The Church, the Falling Away, and the Restoration

by J. W. Shepherd

As leaven will permeate so truth must influence more or less the mass into which it is cast. From Scotland the principles associated with the names of the Haldanes, Carmichael and McLean found receptive hearts in Wales. Even in Ireland, also, there was in men’s minds the struggling of truth and error, the partial expulsion of the false by the true, the consequent advance to apostolic faith and order, and falling short of a complete return thereto, notwithstanding progress calling for thankful recognition.

THE SEPARATISTS

About the year 1802 there were a few persons in Dublin, most of them connected with the religious establishments of the country. The most noted among them were John Walker, G. Carr and Dr. Darby, all of whom organized religious bodies, differing in minor points from one another. Their attention was directed to Christian fellowship, as they perceived it to have existed among the disciples in apostolic times. They concluded from the study of the New Testament that all the first Christians in any place were connected together in the closest brotherhood; and that as their connection was grounded on the one apostolic gospel which they believed, so it was altogether regulated by the precepts delivered to them by the apostles, as the divinely commissioned ambassadors of Christ. They were convinced that every departure of professing Christians from this course must have originated in a withdrawing of their allegiance from the King of Zion, and in the turning away from the instruction of the inspired apostles; that the authority of their word, being divine, was unchangeable, and that it can not have been annulled by or weakened by the lapse of ages, by the varying customs of different nations, or by the enactments of earthly legislators.

With such views in their minds they set out in the attempt to return fully to the course marked out in the Scriptures; persuaded that they were not called to make any laws or regulations for their union, but simply to learn and adhere to the law recorded in the divine Word. Their number soon increased; and for some time they did not see that the union which they maintained with each other, on the principles of scripture, was at all inconsistent with the continuance of their connection with the various religious bodies round them. But after a time they were convinced that these two things were utterly incompatible; and that the same divine rule which regulated their fellowship with each other forbade them to maintain any religious fellowship with others. From this view, and the practice consequent upon it, they were called “Separatists.”

They held that even two or three disciples in any one place, united together in the faith of the apostolic gospel, and in obedience to the apostolic precepts, constitute the Church of Christ in that place.

They held that the only good and sure hope toward God for any sinner is by the belief of this testimony concerning the great things of God and his salvation. And as they understood by faith, with which justification and eternal life were connected, nothing else but belief of the things declared to all alike in the Scriptures, so by repentance they understood nothing else but the new mind which that belief produces. Everything called repentance, but antecedent to the belief of the Word of God, or unconnected with it, they considered spurious and evil.

They considered the idea of any successors to the apostles or of any change of Christ’s laws as utterly unchristian, and did not tolerate any men of the clerical type among them. They believed that the Scriptures taught the community of goods. They held that there is no sanction in the New Testament for the observance of the first day of the week as the Sabbath; and that the Jewish Sabbath was one of the shadows of good things to come, which passed away on the completion of the work of Jesus on the cross. They believed themselves bound to meet together on the first day of the week, the memorial day of Christ’s resurrection, to show his death, in partaking of bread and wine, as the symbols of his body and his blood shed for the remission of sins.

In their assembly they joined together in the various exercises of praise and prayer, reading the Scriptures, exhorting and admonishing one another as brethren according to their several gifts and ability; contributed of their means and saluted each other with “an holy kiss.” In the same assemblies they attended, as occasion required, to the discipline appointed by the apostles, for removing any evil that might appear in the body.

When any brethren appeared among them possessing all the qualifications of the office of elders or overseers, which are marked in the apostolic writings, they thought themselves called upon to acknowledge them as brethren in that office, as the gifts of the Lord to his church. They held themselves bound to live as peaceable and quiet subjects of any government under which the providence of God placed them; to implicitly obey all human ordinances which did not interfere with their subjection to their heavenly King.

The baptism of believers was cast aside as anti-Christian, except in the case of the heathen, who on conversion had made no previous confession of faith. Their mistake lay in the belief that baptism was intended to mark the mere profession of Christian faith. They failed to see that it was commanded by the Lord himself to follow upon a real believing with the heart, and a confession with the mouth. Any act called baptism prior to that is not the ordinance of Christ, and stands for nothing. The time for baptism is so soon as that believing confession and heart trust exists as a fact. So long as it remains unperformed after that there is a cessation in that particular of compliance with the divine command, which should be terminated by obedience so soon as possible.