FIRST PART - PRESENT STATE OF OPINION ON THE SUBJECT OF MINISTRY
FIRST PART — PRESENT STATE OF OPINION ON THE SUBJECT OF MINISTRY
The universal priesthood of the children of God, a truth so precious — what do I say? — a relationship with their God and Father essential to their happiness and to that of the Church itself — this priesthood is now admitted without contestation; but, in exchange, it is sought to carry on the combat with more success on another ground. We will follow our adversaries to the field which they have themselves chosen, namely, the question of ministry: that of the sufficiency of the word and the Spirit to lead Christians in every respect; finally, that of a formal organization, the great idol of the day, what is called a Free Church.
What had been refused to the testimony of the word is yielded to the force of circumstances. Wherever there is a little light, the clergy are absolutely unable to maintain themselves in the position they took pleasure in keeping. Spiritual activity is too great; eyes are too much opened to abuses; the position in which the clergy themselves find themselves is too false. By the goodness of God the attention of Christians is too much awakened as to these questions. But the exterior evil is more threatening than even this movement of minds in the midst of the flocks; and the ecclesiastical functionaries feel that they must leave it an undisputed field, or that still worse would come to them. They feel, besides, that what constituted their support is becoming a clog to them, and that they are obliged to leave in freer hands the work which they would like to direct, and which nevertheless they dare not undertake.
Read what is said in “The Archives of Christendom,” vol. 14, page 74, “This immense privilege [that of priesthood], to which the mercy of God has exalted poor sinners, imposes sacred duties on all Christians, confers on them also all the spiritual rights which the Church is in possession of I say all: government, the preaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments, the power to remit or retain sins.” “If this be objected to,” adds the author of this article, “the protestant dogma on this point is not known.”
[p. 3] There is certainly great confusion in this; but the establishment of such a principle is of the greatest importance. The author, it is true, makes a restriction — a restriction which he presents not at all as flowing from divine right, but purely from human right. It is that for good order. The Church entrusts+ these rights to men whom she sets up, to a Clergy.
“Such is, in particular,” continues this same article, “the evangelistic ministry. The minister receives his gifts from God only; his office from men. It is not a character which distinguishes him from other Christians, which makes of him and his colleagues a separate order, a caste, a clergy, according to the proudly pretentious word of the catholic hierarchy, which thus calls itself alone the heritage of the Lord, while it sees in the rest of the Church only the laos [the people], the laity.”
Besides this, the article we are citing complains, because the author of the “Examination of the Darbyite Views on the Sacred Ministry” believes he finds in scripture a hierarchical government for each flock, concentrated in the person of the pastor alone, however right it may be, that he should “endeavour to utilize the religious elements he meets with among the faithful.” And he fears this monarch soon becoming a pope, “without reckoning that here again universal priesthood is found pitiably banished in the cloudy region of abstractions.”
Here is the language of “The Reformation.” “For our part, we readily acknowledge the services which Plymouthism has rendered to the gospel ... . Everything in Plymouthism may be reduced to two points, the idea of the action of the Holy Spirit, and the idea of the authority of the scriptures ... . Plymouthism wishes to substitute for human organization the action of the Holy Spirit ... . We also have long thought that, on the ground of conformity to primitive usages, there can be no successful defence of present usages. We must take our stand boldly on that of evangelical liberty and of human order.” That is, boldly saying that we must arrange the things of God according as we think proper.
+ The presence of the authority of the Holy Spirit, and, in consequence also, the authority of the gifts He confers, are ignored by our opponents. Priesthood does not confer the right of preaching; it is the gift which imposes this duty on the one who has received it. If, for example, a spiritual capacity for preaching is met with, the Church can neither confer nor take it away. Neither gifts, nor the right to preach, are the portion of all; and it is very wrong to consider the right of preaching as a right of man. It is a duty which flows from a gift, an obligation toward God. Woe to him who does it not, if God has conferred the gift on him. The Church cannot entrust him with that for which God has already made him responsible, nor take it from him; neither can it relieve him from the responsibility which is attached to it. On the other hand, the Church cannot entrust to him that which God has not given him. If he has the talent, the Lord calls him to traffic with this talent; if he has it not, no institution can fit him to do so.
