MR. WOLFF'S JUDGMENT OF THE ROCHAT SYSTEM

MR. WOLFF’S JUDGMENT OF THE ROCHAT SYSTEM

I have said that the object of Mr. Wolff’s pamphlet is to maintain existing things, and to oppose our brethren. He says of Mr. Rochat: “a scriptural system.” This is good, because Mr. Rochat opposes the brethren, and maintains more or less a clergy appointed by men. It matters little who appoints them, as Mr. Wolff says elsewhere, provided that it be men, and that there be no gift.

But, at the same time, although it may be convenient to establish a unity of opposition to our brethren, in order to maintain a clergy appointed by men, in some way or another he must, in another part of the pamphlet, destroy all this in order to maintain with exactness the system of the party. The following are the terms in which, after having called Mr. Rochat’s system a scriptural one (page 9), Mr. Wolff expresses himself with regard to the very same system in page 37 of his work, “I must add here that an election by a church, in Mr. Rochat’s sense, cannot agree with a divine vocation of the bishop”; and lower down, “If a church, when it needs a pastor, sets about voting, by means of which the member who receives most suffrages is constituted a bishop, that bishop has received no vocation from God; he is established in the name of man, and by man only. This result is inevitable.”I am therefore obliged, according to Mr. Wolff, to suppose it a very scriptural thing, that the one who is bishop over the flock of God should be established without any vocation from God. It matters little. There are thirty-seven pages between these two sentences, and in each place these contradictory statements are made in order to sustain what is existing in his party.