Ministry by J. N. Darby
– Part Two


Introduction Separation from Evil, God's Principle of Unity Grace, the Power of Unity and of Gathering The Notion of a Clergyman Dispensationally the Sin Against the Holy Ghost Ministry by J. N. Darby: Previous Next

INTRODUCTION

If you have not already done so, you should read the 'Introduction' to 'Part One' which also applies to this page.

As it is stated there "The following papers had a distinctive place in connection with the revival, in the last century, of the truth relating to the assembly of God".

G. A. R.

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SEPARATION FROM EVIL,
GOD'S PRINCIPLE OF UNITY

Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, 1: 353-65
This tract still comes under severe criticism from many – some
of whom do not appear to have even read it or its sequel
Grace, the Power of Unity and of Gathering. JND says there,
"I confess, it seems to me that one who would deny the abstract
principles of that tract is not on Christian ground at all".

SEPARATION FROM EVIL, GOD'S PRINCIPLE OF UNITY
Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, 1: 353-65 This tract still comes under severe criticism from many – some of whom do not appear to have even read it or its sequel Grace, the Power of Unity and of Gathering. JND says there, "I confess, it seems to me that one who would deny the abstract principles of that tract is not on Christian ground at all".

The need of union is felt now by every right-minded Christian. The power of evil is felt by all.

Its pressure comes too near home, its rapid and gigantic strides are too evident, and affect too nearly the particular feelings which characterise distinctively every class of Christians,
- to allow them to be blind to it, however little they may appreciate its true bearing and character.
Better and holier feelings, too, arouse them to the sense of common danger, and – as far as it is entrusted to man's responsibility – the danger in which the cause of God is, from those who never did, and never would spare it.
This need is felt wherever the Spirit of God acts, so as to make the saints value grace and truth and one body.

The feelings which the sense of the progress of evil produces may be different.

Some, though they are but few, may yet trust to the bulwarks they have long looked at, but which had their force only in a respect for them which exists no longer.
Others may trust to a fancied force of truth, which it has never exerted but in a little flock, because God and the work of His Spirit were there;
others, to a union which never yet was the instrument of power on the side of good – that is, a union by concord and agreement.
While others may feel bound to abstain from such an agreed union, by reason of previously subsisting obligations, or prepossessions, so that the union tends to form only a party.
But the sense of danger is universal. That which was long mocked at as a theory is now too practically felt to be denied; though the apprehensions of the word, which made those who were subjected to that mockery foresee the evil, may be rejected and slighted still.

But this state of things produces difficulties and dangers of a peculiar kind to the saints, and leads to the inquiry, where the path of the saint is, and where true union is to be found.

There is danger, from the very blessedness and desirableness of union, of those who have long truly felt its value, and the obligation that lies on the saints to maintain it,
- being led to follow the impulses of such as refused to see it when it was spoken of from the Word,
- and to abandon the very principles and path which their own clearer apprehension of the Word of God led them to embrace from it, as foreseeing the coming storm.
They learnt from that precious Word that it was coming; and, while calmly studying it in the Word, saw the path marked out there for the believer as such, and indeed, in every time.
It is now pressed upon them to desert it for that suggested to men's minds by the pressure of the anxieties they anticipated, but which, though there may be an impulse of good in it, the Word of God itself did not furnish when inquired into in peace.
But is this the path of the saints, to turn from that which generally rejected intelligence of the Word afforded them, to pursue the light of those who would not see?
This, however, is not the only danger; nor is it my object to dwell on the dangers but the remedy.

There is a constant tendency in the mind to fall into sectarianism, and to make a basis of union of the opposite of what I have here just alluded to:

that is, of a system of some kind or other to which the mind is attached, and round which saints or others are gathered; and which, assuming itself to be based on a true principle of unity,
- regards as schism whatever separates from itself – attaching the name of unity to what is not God's centre and plan of unity.
Wherever this is the case, it will be found that the doctrine of unity becomes a sanction for some kind of moral evil, for something contrary to the Word of God;
- and the authority of God Himself, which is attached to the idea of unity, becomes, through the instrumentality of this latter thought, a means of engaging the saints to continue in evil.
Moreover, continuance in this evil is enforced by all the difficulty which unbelief finds to separate from that in which it is settled, and where the natural heart finds its ties, and, generally, temporal interests the sphere of their support.

Now, unity is a divine doctrine and principle; but, as evil is possible wherever unity is taken by itself so as to be a conclusive authority,

wherever evil does enter, the conclusive obligation of unity binds to the evil, because the unity, where the evil is, is not to be broken.

Of this we have a flagrant example in Romanism. There the unity of the Church is the grand basis of argument; and it has been the ground of keeping the world, we may say, in every sanctioned enormity, and made the name of Christianity its warrant:
- an authority to bind souls to evil, till the name itself became shameful to the natural conscience of man.
The plea of unity may then be, in a measure, the latitudinarianism which flows from the absence of principle;
- it may be the narrowness of a sect formed on an idea;
- or, it may be, as taken by itself, the claim to be the Church of God, and hence in principle to
- secure as much indifference to evil, as it is the convenience of the body or its rulers to allow, or is in the power of Satan to drag them into.
If the name of unity then be so powerful in itself, and in virtue of blessings withal which God Himself has attached to it, it behoves us well to understand what the unity He owns really is.
This it is I would propose to inquire into; acknowledging the desire for it to be a good thing,
- and many of the attempts at it to contain in them elements of godly feeling, even when the means may not carry conviction to the judgment as being those of God.

Now, it will be at once admitted, that God Himself must be the spring and centre of unity, and that He alone can be in power or title.

Any centre of unity outside God must be so far a denial of His Godhead and glory, an independent centre of influence and power;
- and God is one – the just, true, and only centre of all true unity.
Whatever is not dependent on this is rebellion. But this so simple, and, to the Christian, necessary truth, clears our way at once.
Man's fall is the reverse of this. He was a subordinate creature, an image too of Him that was to come; he would become an independent one, and he is, in sin and rebellion, the slave of a mightier rebel than himself,
- whether in the dispersion of several self-will, or its concentration in the dominion of the man of the earth.

But then we must, in consequence of this, go a step farther.

God must be a centre in blessing as well as power, when He surrounds Himself with united and morally intelligent hosts.
We may know that He will punish rebellion with everlasting destruction from His presence into the hopelessness of uncentred and selfish individual misery and hatred;
- but He Himself must be a centre of blessing and holiness, for He is a holy God, and He is love.
Indeed, holiness in us – while it is by its nature separation from evil – is just having God, the Holy One, who is love too, the object, centre, and spring of our affections.
He makes us partakers of His holiness – for He is essentially separate from all evil, which He knows as God, though as His contrary –
- but in us, holiness must consist in our affections, thoughts, and conduct being centred in, and derived from Him: a place maintained in entire dependence upon Him.
Of the establishment and power of this unity in the Son and Spirit I will speak presently. It is the great and glorious truth itself on which I now insist.

This great principle is true even in creation. It was formed in unity, and God its only possible centre.

It shall be brought into it yet again, and centred in Christ as its Head, even in the Son, by whom, and for whom, all things were created. Colossians 1: 16.
It is man's glory – though his ruin, as fallen – to be made thus a centre in his place – the image of Him that is to come; *

* See Ephesians 1. He hath made known to us the mystery of His will; that is, gathering together in one all things in Christ, in whom we have received an inheritance. J.N.D.

but alas! his imitator in a state of rebellion in this same place, when fallen.
I know not – I would venture to say no more – that angels were ever made the centre of any system; but man was.
It was his glory to be the lord and centre of this lower world – an associate but dependent Eve his companion and help in his presence. He was the image and glory of God.
His dependence made him look up; and this is true glory and blessedness to all but God. Dependence looks up, and is exalted above itself.
Independence must look down – for it cannot in a creature be filled with itself – and is degraded.
Dependence is true exaltation in a creature when the object of it is right.
The primæval state of man was not holiness, in the proper sense of it, because evil was not known.
- It was not a divine – but it was a blessed creation – state; it was innocence. But this was lost in the assertion of independence.
If man became as God, knowing good and evil, it was with a guilty conscience, the slave of the evil he knew, and in an independence he could not sustain himself in, while he had morally lost God to depend on.

With this state – for we must now descend to the present actual question of unity – with man in this state, God has to deal, if true real unity, such as He can own, is to be attained.

