterises only the
worst antagonism to God. His word warrants and demands this distinction, which
no sober saint used to doubt, and none would now unless carried away by
worthless theory or straits of false position.
The evil doctrine
against Christ, which has given us most trouble for thirty years, is that,
apart from imputation or vicarious suffering, Christ came as a man and an
Israelite into a condition of distance and inflictions from God, in which "He
was made experimentally to prove the reality of that condition in which others,
but more especially Israel, had sunk themselves, by their disobedience to God's
holy law, a condition out of which He was able to extricate Himself, and from
which He proved that He could extricate Himself by His own perfect obedience"
(B.W.Newton's - "Remarks on the Sufferings" etc. p. 12).
"And Jesus, as
man, was associated with this place of distance in which man in the flesh was,
and He had through obedience to find His way to that point where God could meet
Him as having finished His appointed work- glorify Him and set Him at His own
right hand, in the heavenly places; and that point was death- death on the
cross- death under the wrath of God" (ib. pp. 31, 32).
"He was exposed,
for example, because of His relation to Adam to that sentence of death, that
had been pronounced on the whole family of man" (B. W. N.'s "Observations" etc.
p. 9).
"The mission of John must be regarded as an all-important era, not
only in the life of the Lord Jesus, etc.... Indeed unless grace be the same as
law, and destruction the same as salvation, the infinite importance of that era
cannot be denied" (lb. pp. 10, 11).
"Moreover, the exercises of soul which
His elect in their unconverted state ought to have... such exercises, yet
without sin, Jesus had" (ib. p. 26).
"The anointing of the Spirit would
never have come on Him at Jordan, unless He had been fore-ordained and
certainly known as the victim to be slain at Calvary" (ib. p. 32).
It
is true that, when this deadly poison was analysed and the godly stood aghast,
Mr. N. printed an "Acknowledgment of Error" in applying Rom. 5: 19 (first
clause) to Christ. But this did not satisfy even his most trusted associates,
who owned solemnly in print that it was an elaborate system, permeating their
views of scripture generally, and quite as fatal as any one had charged on
them. One indeed warned that souls resting on what they had taught for years
could not be saved. For Christ was thereby made by birth to be in man's
distance from God, and especially in Israel's by a broken law! obnoxious
therefore to the two-fold penalties, not vicariously, but by association as one
of them!! But He extricated Himself by obedience, faith, and prayer, out of
some of those inflictions by which He was threatened, passing by baptism into
grace- from Sinai to Zion! But the exercises which the elect when unconverted
ought to have (!) if possible were His!! Yet He had, notwithstanding, to find
His way to a point where God could meet Him - death under God's wrath! If this
be not a systematic and complete overthrow of "the teaching of Christ " in
scripture, words are meaningless. No heretic more thoroughly or subtly debased
Christ; some like Irving taught more truth than B. W. N. It is a denial, not a
confession, of Christ coming in the flesh: which truth does not mean the bare
fact, but the divine person of Him who came in flesh. He, and He alone, born of
woman, might have come otherwise; but thus He was pleased, for God's glory and
the reconciliation by His death of man and all the universe heavenly and
earthly, to come in flesh. Had Newtonism been true, Christ must have died for
Himself - could not for us, for creation or for God's own glory. Again, if He
be supposed to extricate Himself by good works and ordinances, the truth is
overthrown in this way too. And if His death were still needful for Himself to
be saved (error usually being incoherent), as well as to get the anointing of
the Spirit, His person is denied, and all hope of saving others wholly and
necessarily destroyed.
I am grieved to add that the blinded author of
this fundamental heterodoxy printed "A letter on subjects connected with the
Lord's Humanity;" in which, after the so-called Acknowledgment of Error, he
re-affirmed the principles of both the "Remarks" and the "Observations" which
had horrified even his own oldest friends and most of his partisans. Arianism
etc. on the one side, and perhaps Irvingism on the other, deny the Lord's glory
more openly; but does any false system more thoroughly than his make Jesus
anathema? Compare 1 Cor. 12: 3.
When the meeting at Bethesda (Bristol)
admitted several partisans of Mr. N. and thus occasioned a separation far and
wide among "Brethren," it had been for years fully owned as enjoying
intercommunion. Hence, there is no honesty in comparing that meeting with
individuals coming from the national body or from dissent. How far Bethesda
really coalesced, it may be hard to say: still it was an accomplished fact, and
no question was raised till the crisis of 1848 came, when reasons were sought
to palliate the fatal deed of receiving the known followers of a convicted
heretic.
Now we have always excepted cases of real ignorance. But what
could justify receiving persons of intelligence who came straight from his
party, eulogising and circulating the very tracts which contained the
anti-christian doctrine already described? Bethesda received them in the most
determined manner, driving out not a few souls, some of them among the most
enlightened, spiritual, and devoted there, who refused to sanction such
indifference to a blasphemy at Bristol, from which at all cost they were apart
at Plymouth and elsewhere. Not satisfied with letting these persons in, ten of
the leaders at Bethesda put forth a too famous document, in which they laboured
to defend their refusal of investigation before receiving the incriminated. The
first thing insisted on was that the Bethesda meeting should clear those who
signed it: else they would minister no more in their midst! Was it surprising
that the mass fell into the snare, and consented to vote the leaders right,
before the tracts were read, or comments allowed, in presence of the meeting?