The same journal adds, “Perhaps Plymouthism owes its existence not so much to such views on scripture and the Spirit, as to an anticlerical tendency to which these views have served as a scaffolding, as materials, and as weapons. If this be so, we might find ourselves not so far severed as might appear. It is thus that we find ourselves entirely agreed as to the principal point of the controversy on the subject of ministry: that is to say, as to sacerdotal notions of every sort — apostolical succession, the efficacy of ordination, the conferring of an indelible character, the distinction between laity and ecclesiastics, the inherent capacity of the one or the inherent incapacity of the other to exhort, to teach, and to administer baptism or the Lord’s supper. Upon all these points we pass condemnation, because nothing of all that is found in the New Testament, but especially because it is contrary to its spirit and tends to alter it gravely. It is yet needful to extirpate from our thoughts the preconceived notion of a distinction between ecclesiastics and laymen.”
Let us listen to M. Henri Martin, in his pamphlet on “The resignation of the Vaudois clergy.”
“The whole Church,” says he, “is the clergy. There is, in the New Testament, no other high priest than Jesus Christ. Every Christian is nevertheless a priest, as sharing the priesthood of the Lord ... . If all are priests and offerers of sacrifice, there are in the Church no laity in the vulgar sense of the word, and all are the laity in the sense of being the people that God has acquired for Himself.”
The “Examination of the Darbyite views,”+ by a minister of Neufchatel, also acknowledges that spiritual gifts are allotted to all the faithful without exception; and the author, speaking of what he calls the Darbyite system as to ministry, agrees++ “that the greater part of the blows by which it is, in general, thought possible to vanquish this enemy, in reality do not touch it”; that instead of “rejecting ministry,” it “on the contrary pretends to re-establish the only true, the only scriptural one” ... that “received with charity, this adversary will certainly be changed into a friend who will contribute to awaken in the bosom of the Church the consciousness of several important truths.” And the author cites this one among others: “that true Christian ministry, the ministry of spirit and of life ... cannot be conferred by a mere human consecration, but must rest upon a call and a living gift of the Spirit.” Moreover, he declares that he gives his “full assent to all that the system of Mr. Darby contains really true and salutary to the Church in the present day,” and he recognizes “the necessity of raising ministry to, and maintaining it at, the height of these eternal truths.”+++
+“Examination of the Darbyite views on Holy Ministry by passages of Scripture,” by a minister of the Word of God. Neufchatel (Switzerland), 1846.
++“Examination,” page 18.
+++“Examination,” pages 19-21.
[p. 5] Here are testimonies drawn from pamphlets and journalistic articles written with the intention of condemning the system brought of late under the notice of Christians testimonies which perfectly justify what I have advanced, namely: that the battlefield is entirely changed. By the avowal of our adversaries,+ the great principles which have been put forth are eternal truths. The most decided among them agree with me on the principal point. If the Reformers recognized these eternal truths, so much the better for them and for us. I have given the preceding extracts with a view to establish that these truths are recognized. There is no longer any possibility of drawing back from this recognition.
+In saying “adversaries,” I mean to refer only to views and the position taken with regard to them. I am not the adversary of the persons who have taken this position. The author of an “Examination of the Darbyite Views,” a pamphlet written in a gentle and amiable spirit, is, to my knowledge, a brother who would not like to be an adversary of the children of God. He has, in general, represented my views with uprightness, with sincerity, and ordinarily with justness. Nevertheless, in the point which constitutes the thesis of the pamphlet, he has made me say precisely the contrary of what I have really said. Preoccupied with his subject (I only attribute this mistake to preoccupation), he has made me, from the distinction established between gifts and local charges, conclude their incompatibility — a conclusion contrary to what I have written, of which he would have done well to take a little more account. The examination which, on this occasion, I have made of my previous publications, has convinced me of the justness of what I said, and has shewn me that God has given me grace to keep, with much more exactness than this brother, within the limits of truth on the subject in question, a subject on which I agree with him. The controversy bears upon the points which he has avoided; among others, that as to whether the Church’s fall has not altered the position of the children of God. A system which prefers the Church of Neufchatel to the apostolic times exposes itself to be received with some distrust.
[p. 6] We shall see, nevertheless, that it is quite possible to seek to render null the force of this concession, made under the constraint of facts, rather than dictated by faith.
I shall begin by rectifying some errors into which the author of the “Examination” has fallen, and to which I have alluded in the last note.