Now, He must be still the centre. It is not therefore in mere creative power. Evil exists. The world is lying in wickedness, and the God of unity is the Holy God.
Separation therefore, separation from evil, becomes the necessary and sole basis and principle, I do not say the power, of unity.
For God must be the centre and power of that unity, and evil exists: and from that corruption they must be separate who are to be in God's unity; for He can have no union with evil.
Hence, I repeat, we have this great fundamental principle, that separation from evil is the basis of all true unity.
Without this, it is more or less attaching God's authority to evil, and rebellion against His authority; as is all unity independent of Him.
It is a sect in its lightest and feeblest forms; in its fullest, it is the great apostasy, of which one of the characteristics, as ecclesiastical or secular power, is unity;
- but unity by subjection of man to what is independent really or openly of God because it is of His Word;
- not established by subjection to the Holy One, according to His Word,** and by the power of the Spirit working in those that are united, and by His presence, which is the personal power of union in the body.

** This is characteristic of the independent unity. I believe that it will be in an openly infidel state, and a manifestation of the power of Satan. But supposing it is not openly such, it is clear that subjection to God is shown in subjection to His Word. Now, the authority of the church is confessedly antecedent to the authority of the Word in Romanism, and the saints are not all of them allowed to be the immediate objects of God's own Word, nor act upon it – that is, be subject to it. They are to be subject to the Church: let the Church allow it or not, that makes no difference. He who allows can hinder – that is, hinder God's addressing the saints. For this is the true question of Protestantism, not man's title to the Bible merely, but God's title to address man directly by His word: more particularly to address each of His own servants, or those professedly such. J.N.D.

But this separation is not yet by judicial power, which separates – not the good from the evil, the precious from the vile, but – the vile from the precious, banishing it from His presence in judgment;
- binding up the tares in bundles, and casting them into the furnace of fire; gathering out of His kingdom all things that offend – Satan himself and his angels being cast down and all things thereupon being gathered together in one in Christ, in heaven and in earth.
Then the world, not the conscience, will be cleared from evil by the judgment which will not allow it, but early cut off all the wicked – not by the power and testimony of the Spirit of God.

It is not now the time of this judicial separation of the evil from the good in the world, as the field of Christ, by the cutting off and destruction of the wicked.

But unity is not therefore given up out of the thoughts of God; nor can He have recognized union with evil.
There is one Spirit and one body. He gathers together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad.

And now, as to the principle in general: God is working in the midst of evil to produce a unity of which He is the centre and the spring, and which owns dependently His authority.

He does not do it yet by the judicial clearing away of the wicked; He cannot unite with the wicked or have a union which serves them.
How can it be then this union? He separates the called from the evil.
- "Come out from among them and be ye separate, and I will receive you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty". As it is written, I will walk in them and dwell in them.
Now here we have it distinctly set forth. This was God's way of gathering. It was by saying, Come out from among them. He could not have gathered true unity around Him otherwise.
Since evil exists – yea, is our natural condition – there cannot be union of which the Holy God is the centre and power but by separation from it. Separation is the first element of unity and union.

We may now inquire a little further into the manner in which this unity is effectuated, on what it is based.

There must be an intrinsic power of union holding it together to a centre, as well as a power separating from evil to form it; and, this centre found, it denies all others.
The centre of unity must be a sole and unrivalled centre. The Christian has not long to inquire here.
It is Christ – the object of the divine counsel – the manifestation of God Himself – the one only vessel of mediatorial power, entitled to unite creation as He by whom and for whom all things were made; and the Church as its Redeemer, its Head, its glory, and its life.
And there is this double headship: He is the Head over all things to the Church which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. This will be accomplished in its day.

For the present we take up the intermediate period, the unity of the Church itself, and its unity in the midst of evil.

Now there can be no moral power which can unite, away from evil, but Christ.
He alone, as perfect grace and truth, detects all the evil which separates from God, and from which God separates.
He alone can, of God, be the attractive centre which draws together to Himself all on whom God so acts. God will own no other.
- There is no other to whom the testimony could be borne, who is morally adequate to concentrate every affection which is of God and towards God.
Redemption itself, too, makes this necessary and evident: there can be but one Redeemer, one to whom a ransomed heart can be given,
- as well as where a divinely quickened heart can give all its affections, the centre and revelation of the Father's love.
He, too, is the centre of power to do it. In Him all the fulness dwells. Love – and God is love – is known in Him. He is the wisdom of God and the power of God.
And, yet more than this, He is the separating power of attraction, because He is the manifestation of all this, and the fulfiller of it in the midst of evil; and
- this is what we poor, miserable ones want who are in it; and it is what, if we may so speak, God wants for His separating glory in the midst of evil.
Christ sacrificed Himself to set up God in separating love in the midst of evil. There was more than this – a wider scope in this work; but I speak in reference to my present subject now.

Thus Christ becomes, not only the centre of unity to the universe in His glorious title of power, but – as the manifester of God, the One owned and set up of the Father and attracter of man –

He becomes a peculiar and special centre of divine affections in man, round which they are gathered as the sole divine centre of unity.

For indeed, as the centre, necessarily the sole centre, "he that gathereth not with me scattereth".
And such, as to this point, was the object even, and power of His death:— "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me".
And more specially, He gave Himself not for that nation only, but that He might gather together in one the children of God which were scattered abroad.
But here again, we find this separation of a peculiar people, He "gave himself for us, that he might purify to himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works".
He was the very pattern of the divine life in man, separate from the evil, by which it was universally surrounded;
- He was the friend of publicans and sinners, piping in grace to men by familiar and tender love; but He was ever the separate man.
And so He is as the centre of the Church and High-Priest. "Such an high-priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" – and, it is added, "made higher than the heavens".
Here in passing we may remark, that the centre and subject of this unity then is heavenly.
A living Christ still became the instrument of maintaining the enmity, being Himself subject to the law of commandments contained in ordinances. Ephesians 2: 15.
Hence, though the divine glory of His person necessarily reached over this wall as a fruitful bough of grace to poor passing Gentiles without
- – and it could not be otherwise, for where faith was, He could not deny Himself to be God, nor what God was, even love – yet in His regular course, as a man made of a woman, He came under the law.
But by His death He broke down the middle wall of partition, and made both one, and reconciled both in one body unto God, making peace.
Hence it is as lifted up, and finally as made higher than the heavens, that He becomes the centre and sole object of unity.

Let us remark in passing, that hence worldliness always destroys unity.

The flesh cannot rise up to heaven, nor descend in love to every need. It walks in the separative comparison of self-importance. "I am of Paul", etc. "Are ye not carnal and walk as men?"
Paul had not been crucified for them, nor had they been baptized in the name of Paul. They had got down to earth in their minds, and unity was gone.
But the glorious heavenly Christ in one word embraced all. "Why persecutest thou me?"
This separation from all else was more slow among the Jews, as having been outwardly themselves the separated people of God;
- but having fully shewn what they were, the word to the disciples was, "Let us go forth to him without the camp, bearing his reproach".
The Lord – when as the great result He would have one flock and one Shepherd – put forth His own sheep, and went before them.
Indeed we have only to shew that unity is God's mind, and separation from evil is the necessary consequence; for it exists as a principle in the calling of God before unity itself.
Unity is His purpose, and, as He is the only rightful centre, it must be the result of holy power; but separation from evil is His very nature.
Hence, when He publicly calls Abraham, the words: "Get thee out of thy country, and out of thy kindred, and from thy father's house".

But, to continue; from what we have seen, it is evident that the Lord Jesus Christ on high is the object round which the Church clusters in unity.

He is its Head and Centre. This is the character of their unity, and of their separation from evil, from sinners.
Yet they were not to be taken out of the world, but kept from the evil, and sanctified through the truth; Jesus having set Himself thus apart to this end.
Hence, as well as for the public display of the power and glory of the Son of man, the Holy Ghost was sent down to identify the called ones with their heavenly Head, and to separate them from the world in which they were to remain:
- and the Holy Spirit became thus the centre and power down here of the unity of the church in Christ's name – Christ having broken down the middle wall of partition, reconciling both in one body by the cross.
The saints, thus gathered in one, became the habitation of God through the Spirit.
The Holy Ghost Himself became the power and centre of unity, but in the name of Jesus, of a people separated alike from Jew and Gentile, and delivered out of this present evil world into union with their glorious Head.
By Peter, God visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name.
And of the Jews there was a remnant according to the election of grace; as Paul, one of them, was separated himself from Israel, and from the Gentiles, to whom he was sent.

And so was the constant testimony. He that saith he hath fellowship with Him and walketh in darkness, lieth and doeth not the truth.

Separation from evil is the necessary first principle of communion with Him. Whoever calls it in question is a liar – he is, so far, of the wicked one. He belies the character of God.
If unity depends on God, it must be separation from darkness. So with one another. If we walk in the light, as God is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.
And mark, here there is no limit. It is as God is in the light. There the blessed Lord has placed us by His precious redemption; and hence, by that, the whole manner of our walk and union must be formed: we can have no union – as of God – out of it;
the Jew could, because his – though separation, and hence the same in principle – yet was only outward in the flesh, and the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest – no, not even for the saints, though in God's counsels doubtless they were to be there through the sacrifice about to be offered.

