Darbyism and Its New Bible/Appendix B
APPENDIX B.
Mr. Darby, in letter to Mr. Spurr of Sheffield, Feb. 19, 1864 concerning an act of excommunication, a letter since published, says, “I take part in this act, and hold him to be outside the Church of God on earth, being outside what represents it in London. I am bound by Scripture to count him 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 of God on earth, cannot be, so as to be in one and out of another.”
Mr. Kelly in his lectures on the Church of God, pp. 32, 33, speaking of their assemblies as the recovery of the Church, which is the only solid divine rock, says, “I cannot doubt that its recovery in any measure is vouchsafed of God, in view of the Lord’s speedy coming.” And again, “I call upon you all to beware lest Satan should, in any insidious way, lead you from the only solid divine rock in the midst of the rising surges of apostacy.”
Mr. Patterson in his Blackrock lectures (p. 32), calls the Church the City of Refuge, of which their meetings are now the expression on earth. He says, “The Temple at Jerusalem was an empty house, and Israel an untoward generation. The assembly was now ‘the city of refuge’ for the slayer of blood, where those who bowed to the guilt of their Messiah’s blood could flee;” and in the note adds, “The assembly of God is ever since the city of refuge’ for the poor Jew; guilty of his Messiah’s blood, and fleeing to it he is safe from the avenger of blood.”
Mr. Stoney, in lectures and addresses delivered in Manchester, June, 1873 (pp. 15, 16), says: “One thing more—what I believe has done more detriment to the truth than any one thing yet, is the Gospel without the Church. I am bold to say it, and I say it anxiously; I have lost friends by it, because I have tried to maintain what is the truth. … There are those who have no Church, while they have derived their Gospel from us. We have heard of the gathering good into vessels. They have no vessels at all.” And again, “It is not that I regret the work of those to whom I have alluded, but I would not co-operate with them, I would not touch the net while they were touching it.”
Note.—Churchism here goes far enough to satisfy the most extreme. The last gentleman even saying that he would not help to cast the net for souls, or draw it in, whilst others were touching it who were not in his community. This is exclusiveness with a vengeance in a very literal sense.
But many lessons are derived from Old Testament histories. David began as a “little in his own eyes,” yet Solomon was great, and had a navy, with “ships of Tarshish,” freighted with a cargo consigned to Jerusalem. The vesssels were observable, and so was the cargo.