After the breach was consummated! they held meetings in which Mr. Newton's
doctrine was condemned, especially by Mr. Muller,[1] as strongly almost as by
any outside Bethesda. God however took care to test its moral value ere long,
if a few were deceived at first.
Partly by this, and partly by other
means, Mr. Newton's partisans were got to retire from Bethesda, expressly not
waiving their claim to be there, but desiring to release the leaders from some
of their difficulties. Could this yield a moment's satisfaction to a sober
Christian? Bethesda was bound to clear itself openly of a sin of the gravest
kind openly done: mere words would not avail, nor getting rid of souls in an
underhand way. Subsequently a party was formed, a public building was taken,
Mr. Newton was had there, two of "the Ten" (Messrs. A. and W.) being found in
their midst. The movement failed; and these two leading men, to speak of no
others, after Bethesda's loud denunciation of the Newtonian blasphemy and after
their own public association with Mr. Newton, were permitted to return to
Bethesda, without the smallest confession of their notorious and flagrant sin!
All they owned was the wrong of leaving Bethesda; but they were not asked, nor
did they give, an expression of sorrow for the wickedness of fraternising with
one who still retained the main parts of his heterodoxy as to Christ. And this
after the seven meetings!
Now because we renounce all fellowship with
such ways and persons, we are covered with the bitterest reproaches possible!
We are taxed with "new tests," and I know not what. Whereas, on the face of the
matter, it was the beloved apostle, not we, who wrote 2 John. And if he
introduced no new test when he insisted on uncompromising rigour wherever a
false Christ was in question, how charge us with it who are very simply
carrying out the word of God given through him? Those who plead for laxity in
such a case, would be more consistent if they denied the authority of this
Scripture altogether.
This then was the origin of the Neutrals, or
Open Brethren as some of them prefer to be called. They more or less sided with
Bethesda, some going farther, others not quite so far, but all on substantially
the same principle, if not of receiving the partisans of an antichrist,
certainly of palliating those who so received and making "one lump" with them.
Not one meeting ever ventured to reject the most guilty leader in that neutral
result. To refuse such an one would be to give up their evil line of things.
For it is no question of receiving Christians in Christ's name,
graciously dealing with ecclesiastical ignorance. This we have always held
(save a few who played an unhappy part in the late disasters) to be thoroughly
of God; and I trust we shall ever so continue, believing and acting on it as
due to Christ. With Open Brethren it is a wholly different case from welcoming
a godly person, in spite of his sect. For they were once with us on common
ground of scripture; they owned the "one body and one Spirit," as gathered to
Christ's name. Their origin, the reason of their existence, was to defend and
maintain the reception of men tainted with the worst sin - indifference to the
truth of Christ. That they may have liked independency before, that they walk
in it and enforce it since, is true enough; but he that puts forward
independency of principle, as the plague-spot of the O.B., is blind to their
characteristic and most serious evil. And if he goes so far as to reject
individuals for independency, he must, to be consistent, abandon all the
largeness of heart which marked Brethren from the first, and the principle
which their best and wisest leaders cherished to the last,- our title of grace
to welcome godly saints out of an orthodox denomination, though independency is
stamped in various forms on all. No denomination, as such, great or small, does
or can stand on the "one body and one Spirit" of scripture for principle and
practice alike. It demands living faith ecclesiastically, and an entire
superiority to the world and flesh, which must have independency open or latent
but real.
We have ever allowed that in the ranks of Open Brethrenism
there might be individuals wholly and honestly ignorant that it is founded as a
society on indifference to a true or a false Christ. Where this is certain, one
would seek to deal pitifully with them; and no one was freer to receive such
with a grave caution than the late J. N. Darby, as almost all others of weight
have done. Timid men, ever prone to sectarian barriers, have alas! refused even
such. But no upright neutral brother would seek, wish, or submit to, such
terms: only those who have neither faith nor principle, who are ready to break
bread at Bethesda, and at Park Street, and with us too who refuse both systems,
if they were allowed. These are the worst of all and can only corrupt, as they
are already corrupted.
Is it asked, How do Open Brethren stand now?
The answer is, As they began, or rather worse. Indeed evil may grow or spread,
but does not get better or die. Scripture requires that it be judged, which is
its doom, if we are faithful to Christ. Not only did Newtonians get in and were
never put out, but some are known as Mr. J. Beaumont can testify, to play fast
and loose with the denial of everlasting punishment, in as respectable a
company as they have in England. The conduct of the leaders and meeting was
flagrant; but no meeting nor even individual seemed to mind it, beyond a
protest, which was put in the fire, and all went on together- in love so
called! but where is the truth? Where is Christ?