So, again, one with the other. What fellowship hath light with darkness? Christ with Belial? What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What agreement hath the temple of God with idols?

And then, addressing the saints, the Holy Ghost adds,
- "For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate".
Otherwise we provoke the Lord to jealousy, as if we were stronger than He.
Of this unity and fellowship, I may add, the Lord's Supper is the symbol and expression. For we, being many, are all one bread – loaf – for we are all partakers of that one bread.

We find then most distinctly, that, as the unity of Israel of old was founded on deliverance and calling from the midst of, and maintained separation amongst, the heathen which surrounded them,

so the Church's unity was based on the power of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, separating a peculiar people out of the world to Christ, and dwelling amongst them; God Himself thus dwelling and walking in them.

For there is one Spirit, and one body, as we are called in one hope of our calling.
- Indeed, the very name of Holy Spirit implies it; for holiness is separation from evil.
Whatever failure, moreover, there may be in attainment, the principle and measure of this separation is necessarily the light, as God is in the light;
- the way into the holiest being made manifest, and the Holy Ghost come down thence to dwell in the Church below, and so in power of heavenly separation, because the indwelling centre and power of unity – just as the Shekinah in Israel –
- He establishes the holiness of the Church and its unity in its separation to God, according to His own nature, and the power of that presence.
Such is the Church, and such is true unity. Nor can the saint recognize, intelligently, any other, though he may own desires and efforts after good in that which is short of it.

Here I might close my remarks, having developed the great, though simple, principle, flowing from the very nature of God, that separation from evil is His principle of unity.

But a difficulty collateral to my main object and subject presents itself.

Supposing evil introduces itself into this one body so formed actually on earth, does the principle still hold good?
- How then can separation from evil maintain unity? And here we can touch on the mystery of iniquity.
But this principle, flowing from the very nature of God, that He is holy, cannot be set aside.
Separation from evil is the necessary consequence of the presence of the Spirit of God under all circumstances as to conduct and fellowship.
- But here there is a certain modification of it.
The revealed presence of God is always judicial when it exists; because power against evil is connected with the holiness which rejects it.
Thus, in Israel God's presence was judicial; His government was there which did not allow of evil. So, though in another manner, it is in the church.
God's presence is judicial there – not in the world, save in testimony, because God is not yet revealed in the world, and hence it plucks up no tares out of that field. But it judges them that are within.

Hence the Church is to put out from itself the wicked person, and thus maintains its separation from evil. And unity is maintained in the power of the Holy Ghost and a good conscience.

And indeed, that the Spirit may not be grieved, and the practical blessing lost, saints are exhorted to look diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God.
And how sweet and blessed is this garden of the Lord, when it is thus maintained and blooms in the fragrance of Christ's grace.
But, alas! we know worldliness creeps in, and spiritual power declines; the taste for this blessing is enfeebled, because it is not enjoyed in the power of the Spirit;
- the spiritual fellowship with Christ, the heavenly Head, decays, and the power which banishes evil out of the Church is no longer in living exercise.
The body is not sufficiently animated by the Holy Ghost to answer the mind of God. But God will never leave Himself without witness.
He brings home the evil to the body by some testimony or other – by the Word or by judgments, or both in succession – to recall it to its spiritual energy, and lead it to maintain His glory and its place.
If it refuse to answer to the very nature and character of God, and to the incompatibility of that nature with evil – so that it becomes really a false witness for God – then the first and immutable principle recurs, the evil must be separated from.

Further, the unity which is maintained after such separation, becomes a testimony to the compatability of the Holy Ghost and evil: that is,

it is in its nature apostasy; it maintains the name and authority of God in His Church, and associates it with evil.

It is not the professed open apostasy of avowed infidelity; but it is denying God according to the true power of the Holy Ghost, while using His name.
This unity is the great power of evil pointed out in the New Testament, connected with the professing church and the form of piety. From such we are to turn away.
This power of evil in the Church may be discerned spiritually, and left when there is the consciousness of inability to effect any remedy; or if there be an open public testimony, it is then open condemnation to it.
Thus, previous to the Reformation, God gave light to many who maintained a witness to this very evil in the professing church, apart from it; some bore testimony and still remained.
When the Reformation came, it was openly and publicly given, and the professing body of Romanism became openly and avowedly apostate, as far as a professing christian body can, in the Council of Trent.
But wherever the body declines the putting away of evil, it becomes in its unity a denier of God's character of holiness, and then separation from the evil is the path of the saint;
- and the unity he has left is the very greatest evil that can exist where the name of Christ is named.
Saints may remain, as they have in Romanism, where there is not power to gather all saints together; but the duty of the saint as to it is plain on the first principles of Christianity, though doubtless his faith may be exercised by it.
- "Let every one that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity".
It is possible that "he that departs from evil may make himself a prey"; but this, of course, makes no difference; it is a question of faith. He is in the true power of God's unity.

Thus, then, the Word of God affords us the true nature, object, and power of unity; and, in so doing, it gives us the measure of it, by which we judge of what pretends to it, and the manner of it;

and, moreover, the means of maintaining its fundamental principles according to the nature and power of God by the Holy Ghost in the conscience where it may not be realised together in power.

Its nature flows from God's; for of true unity He must be the centre, and He is holy; and He brings us into it by separating us from evil.
Its object is Christ; He is the sole centre of the Church's unity, objectively as its Head.
Its power is the presence of the Holy Ghost down here, sent as the Spirit of Truth withal from the Father by Jesus.
Its measure is walking in the light, as God is in the light; fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus, and, we may add, through the testimony of the written Word – the apostolic and prophetic word of the New Testament especially.
It is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets – of the New Testament – Jesus Christ Himself being the corner stone.
The means of maintaining it is putting away evil – judicially if needed – so as to maintain, through the Spirit, fellowship with the Father and the Son.
If evil be not put away, then separation from that which does not, becomes a matter of conscience.
- I return, if alone, into the essential and infallible unity of the body, in its everlasting principles of union with the Head in a holy nature by the Spirit.
The path of the saints thus becomes clear. God will secure by eternal power the vindication, not here perhaps, but before His angels, of them who have rightly owned His nature and truth in Christ Jesus.

I believe these fundamental principles are deeply needed in this day, for the saint who seeks to walk truly and thoroughly with God.

Latitudinarian unity it may be painful and trying to keep aloof from; it has an amiable form in general, is in a measure respectable in the religious world, tries nobody's conscience, and allows of everybody's will.
It is the more difficult to be decided about, because it is often connected with a true desire of good, and is associated with amiable nature.
- And it seems rigid, and narrow, and sectarianism to decline so to walk.
But the saint, when he has the light of God, must walk clearly in that. God will vindicate His ways in due time.
Love to every saint is a clear duty; walking in their ways is not. And he that gathers not with Christ scatters.
There can be but one unity; confederacy, even for good, is not it, even if it have its form.
Unity, professed to be of the Church of God, while evil exists and is not put away, is a yet more serious matter.
It will always be found to be connected with the clerical principle, because that is needed to maintain unity, when the Spirit is not its power, and, in fact, takes its place, guides, rules, governs in its place,
- under the plea of priesthood, or ministry, owned as a distinct body, a separate institution: it would not hold together without this.

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GRACE, THE POWER OF
UNITY AND OF GATHERING

Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, 1: 366-77, 1853
The following is JND's own review of his earlier tract
Separation from Evil, God's Principle of Unity.

GRACE, THE POWER OF UNITY AND OF GATHERING
Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, 1: 366-77, 1853 The following is JND's own review of his earlier tract Separation from Evil, God's Principle of Unity.

I have had the desire on my mind to make a few remarks on a point I believe to have importance at the present moment;

and in doing so, I carry in my mind a tract to which the circumstances drew attention, and practically review it.

And I do so, the rather, because I think I read a paper some time back in "The Present Testimony", which, if my memory serves me, placed the subject on a ground which I did not think quite just:

that is, it saw only one side of the matter, as it seemed to me.

What I think important to be understood is, that the active power that gathers is always grace – love.

Separation from evil may be called for. In particular states of the church, when evil is come in, it may characterise very much the path of the saints.
It may be, that through many acting under the same convictions at the same time, this may form a nucleus. But this in itself is never a gathering power.
Holiness may attract when a soul is in movement of itself. But power to gather, is in grace, in love working; if you please, faith working by love.
Look at all the history of the church of God in all ages, and you will find this to be the case. Gathering
[or grace ?] is the formative power of unity, where it does not exist.
- I take for granted here that Christ is owned as the centre.
If evil exist, it may gather out of that evil, but the gathering power is love.

The paper which I would pass under review is a tract, which, from circumstances, is not unknown:
Separation from Evil, God's Principle of Unity.

I trust I should have grace to acknowledge error where I thought there was such, and I am sure I owe it to the Lord to do so; but my object here is somewhat larger.

That tract refers to the state of the church of God at large, and not any particular member of it;
- but as one part of truth corrects an evil, so another, by its operation on the soul, may enlarge the sphere, and strengthen the energy of good.
There are two great principles in God's nature, owned of all saints – holiness and love.
One is, I may be bold to say, the necessity of His nature, imperative, in virtue of that nature, on all that approach Him; the other, its energy.
One characterises; the other is, and is the spring of activity of, His nature.
God is holy – He is not loving, but love. He is it in the essential fountain of His being; we make Him a judge by sin, for He is holy and has authority; but He is love, and none has made Him such.
- If there be love anywhere else, it is of God, for God is love. This is the blessed active energy of His being.
In the exercise of this He gathers to Himself for the eternal blessedness of those who are gathered, its display in Christ, and Christ Himself, being the great power and centre of it.
His counsels as to this are the glory of His grace, His applying them to sinners and the means He employs for it, the riches of His grace.
And in the ages to come He will shew how exceeding great these were in His kindness to us, in Christ Jesus.

Allow me, in passing, before entering on the examination of the point which is now directly my object, to say a word on the sweet passage I have referred to,

because it opens out God's full thoughts in bringing into the unity of which that epistle speaks.

We are blessed in Christ, and God Himself is the centre of the blessing, and in two characters, His nature and His relationship;
- in both He is related to Christ Himself, viewed as Man before Him, though the beloved Son.

The verses I refer to, are Ephesians 1: 3-7. He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As the Lord, when ascending up on high, said, "I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God"; only in Ephesians He goes on to their unity in Christ. There Christ speaks of them as His brethren.
In this double character then, in which God stands to Christ Himself, He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings, none left out, in heavenly places, the best and highest sphere of blessing, where He dwells;
- not merely sent down to earth, but we ourselves taken up there, and in the best and highest way, in Christ Jesus, save His divine title to sit on the Father's throne.
Wonderful portion, sweet and blessed grace, which becomes simple to us in the measure in which we are accustomed to dwell in the perfect goodness of God, to whom it is natural to be all that He is, who could be no other.

In verse 4, we have "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ", according to the glory of the divine nature, introducing into His own presence in Christ that which shall be the reflex of itself, according to its eternal purpose.

For the church in the thoughts of God – and, I may add, in its life in the Word – is before the world in which it is displayed.
Here, it is His nature. We are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.
- God is holy, God is love, and in His ways, when He acts, blameless.
Then there is relationship in Christ, and His is that of Son. Hence in Him we are predestinated to adoption (sonship) to God Himself, according to His good pleasure, the delight and goodness of His will.
This is relationship. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as well as God. This is the glory of His grace; His own thoughts and purposes, to the praise of which we are. He has shewn us grace in the Beloved.
But in fact He finds us sinners. He has to put sinners in this place. What a thought! Here His grace shines out in another way. In this same blessed one, Christ the Son, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins,
- what we need, in order to enter into the place where we shall be to the praise of the glory of His grace;
- and this is according to the riches of His grace; for God is displayed in the glory of His grace, and need is met by the riches of grace.

Thus we are before God. What follows in the chapter is the inheritance which belongs to us through this same grace – what is under us.

Into this I do not enter; only remarking, as I have elsewhere, that the Holy Ghost is the earnest of the inheritance, but not of God's love.
This is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us.
These two relationships, of God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, will be found to unfold much blessing. They are of frequent occurrence in Scripture.

But interesting as that subject is, I turn now to the one before me. I have read over the tract I have referred to. ["Separation from evil, etc."]

I confess, it seems to me that one who would deny the abstract principles of that tract is not on christian ground at all.
I cannot conceive anything more indisputably true, as far as human statement of truth can go.

Still there is something more than truth to be considered, and that is, the use of truth.
- God's imputing no sin to the church, through grace and redemption, is always blessedly and eternally true. To a careless conscience, I may have to address other truth.
Now, I repeat, that on reading that tract I do not see how a person resisting the principles stated, is on christian ground at all.
- Is not holiness the principle on which christian fellowship is based? And the tract is really and simply that.
But two other points I believe it important to bring out along with that – one, in relation to man; the other, to the blessed God.
The first is this: human nature we all own, and in a measure know, is a treacherous thing.
Now separation from evil, when right, which I now assume, still distinguishes him who separates from him from whom he does so.
This tends to make one's position important, and so it is; but with such hearts as we have, one's position mixes itself up with self – not in a gross way but in a treacherous one;
- it is my position, and not only so, but the mind being occupied with what has been important – justly so in its place – to itself,
- tends to make, in a measure, separation from evil a gathering power, as well as a principle on which gathering takes place.
This – save as holiness attracts souls who are spiritual by a moving principle in them – it is not.

There is another danger: a Christian separates from evil, I still suppose, in a case in which he is bound to do so.

Say, he leaves the corruptest system in existence; on this principle, it is the evil acting on the conscience of the new man, and known to be offensive to God, which drives him out.
- Hence he is occupied with the evil. This is a dangerous position.
He attaches it, perhaps anxiously, to those he has left, to give a clear ground why he has done so. They conceal, cover over, gloss, explain. It is always so where the evil is maintained.
He seeks to prove it, to make his ground clear; he is occupied with evil, with proving evil, and proving evil against others. This is slippery ground for the heart, to say nothing of danger to love.
The mind becomes occupied with evil as an object before it. This is not holiness, nor separation from evil, in practical internal power. It harasses the mind, and cannot feed the soul.
Some are almost in danger of acquiescing in the evil through the weariness of thinking about it. At all events power is not found here.
- God separates us surely from evil, but He does not fill the mind when it continues to be occupied with it; for He is not in the evil.
It is quite true that the mind may say, Let us think of the Lord and drop it, and get a measure of quiet and comfort; but in this case the general standard and tone of spiritual life will be infallibly lowered. Of this I have not a shadow of doubt.
The positive evil will not be actually acquiesced in; but God's horror of it is lost in the mind, and the measure of divine power and communion just proportionately lost, and the general path shews this. The testimony fails and is lowered.
This is the widest evil – where there is conflict with evil not maintained in spiritual power – and creates the most serious difficulties to extended unity; but God is above all.
The new nature, when in lively exercise, because it is holy and divine, revolts from evil when it comes before it. The conscience, too, will then be in exercise as responsible to God.

But this is not all, even as to holiness. There is another, which in many – I may say, at bottom, in all – cases distinguishes real holiness from natural conscience, or conventional rejection of evil.

Holiness is not merely separation from evil, but separation to God from evil. The new nature has not merely a nature or intrinsic character as being of God.
- It has an object, for it cannot live on itself – a positive object, and that is God.
Now this changes everything; because it separates from evil – which it abhors, therefore, when it sees it – because it is filled with good. This does not enfeeble its separation.
It makes its abhorrence of it lively when it has to be occupied with it, but it gives another tone to that which is abhorrent to it,
- the possession of good sufficient, when it is not forced to think of evil, to put it quite out of mind and sight.
Hence it is holy, calm, and has a substantive character of its own, apart from evil, as well as abhorrent of it.
With us this can only be in having an object, because we are and ought to be dependent, only so far as we are positively filled with God in Christ.
We are occupied with good, and hence holy, for that is holiness; and, therefore, easily and discerningly abhorrent of evil, without occupying ourselves with it.
It is God's own nature; He is essentially good; delights in it in Himself: and therefore He is abhorrent, in virtue of His goodness, of evil; His nature is the good, and hence in His very nature He rejects the evil.
He will do so authoritatively, no doubt, in judgment; but we now speak of nature.

Hence you will find, that when it is in power, love precedes and makes holy, whether it be mutual or the enjoyment of it in the revelation of God.

"And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: to the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints", 1 Thessalonians 3: 12-13.
So in 1 John 1, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life – for the life was manifested, and we have seen it and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us – that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth".

Now here the separation from evil, walking in the light, in God's revealed character in Christ, in the practical knowledge of God as revealed in Christ, in the truth as it is in Jesus, in whom the life was the light of men, is

fully insisted on with lines as clear and strong as the Holy Ghost alone knows how to make them.