Granted that in some
places under strong pressure they put away a clique of these offenders; such
vigour may be now and then, here and there. But, where it is not so (and
nothing is harder than to get necessary care against error), they maintain
intercommunion all the same. They are on a free-and-easy ground, which admits
of every one's will and tries nobody's conscience. An "assembly-judgment" there
too over-rides truth and righteousness, to the deep dishonour of the Lord and
His word.
In one of their recent "Appeals" C. E. argues that a true
platform contemplates all the saints of God, as we have often said and still
say. But the O.B.'s abuse of this godly plea is to accredit, not only
Christians guilty of sin, but yet more their society got up by the
determination to shelter such from scriptural judgment. This was not the case
with any orthodox sect known to us; and therefore O.B. have no title to the
same gracious consideration. Others began for good according to their light.
Open Brethren began by palliating evil or screening evildoers, in departure
from the light they once had. To receive saints in Christ's name was never
meant to let in such as dishonour His name; which is as mighty to detect those
who treat Him lightly, whatever their pretensions, as to encourage the godly
who may be ever so ignorant. An honourable man among O.B. ought not to wish
fellowship with us, if he believe in his own policy, and ought to resent the
plea of ignorance, which, when ever true, would not be used in vain. And as to
"thirty years," what difference does this make, if the same old principle
abides?
That it does abide is plain from J. R. C's "Exclusivism"
(Glasgow, 1882); who, though wholly unknown to me, is reported to be as sober
and conscientious a representative as could be desired. Here we have the error
as lively as ever. 1 Cor. 5: 6 is perverted (p. 8) just as of old. He mocks the
idea that the whole Corinthian church was leavened, and seems to think it
absurd, if it were, to call upon them to purge out the leaven. Thus does he
convict himself and his party (for in this they have always been alike) of
guilty opposition to the word of the Lord. It was exactly because they were as
a whole leavened by the little leaven allowed in their midst, that the apostle
commanded them to purge out the old leaven that they might be a new lump, "even
as ye are unleavened.'' This was their standing in and by Christ; and, because
they were thus unleavened before God, they must purge the leaven out; for it
leavens, not the one offender only, but the whole lump. The reasoning of Mr. C.
is wholly false, but it betrays the unholy principle common to them all. It is
a question not of every individual in the Corinthian church becoming
incestuous, etc., which is truly absurd, but of the whole assembly being
defiled by the evil they knew and did not judge. Hence the restoration was, not
merely through discipline nor only self-judgment of the wicked person, but by a
deep work in the assembly also: "in all things ye have approved yourselves to
be clear in this matter." (2 Cor. 7: 11.)
The Open Brethren are thus
fundamentally at fault. Their distinctive difference is corruption in principle
now, as more than thirty years ago. I should not, I confess, turn to an
Anglican divine to find spiritual instruction on such a theme, considering how
the National Establishment stands condemned in practice by its own Homily for
Whitsunday (second part). But it is painfully instructive to see how Dean
Alford disproves and rejects the same unholy lack of intelligence as in the
Open Brethren's argument for their party. "Are you not aware that a little
leaven imparts a character to the whole lump? That this is the meaning, and not
'that a little leaven will, if not purged out, leaven the whole lump,' is
manifest from the point in hand, viz. the inconsistency of their boasting:
which would not appear by their danger of corruption hereafter, but by their
character being actually lost. One of them was a fornicator of a fearfully
depraved kind, tolerated and harboured: by this fact, the character of the
whole was tainted." (The Greek Test. ii. 507, fifth ed.) What Mr. C. assails
unwittingly through his false position is the apostle's "theory" as well as
practice as to defilement. Equally below the Anglican are his unfaithful
remarks on 2 John. We do not say that the lady, if she had received him who did
not bring the doctrine of Christ, was to be treated "exactly as you would
treat" the anti-christian teacher himself, but that she thereby became a
partaker of his evil deeds. So Bethesda and the Open Brethren have fallen in
similar cases.
Their point of departure is so anti-scriptural, that
their most recent and cautious apologists cannot but expose their party badge
to the withering condemnation of scripture. Having left God's word, their
prudent course (humanly speaking) would be, like their delinquent antipodes, to
attempt no self-defence but wrap themselves up in silent pride.
Scripture
is not silent as to their great sin. "Come out," therefore, brother, that you
partake not of the sins and so receive not of God's strokes.
1 As much
is made of J. N. Darby's visit to George Muller. after these meetings, it may
be stated that Mr. Darby's hopefulness was not shared by his brethren, who knew
that Bethesda never owned its sin in receiving Mr. Newton's partisans, and
never repented of the false principles in the Letter of the Ten (adopted by a
formal vote of its constituents). It never so much as noticed the sin, after
the seven meetings, of receiving back two of the Ten who had gone out and
publicly supported Mr. Newton before all Bristol! In the face of grave facts
like these, what was the value of theoretic censure of the doctrine? Mr.
Muller's rude repulse only compelled Mr. Darby to feel, as others felt, the
hollowness of Bethesda throughout. Mr. Darby's power lay in expounding the
word, not in disciplinary action, as he used to own freely throughout his life.
As he once said to me long ago, "my favourites turn out scamps." This was never
more applicable than in his later years, when they carried him away.