He who pretends to fellowship, and does not walk in the knowledge of God, according to that knowledge, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
But what makes the fellowship? This keeps it pure – but what makes it? The revelation of the blessed object, and centre of it, in Christ.
John was speaking of One who had won his own heart – who was the gathering power into fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
- He knew by the Holy Ghost, and enjoyed what the Saviour had said, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father".
This was love, infinite, divine; and, through the Holy Ghost, the witness of it had communion with it and told it out, that others might have fellowship with him; and truly, his was such. They joined in it.
Now that, I apprehend, was gathering power. The object gathered to, necessarily involved what follows.
So, indeed, he closes the epistle. "We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an under-
standing to know him that is true, and we are in him that is true; that is, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep your-selves from idols".
That is, the gathering power of good comes before the warning. This is the more remarkable in this epistle, because it is, in a certain sense, occupied with evil, is written concerning those that seduced them.

Holiness, then, is separation to God, if it be real, as well as from evil; for thus alone we are in the light, for God is light.

This is true, in our first sanctifying – we are brought to know God, brought to God.

If we come to ourselves it is, "I will arise and go to my father". If it is restoration, "If thou wilt return, return unto me".
Indeed a soul is never restored really till it does; for it is not in the light so as to purge flesh, even if the fruits of flesh have been confessed; nor is sin seen as it is in God's sight.
Hence love comes in, in all true conversion and restoration, however dimly seen, or through however dark workings of conscience.
We want to get back to God; there is forgiveness with Him that He may be feared; otherwise, it is despair which drives us farther away. Indeed, what would or could restoration be if it were not to God?

But, in the full sense of gathering, that is, to common fellowship, it is clearly the blessed object which reveals that in which we are to have the fellowship, which so gathers.

We are to have fellowship in something, that is, with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

This, then, must draw hearts to itself, that in their common delight in it their fellowship may exist.
The principle of the tract is this, that in doing this it must separate from evil. It is the "this-then-is-the-message" part of the statement.
So Christ says, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me".
Now here was perfect love, entire separation from all sin and condemnation of it. "In that he died, he died unto sin once" – separation from the world, and deliverance from the whole power of the enemy and the scene of it.
It is perfect love drawing from everything to itself; showing all was evil, absorbing the soul into what was good, in a saving way from it.

But when we follow Him into life, all is gone from which He separated. "In that he liveth, he liveth unto God"; that is His whole being, so to speak.

Now He is, in this life, made higher than the heavens – the divine glory I do not here enter into, but the life.
It is a heavenly place He takes, and our gathering through the cross is to Him there, in the good where evil cannot come.
There is our communion – entering into the Father's house in spirit. And this, I apprehend, is the true character of the assembly, of the church, for worship in its full sense.
It remembers the cross, it worships, the world left out, and all known in heaven before God. He gave Himself that He might gather into one.
But here I anticipate a little, for I am speaking as yet of the object, not of the active power.

I apprehend that what separates the saint from evil, what makes him holy, is the revelation of an object – I mean of course, through the Holy Ghost working –

which draws his soul to that as good, and thereby reveals evil to him, and makes him judge it in spirit and soul:
his knowledge of good and evil is, then, not a mere uneasy conscience, but sanctification;
that is, sanctification is resting, by the enlightening of the Holy Ghost, on an object, which, by its nature, purifies the affections by being their object – creates them through the power of grace.

Even under law it had this form, "Be ye holy for I am holy"; though, I admit, it there partook necessarily of the character of the dispensation.

In the cross we have these two great principles perfectly brought out.

Love is clearly shewn, the blessed object which draws the heart; yet the most solemn judgment of and separation from all evil;
such is God's perfectness – the foolishness and weakness of God.

Divine attraction in love, evil in all its horror and forms, perfectly abhorred by him who is attracted and attaches himself to that.
The soul goes with sin, as sin, to Love; goes because love thus displayed has shown him that it is sin, in Christ being made sin for us.
This is the power objectively that separates from evil, and ends all connection with it; for I die then to all the nature I lived to.
Evil ceases to be, through faith, as I live hereforth in blessed activity in love.

But I have, perhaps, dwelt long enough on what objectively gathers and gives fellowship;

and surely, our fellowship, communion, is in that which is good – and as heavenly by no evil being there.

Imperfectly realised no doubt here, but so far as it is not, fellowship is destroyed, for the flesh has none. Hence it is said:
- "If we walk in the light as God is in the light, we have fellowship one with another".
But we cannot walk out of darkness but by walking in the light, that is, with God: and God is love, and were He not, we could not walk there.

But we have other privileges; God's love in Christ is not only an object which gathers – it is an activity which does so.

Love is relative; it acts and shews itself. Hence God has acted.

It is not the silent depths of self-consciousness which heathenism made of God, as mere intellect, though erroneously supposing matter equally eternal, receiving merely form from God;
- though it then became active in generating thoughts – and, delighted with them objectively, became active in creation to produce them according to truth.
In this scheme they justly made primeval darkness the mother of all things. But such is not our God. These, save in benefits sensibly known in creation, knew not love in God.
Jesus has revealed Him, and we thus know Him to be love, and light, too. Blessed knowledge!
It is, as given to us in the word, eternal life; and this life is occupied with it, as we have seen, with the Father and the Son.
But we can equally say that we know this sweet and blessed truth: "My Father worketh hitherto and I work".
It is the activity of love which is the power of gathering. "He gave himself that he might gather into one the children of God, which were scattered abroad".
Even in Israel: "How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"
Here we have not only the attractive, sanctifying object bringing into fellowship, but the activity of love, which acts, gives itself, in order to gather; in this we are allowed to have a part.
It is this, while sanctifying and maintaining His holiness, making us partakers of it, reveals God and gathers weary souls.

Now this alone is the proper principle and power of gathering: I do not say on which souls are gathered;

for that is clearly holiness – separation from evil in which alone communion is maintained – or darkness would have fellowship with light.

But love gathers; and this is as evident to the Christian as that it gathers to holiness, and on the principle of it.
For when would the mind of man separate from and leave the evil in which it lives, which is its nature, alas! as to its actual desires, and the sphere in which it lives? Never! Alas! its will and lusts are there – it is enmity against God.
This is what the presenting of grace in Jesus has so solemnly proved.
Law was never given to gather; it was the rule of a people already with God – or a convicter of sin.
Sin does not gather to God, nor law; and one or other is all man's state unless grace acts.
Besides, grace alone fully reveals God; and hence without grace that to which we are to be gathered is not manifested.
- Grace alone reaches the heart so as to bring it – all short of this is responsibility merely, and failure.
It is Christ gathers, and hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us.
Indeed, truth itself is never known till grace comes. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
The law told man what he ought to be. It did not tell him what he was. It told him of life if he obeyed, of a curse if he disobeyed;
- but it did not tell him that God was love; it spoke of responsibility; it said, Do this and live.
All this was perfect in its place, but it told neither what man was nor what God was; that remained concealed; but that is the truth.

The truth is not what ought to be, but what is – the reality of all relationships as they are, and the revelation of Him who, if there are any, must be the centre of them.

Now that could not be told without grace, for man was a ruined sinner, and God is love.

And how tell, moreover, that all relationship was gone (morally, I mean, for we are, of course, creatures still)
- – for judgment is not a relationship, but the consequence of the breach of one –
- as the truth of any existing one, but in the revelation of that grace which formed one on this very ground by divine power?
Hence we read "of his own will begat he us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures"; that incorruptible seed of the word.
- Law begat nothing in me; it supposed man was, and that he belonged to God, and prescribed a way for him.
Hence Christ is the truth. For sin, grace, God Himself, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, even, are revealed as they are;
- what man is in perfection, in relationship with God;
- what man's alienation from God;
- what obedience, what disobedience, what holiness, what sin, what God, what man, what heaven, what earth;
- nothing but finds itself placed where it is in reference to God, and with the fullest revelation of Himself, while His counsels even are brought out, and of which Christ is the centre.
- Hence grace is the acting power in, and alone capable of, revealing truth; for Christ's being here is grace; His working effectual grace.

Now, the very existence of such an object and such a power would prove a gathering power, gathering into unity, for it must, being divine, gather to itself;

yet, we are not left to abstract consequences, however practically familiar to every renewed soul who does and must know, that all such are drawn together to Christ.

The Word of God is plain: He gave Himself to gather together into one the children of God which are scattered abroad.
I speak of these things as characterising the power which gathers.
Christ, though the truth itself, yet, while here, was lonely truth: no new relationship was established on a divine basis for other men.
Hence presented grace was rejected grace; the corn of wheat abode alone; but, dying, redemption was accomplished and atonement made.
He was no longer "straitened"; the grace and truth shut up, so to speak, into His own heart, could now flow freely forth.
The highest love was shown; and sin in man, instead of hindering its application and barring relationship, was its object, at least that as to which it was displayed; and thus, therefore, He gathers.
Divine righteousness supplants – what, indeed, never existed, though it was called for – human righteousness; divine life, mere human life; and God finds His glory in salvation.
- Grace reigns through righteousness.
Now, this it is, by uniting souls in the power of the Holy Ghost to Jesus, which gathers by the cross, whence the truth is told to us as we are here, to Christ in heaven,
- who tells our true place to faith there – saving always, of course, His personal divine title.

Now this, I apprehend, is what Ephesians shows, only that as it begins with the divine glory, the true source of all,

that epistle begins with the purpose of love as to us in heaven in glory; and brings in redemption itself as a second thing, needed to bring us there.

But this clearly does not alter the love which is, and is acting to bring us into this blessed and heavenly unity,
- and which is thus heavenly, and, in connection with God's glory, is holy according to the holiness of His presence.
Christ's path on earth is the pattern of it below – in its full measure on the cross. Hence heaven and the cross are correlative.
When the blood went into the holiest the body was burnt without the camp – outside; yea, denying all relationship of God with man as he was.
Then gathering into one began. He slew the enmity – as between Jew and Gentile – and reconciled both in one body to God; and so we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.
Ordinances always separate according to human holiness; grace unites according to divine.

I believe I have said enough to make what is in my mind plain; and I am more anxious to state than to insist on it.

In the full divine sense, without grace, there is neither truth nor holiness – out of God, of course, I mean, save as holiness may be applied to the elect angels – nor can be;
- because it is impossible that a sinner can be with God but on the ground and by the power and activity of grace.
The power of unity is grace; and, as man is a sinner and departed from God, the power of gathering is grace – grace manifested in Jesus on the cross,
- and bringing us to God in heaven, and bringing us in Him who is gone there.
This is holiness: certainly the cross was not acquiescence in evil.

Page Top Article Top

THE NOTION OF A CLERGYMAN
Dispensationally the Sin Against the Holy Ghost

Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, 1: 36-51
Details regarding the effects of clericalism on the 'Home Mission'
in Ireland at the time of writing have been omitted.
The situation in present day 'evangelical' churches
may seem less rigid, but clericalism is still firmly entrenched
and cannot yield any real ground without endangering its own position.
Although some 'open' meetings may not yet have a 'pastor'
their unscriptural practice as to 'elders' – or an 'oversight' –
and 'deacons' is merely an extension of the clerical system.
See also Studies: Our Responsibilty in the Present State
of the Church: Public Breakdown: Clericalism

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

It is necessary to give a brief account of the following tract, which is now published for the first time.

It was intended to be published at the time; but the printer and publisher shewed it privately to some of the influential Clergy before it was published,
- and I was surrounded and entreated not to publish it – I cannot really, at this distance of time, say by whom – and gave way.

We can all understand – at least, any who have had deep convictions on points which affect the whole standing of the church of God –

how – however deep internal convictions of any such truths may be – a serious and conscientious mind may hesitate as to putting forth what may shock the feelings of many godly persons, and violates established order;
and in such matters all ought to be not only conscientious but serious, have the fear of God, and not merely an opinion on that which may work deeply in the minds of any, and affect so sacred a thing, the only sacred thing in the world, as the Church of God. It never therefore appeared.

Nor do I, though it may appear to be weakness in myself, regret it at the hands of Him who makes all things work together for good to them that love Him.

I have a deep, abiding conviction that the building up of good can alone give lasting blessing, not the attacking evil. I would press it on every one who seeks good.

I had not the most distant feeling of enmity against any, nor against the Establishment [the Church of Ireland]; I loved it still, I looked at it as a barrier against Popery.

When I left it, I published the tract on The Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ.

Every one knows, and for myself it is a matter of profound sorrow, and a sign of approaching judgment, that it has ceased to be such a barrier, and, for many, has been the road into it, and that infidel principles have been judicially pronounced to be fully admissible in it.

Christians are thrown – where Paul originally threw them when warning them of the perilous times of the last days – on the word of God, and knowing of whom they have learned anything;
as to which we have this word of the Apostle John, "he that is of God hears us" – not tradition, not the fathers in numberless folios, but "us" – not development nor decrees of violent and clashing councils, but "that which was from the beginning",
and, I add, the infallible faithfulness of an ascended Lord.

But we are thus cast on great principles, I mean scriptural principles and truth. Of this the presence of the Holy Ghost is a cardinal one.

I may add as that which led to this – I mean as to the truth itself in my own soul, that – after I had been converted six or seven years, I learned by divine teaching what the Lord says in John 14,
- "In that day ye shall know … that ye [are] in me, and I in you" – that I was one with Christ before God, and I found peace, and I have never, with many shortcomings, lost it since.
The same truth brought me out of the Establishment. I saw that the true Church was composed of those who were thus united to Christ;
- I may add, it led me to wait for God's Son from heaven; for if I was sitting in heavenly places in Him, what was I waiting for but that He should come and take me there?
The infinite love of God flowed early into my soul in this process which the Lord was carrying on.

Previously I had had, from the first, the deepest possible convictions of sin, and had known and after some years taught that Christ alone could fill up that abyss, but not that He had.

I had passed in the deepest way, fasting – a thing which, I believe, if spiritually used, may be most useful – but then in a legal spirit, and in an elaborate system of devotedness, sacraments, and church-going, through what is now called Puseyism;
- but had found that Christ and not that could give peace, but had not found it;
I sought it, looked for the proofs of regeneration in myself, which can never give peace, rested in hope in Christ's work, but not in faith, till I found it, as I have stated, when laid by for some time, by what is called accident, from outward labour.

The presence of the Spirit of God, the promised Comforter, had then become a deep conviction of my soul from scripture. This soon after applied itself to ministry.

I said to myself, if Paul came here, he could not preach, he has no letters of orders; if the bitterest opponent of his doctrine came who had, he would, according to the system, be entitled.
It is not a wicked man slipping in – that may happen anywhere – it is the system itself. The system is wrong. It substitutes man for God.
True ministry is the gift and the power of God's Spirit, not man's appointment. I state merely the great principle.

This principle, with a process and with a delay the details of which I cannot recall, and which are immaterial, was under deep pressure of conscience, the source and origin, as a principle, of the following tract – printed, I suppose, now seven-and-thirty years ago.

There will be found immaturity in it in expression. The sin against the Holy Ghost, though universally used, is not a scriptural expression.
Every sin a Christian commits is a sin against the Holy Ghost; for the Holy Ghost dwells in him, and he grieves that Holy One by whom he is sealed to the day of redemption.
But the principle is one of deep importance, one on which the status of the Church and the Christian depends – the security of the one, as well as that by which he is responsible and judged in his walk, and the ground of judgment of the other.

I did not save myself in any way by not publishing it. It was soon bruited about, and of course held, that I charged each clergyman with the sin against the Holy Ghost, which the tract itself entirely disclaims.

It is a question of the dispensational standing of the Church in the world – a statement that that depends wholly on the power and presence of the Holy Ghost,
- and that the Notion of a Clergyman contradicts His title and power, on which the standing of the Church down here depends. It is the habitation of God through the Spirit.

Scripture is clear, that if the Gentiles do not abide in God's goodness, they will be cut off like the Jews.

It equally predicts a falling away, which is not continuing in God's goodness. I believe these times are hasting greatly.

I add, that there may be no mistake, that I have an absolute confidence in the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus, the great Head of the Church, that what He builds will endure and be translated to heaven,

when God judges the corrupt and evil system – which He as certainly will do – which bears His name, and Christ Himself becomes in glory the blessed witness of His unchangeable faithfulness and love.

The doctrine of the church as the house of God – Eph. 2, and 2 Tim. – became developed in my mind much later; and I add here, that I believe

the confounding the Church, as man built it, as committed to his responsibility – 1 Cor. 3 – resulting in the great house, with Christ's building – though the former be God's building responsibly in the world –
- and attributing the privileges of the body to all that are in the house,
is the origin of the corruption, which has defiled, and for which God will judge the guilty, professing body with His sorest judgment.
- The tract is given as it was printed at first.

As I have spoken of myself – always a hazardous thing – I add that at the same period in which I was brought to liberty and to believe, with divinely given faith, in the presence of the Holy Spirit,

I passed through the deepest possible exercise as to the authority of the word:
- whether if the world and the Church – i.e., as an external thing, for it yet had certain traditional power over me as such – disappeared and were annihilated, and the word of God alone remained as an invisible thread over the abyss, my soul would trust in it.
After deep exercise of soul I was brought by grace to feel I could entirely. I never found it fail me since. I have often failed; but I never found it failed me.
I have added this, not, I trust, to speak of myself – an unpleasant and unsatisfactory, a dangerous thing – nor do I speak of any vision, but because,
- having spoken of the presence of the Holy Ghost, if I had not brought in this as to the word, the statement would have been seriously incomplete.
In these days especially, when the authority of His written word is called in question on every side, it became important to state this part also of the history.

THE NOTION OF A CLERGYMAN Dispensationally the Sin Against the Holy Ghost

In the statement which I make here, I make no rash or hasty expression of feeling, but what I believe the Lord would press upon the minds of Christians, and that which they must receive:

the converse of it He might, winking at the ignorance, bear with in practice, while it did not interfere with and oppose the purposes of His grace, but He cannot when it does.

The statement which I make is this, that I believe the "Notion of a Clergyman" to be the sin against the Holy Ghost in this dispensation.

I am not talking of individuals wilfully committing it, but that the thing itself is such as regards this dispensation, and must result in its destruction.

The substitution of something else for the power and presence of that holy, blessed, and blessing Spirit, [is the sin] by which this dispensation is characterised,

and by which the unrenewedness of man, and the authority of man, holds the place which alone that blessed Spirit has power and title to fill, as that other Comforter which should abide for ever.

If the "Notion of a Clergyman" has had the effect of the substitution of anything which is of man, and therefore subject to Satan,

in the place and prerogative of that blessed Spirit exercising the vicarship of Christ in the world,

it is clear, that however the providence of God may have overruled it, in the ignorance which He could wink at,
it does, when stood upon and rested in against the presence and work of the Spirit, become direct sin against Him – pure, dreadful, and destructive evil – the very cause of destruction to the church.

I must be observed here to say nothing whatever against offices in the Church of Christ, and the exercise of authority in them, whether episcopal or evangelical in character.

It were a vain and unnecessary work here to prove the recognition of that on which scripture is so plain.
But they are spoken of in scripture as gifts derived from on high: "He gave some apostles", Eph. 4: 11; so in 1 Corinthians 12, they are known only as gifts.
My objection to the "Notion of a Clergyman" is, that it substitutes something in the place of all these, which cannot be said to be of God at all, and is not found in scripture.
Now, I believe the whole principle of this to be contained in this dispensation in the word clergyman,
- and that this is the necessary root of that denial of the Holy Ghost which must, from the nature of the dispensation, end in its dissolution.

I am quite aware that people will say, that this is not the sin against the Holy Ghost, that it may amount to resisting the Holy Ghost, but sin against the Holy Ghost is quite another thing.

It is not so much another thing as people suppose. At any rate the cause of the destruction of the Jewish system was this very thing:
- "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye".
I am perfectly satisfied, that however this dispensation may be prolonged in order to the gathering of souls out of the world, of God's elect,
- it has sealed its destruction in the rejection and resistance of the Spirit of God.

But I go a great deal farther, and I affirm, though that were sin enough, that the "Notion of a Clergyman"

puts the dispensation specifically in the position of the sin against the Holy Ghost, and that every clergyman is contributing to this.

The sin against the Holy Ghost was the ascribing to the power of evil that which came from the Holy Ghost: and such is the direct operation of the idea of a "Clergyman".

It charges the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, which the Spirit gives by the mouth of those whom He chooses, whom they are pleased to call laymen, and the righteousness of conduct which flows from the reception of that testimony, with disorder and schism.
- I beg to say here, I do not allude to any modern assumption of the possession of extraordinary spiritual gifts.

Now, God is not the author of confusion or disorder, nor of schism, but the enemy of souls is;

and to charge the plain testimony which the Holy Ghost gives concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, and the effects which it produces, with disorder and schism, is to charge the work of God with being evil, and from the evil one.

But if clergymen have the exclusive privilege of preaching, teaching, and ministering communion, which they claim, and which is the very sense and meaning of their distinctive title, then must it be all evil.
That is, the "Notion of a Clergyman" necessarily involves the charge of evil on the work of the Holy Ghost, and therefore,
- I say, that the "Notion of a Clergyman" involves the dispensation, where insisted upon, in the sin against the Holy Ghost.

Sinners are converted to God, souls called out of darkness, the truth preached with energy and love to souls, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, in the constraint and constancy – in whatever weakness – of the Redeemer's love:

men are gathered from evil and wickedness – for I will put the fullest case my adversaries could wish – into the communion of the Lord's love, to bear witness to their sole dependence on His dying love;
and this is producing confusion and schism – of which God is not the author, but Satan – because they are not, nor are brought together by, clergymen!
What is this but to charge the work of divine grace with proceeding from, and having the character of, the author of evil, which is blasphemy?
- and this is the immediate and direct effect, the necessary effect, of the notion – the exclusive "Notion of a Clergyman".

And this is a thing of very common operation where a number of unconverted clergymen are; and how common this is, yea, how it is the case in a large majority of instances, is well known.

There all the operations of God's Spirit are charged with confusion and schism; and therefore I affirm, that the idea of a "Clergyman", that is, of a humanly appointed office, taking the place and assuming the authority of the Spirit of God,
- necessarily involves – in its condemnation of what the Holy Ghost does do – in the sin against the Holy Ghost: and I defy any one to shew how it can be otherwise …
The "Notion of a Clergyman" consists in acknowledg-ing that, as the source of authority, which, they admit, is not appointed by God at all …

Now, the deference and obedience to a spiritual pastor will be just in proportion to the right feeling – to the holiness of mind of the Christian;

but in the same proportion will his idea of a clergyman be weakened, and will he judge according to what they are, if they assume any office circumstantially connected with the name.
The value attached to it is a purely worldly thing: a thing of this world, with the pretence of religion in its external character, which is just the destruction of the church – the essential characteristic of apostasy.

Let us consider it in its actual operation. If we go to India, the difficulty to be got over, the persons to be soothed and won, so that the gospel should not be hindered, are the clergy;

I speak of nominal Christianity in India, as on the Malabar Coast and their Catanars.

Go to Armenia; the difficulty would arise from precisely the same quarter.
Carry the gospel in its power, where would difficulty be anticipated? – from what quarter? From the clergy. At best, they must be conciliated.
Go to Egypt amongst the Copts: the same thing just is true.
Go to the churches in Palestine, and wherever the Armenian Church is spread, the facts are the same.
- I do not say, they may not in any case be conciliated; but that the opposition to the truth, when it exists, arises from them.
Go to the Greek Church: it is precisely the same. Their Papas, or priests, the ministers and sustainers of all the corruption and evil of the church, are the great hindrance to all missionary and spiritual exertion.
Their churches are fallen; therefore they proportion-ately estimate the clergy, and they do not the gospel.
But the opposers and hinderers, the persons whose influence is dreaded, are the clergy.

Let us look now at the great western body, which is called the church, the Christendom of the world – the vine of the christian profession.

Whence is the difficulty in preaching the gospel? Where is the grand barrier of opposition to Christ in His gospel? It is at once known and felt. The word would be echoed by every one familiar with the subject.
But surely we are not to identify the wilful resisters of the truth with those who preach and forward it.
In this point they are identified, they are both clergy, they have both precisely the same title;
- if a Protestant clergyman has title to this, or whatever title to respect he has, the Roman Catholic priest has the same. I am not talking of mine or any one's estimation of it, but of facts.
And this is so much the case that a priest joining the Established church, whatever his motive might be, acquaintance with or ignorance of the truth, would be at once a clergyman of the Establishment.
His clerical character existed before and his person merely was transferred from one to the other. Nothing could more clearly mark the identity of the two characters.
Their title the same confessedly, the same by the acknowledgment that the title which they insist on distinctively is the same as, and no other than as,
- it is derived from those whose apostasy and opposition to the truth is the ground of judgment on the vine of the earth, the nominal church of God.
If I am bound to acknowledge the one, I am bound to acknowledge the other in the same title and office.
They are their own witnesses that there is no difference between them in title as clergymen.
Whether the ministry of the priests come from God their "mission" they may determine.

But, that we may let no part of the world escape our notice, turn to Protestant Germany.

Who are the hindrances, the bars to the gospel – to truth there finding its way among the people? The clergy.
Consult any missionary reports, or continental reports, or Jewish reports, or a Home Mission Society:
- and the clergy will be universally found to be the hindrances to the propagation of the truth …

One question may remain, Why press such a point now? I answer; first, because it is truth. God's truth is always profitable, and the testimony kept up by it in the world.

But further, because these things have been brought to such a pass by the prevalency of this very notion that nothing remains but to rescue the saints out of its effects before the tide of Papal power which is founded on it, set in in its full and subduing strength.
Men must rest on the Lord or sink into it. If the notion of a clergyman be anything but evil, dissociation from it is but schism and evil.
But if the work of the Holy Ghost be not evil, then, is that which assumes to condemn it, and charge evil upon it, most evil of all things;
- and that is the position in which every clergyman stands by virtue of his title, and which is involved in the very notion of a clergyman: the essence of its name, the sign and distinctive name of apostasy and rebellion against God …

And let us for a moment look at what the word means, and we shall very remarkably find the same great characteristic mark of apostasy upon it:

the substitution of a privileged order whom man owned for the church which God owned, and the consequent depression of the church and the despisal of the Holy Ghost in it, or blasphemy against it.

What does clergy mean? It means in scripture the elect body, or rather bodies, of believers, as God's heritage, as contrasted with those who were instructors, or had spiritual oversight over them;
and it is used in the place where the apostle warns such against ever assuming the place in which – in much worse than which – the ministers have now put themselves; for they are not merely lords over, but the whole "cleroi" themselves.

Now, all this is of the essence of apostasy: power attached to ministry, and its becoming the church in the eye of the world,

so that the world can save itself the trouble of being religious by throwing it on the clergy, and so the church and the world be all one thing,
and irreligious people do for the church as laity, because religion is the clergy's business, and, if theirs, nobody's – for they do not want it for irreligious laymen –
and thus that which has the name of the church, being really the world, serves to exclude and set aside the operations of the Spirit of God in His children as schism and evil; and who is to decide?
The church; but they are the world: and will the world ever receive the Spirit of God? It cannot.
What then? They hold themselves, of course, the church; they have the clergy, which is God's church in their estimation; and the Spirit of God and His work are voted schismatic.
Such is the real and simple meaning of the word clergy so used.

But to produce the passage in scripture – Be not "lords, over God's heritage", says Peter, to the elders or instructors; that is, over God's clergy –

to give it in its English form of letters, "cleroi".

The bodies of Christian believers were called God's "lots" – the meaning of the original word "cleros" – answering to Deuteronomy 9: 29.
Now the clergy have assumed to themselves to be God's lot only, but the only use of clergy in Scripture is, as applied to the laity if you please, contrasted with ministers: charging these to assume no lordship.
Now, the substitution of the clergy for the church is the very moral power of apostasy.
But this is contained, indelibly contained, in the very word in its present use, be they Roman Catholics or Protestants: that is,
- we find the assumption of clericalism, the secret love of many a fair-held name, to be really, in its character and operation, the sin against the Holy Ghost, and the formal character of the apostasy.
How often have we heard from the mouth of a minister or clergyman – "My flock", as if it were a virtue, so to think:
- while it is a shocking blasphemy in fact – I do not say wilfully so – which an apostle would never for a moment have thought of daring to utter or assuming to himself.
It was God's flock which they might be given to oversee – Christ's sheep which they might be entrusted with a portion of a – "cleros" – lot, to feed and guide.
To call them their sheep, or their flock, was to put themselves in the place of God or His Christ; but they do so because they are clergy – they count it their title as clergy – they would be as gods.
Will they say that they are God in the face of them that slay them [the sheep]?

I have the utmost affection and value for many of the individuals among the body designated as clergy; and many doubtless there are unknown to me.

But this is not an individual question, but one affecting the divine glory and the whole order of the church –
one which is the necessary result of its departure from God, and the form into which that departure was matured and has developed itself;
and its present practical result is, that the things by which the Spirit of God would bless the world, or them in it is charged, by virtue of this name, with being that of which Satan is the immediate author;
and thus the name and title of the body become the concentration of that which, by its denial of the Holy Ghost and gratuitous blasphemy against Him, brings destruction, necessary destruction, on all to which it is attached.

How this came to be so is plain enough, without wearying any one with a parade of learning.

The church had confessedly apostatized, and the structure of the apostasy, that wherein it consisted, remained precisely what it was when the truth came in,
- with this single difference – that the king took the place of the pope in the appointment of persons to offices in the church, and the control of its arrangements.
The church, originally, sunk gradually into worldliness, until it embraced the world, and the world became its head.
The world could not manage spiritual office: it could manage formal, local authority; it arranged these authorities, and did so.
For a length of time, in the prevalence of ignorance and superstition, the nominal offices of the church had more power than secular strength;
- when this ceased to be the case, civil power re-assumed the supremacy, but the structure remained the same: governing, contending, or governed, the same thing remained.
The world, in authority, arranged geographical secular power – leaving its influence over superstitious feelings to be what it might – so that it might be an available instrument in its hand to manage the world in its mass, not in Christ's to minister to and guide the church.
Whether the Establishment has sufficient of this influence to be of any use to the State, is exactly the question agitated at this moment. But what has the church of God to do with this? I cannot see.
It is merely a compound of secular influence and remaining superstition, by virtue of which the church is bound up with the world, and all its real energies cramped.
This system, or structure, goes by the name of clergy, whether it be the pope, or from the pope down to the lowest curate, who may be entitled, by virtue of it, to hold a place in the world which otherwise he may not have had;
- or if a Christian, to labour in some field where his labours may be ill-employed, and his usefulness thrown away; but the church is lost in it.
I admit, as fully as any one can do, that many of the clergy are most valuable men. They may have eminent gifts for various offices, which the exigency of the times may require;
- but the effect of this system, by which they form part of this great worldly structure, is to deprive them of the opportunity to stir up, or to bar the exercise of, whatever gifts God may have made them partakers of.

The operation of the Reformation was to introduce a statement of individual faith, and to break off, generally, all without the limits of the Roman Empire, from the immediate power of Rome and Popery.

It in no way separated the church from the world, but the contrary; and, while it changed the relations, left the principles of the structure just where it was.
- The King's Arms took the place, in the rood-loft, of the image of Christ.
Christ and His Spirit ruled in neither case, save in honour.

I verily believe, that the principle of a clergyman, as it is part and parcel of the structure of popery, will reintroduce the power of popery as far as the name of religion remains;

for as it hangs on the doctrine and principle of succession, not on the presence of the Spirit,
- there is no ground on which a Protestant minister, as a clergyman, can prove his title, which does not validate the title of the Pope and his followers more even than his own.
His happening to have right doctrine does not make him a clergyman; his having false doctrine does not make him not one.
The layman or dissenting minister, who holds the same doctrinal truth, is not a clergyman.
The popish priest, who conforms to the Church of England, is not ordained to become so: he has that already which makes him a clergyman.
Nay, in point of fact, the truth was not preached in the Church of England for the greater period of its distinct existence; and in the vast majority of instances the clergy still do not preach the truth; and the rest of the body would not allow them to be Christians at all.

Is it not manifest that the term clergyman, of such amazing influence on the minds of men, is the distinctive title of that association which has grown up from the decay of the church,

and now forms the common though varied ground of its association with the world, and a hindrance to cramp the operation of God's Spirit; the cementing title of that vine of the earth, which is cast into the wine-press of the wrath of God;

and which charges evil upon the operations of the Spirit of God, as rebellion to its authority, not acting within its limits, or in conformity to its secular arrangements and appropriations of service, appropriations of territory formed neither by, nor with reference to, the Church of God at all;
and when the Spirit of God operates by individuals within its limits – for God chooses whom He chooses – making them at once schismatics from their brethren, who do not comply with their geography, or acknowledge authority which they pretend to reverence – because it is of the system –
but really despise, and violate at the same time all the arrangements, for the sake of which they are rejecting their godly and faithful brethren?

If it were not for this term "Clergy", the link and bond of the great evil of the earth, and of pernicious influence over the minds of men, where would be the occasion of schism, save in that which is ever to be subdued?

Or where would be the opportunity to charge the fruits of God's Spirit upon the author of confusion?
Or what else is it that consummates the occasion of judgment to the system – of which it has taken the place of the energy and spirit – and always opposed the blessing?
Has there, I will ask, ever been an opposition to, and hindrance of, the truths of God, of which the clergy have not been the human authors, and in which they have not been the real and active agents?

The clergy, then, is the specific title which identifies the church and the world, not God and the church; and as the world necessarily denies, rejects, and will blaspheme the Holy Ghost, because it is the world, and cannot receive it,

the tendency of this name is solely to involve the church, corporately, in the same thing, and is to be viewed as the grand evil, the destroying evil, of the day.

What is the remedy? The recognition of God's Spirit where it is – personally seeking for that holiness and subjection of spirit which will discern, own, and bow to its guidance and direction,
- and hail its blessing as the hand of God, wherever it operates, in the measure and way it does so – that other Comforter sent to abide with us, whatever else did, for ever;
and working in obedience, that we may possess its joy – boldness, as against all that grieves it – against joining the world, which cannot own or receive it – or denying the truth, of which it is the witness.
The Lord give us to discern things that differ, and to separate the precious from the vile.

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Ministry by J. N. Darby– Part Two

Ministry by J. N. Darby
– Part Two