Organization and Unity of the Church.
'The unity of the Church is held as a fundamental fact, resulting from the acts and operations of God, and not from the agreements and confederacies of men. There is one Body of Christ, embracing all who have been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (though, like the unfruitful branches of the vine, many may at last be cut out and cast away); and, in the absence of the Head, the harmonious intercommunion of the members is secured by the inworking of the One Spirit, and by a ministry proceeding immediately from the Head, and having jurisdiction over all the parts. The distinction between the Church Universal and the local or particular churches which compose it, is sharply drawn in the organization which has been developed under the rule of the apostles. The apostles themselves are the great Catholic ministry, through which guidance and blessing are conveyed to the whole body, and they are assisted in their work by prophets, evangelists, and pastors.
'But each particular church, when fully organized, is under the rule of an angel, or chief pastor or bishop, with presbyters and deacons helping him in their subordinate places. It is his office to stand continually at his own altar at the head of his flock, carrying on the worship of God, cherishing and directing the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and exercising the pastoral charge over all the souls committed to his care. The threefold ministry of Episcopacy (and, in a lower form, of Presbyterianism) is here united with the central authority which Rome has wrongfully sought to attain by exalting her bishop to the place of universal headship.
The Second Coming.
'In respect to eschatology, they hold, with the Church of the first three centuries, that the second coming of the Lord precedes and introduces the millennium; at the beginning of which the first resurrection takes place, and at the close the general resurrection, with the final judgment and its eternal retributions to the righteous and the wicked. This period of a thousand years will be marked by the presence of the Lord and his risen and translated saints upon or in near proximity to the earth, then freed, at least partially, from the curse; by the re-establishment of the tribes of Israel in their own land, in fulfillment of the promises to their fathers, with Jerusalem rebuilt, to be the metropolitan centre of blessing to all nations; and by the bringing of all the families of mankind into the obedience and order and blessedness of the kingdom of God.
'The restoration of the primitive gifts and ministries, like the ministries of Noah and of John the Baptist at the close of the antediluvian and Jewish dispensations, is to prepare for the ushering in of this next stage of God's actings. The order of events is to be as follows: The immediate and special work of the apostles is to gather and make ready a company of first-fruits, described (Rev. vii. 1-8) as sealed with the seal of the living God--the gift of the Holy Ghost bestowed by the hands of the apostles (Eph. i. 13; Acts xix. 1-5)--and as organized after a twelvefold law, of which the type was given in the structure of the twelve tribes of Israel. They are sealed while the angels are holding back the winds of judgment, before the great tribulation (Rev. vii. 14) is let loose upon the earth, that in them the Lord's words may be fulfilled, and they be counted worthy to escape all the things that are coming to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man (Luke xxi. 36).
'But the taking away of the first-fruits is only the first stage of the mighty work to be done in the bringing of this dispensation to a close. It is to be followed by the revelation of the Man of Sin, the infidel Antichrist, who will be successfully resisted for a time by the two witnesses (Rev. xi. 3-12), but will at length prevail over them, and for a short time rule the nations with the tyrannizing power and lurid splendors of the pit. In the midst of the terrors of that great tribulation the harvest will be reaped, and all the faithful gathered into the garner of the great Husbandman; and thereupon will be the vintage of wrath (Rev. xiv. 15-20), and the Lord will come forth to tread the wine-press of his Father's indignation, and to cast the beast and the false prophet into the lake of fire.
Prospects.
'They regard the failure of their labors to gather the Churches of Christendom into their communion as being after the analogy of the failures at the close of all preceding dispensations, and as furnishing no argument against the reality of their divine mission.
'The apostles do not, therefore, expect to have a large following at this stage of God's work. As a sheaf of first-fruits to the harvest, such will be the relation of the few who receive their testimony to the great multitude who will be saved out of the fiery trial of the time of the Antichrist. Nor does their faith fail because many of their brethren have been taken away by death, and it has pleased God to leave their places unfilled; for they look upon this as an indication that their present work is nearly finished, and that the Lord will soon take those who shall be found ready, to stand with him upon Mount Zion, safe in his hiding-place, while he pours out the vials of his wrath upon the earth. It would seem that the two apostolates at the beginning and the end of the dispensation form the company of the four-and-twenty elders who sit on thrones around the throne of the great King (Rev. iv. 4), partakers of his dominion, and associated with him in his work of judgment and rule.
Relation to other Churches.
'This brief statement of the position and doctrines of the "Catholic Apostolic Church" shows the grounds of their refusal to be called by any other name than belongs to the whole community of the baptized. They are a part of the one Church, differing from their brethren in being gathered under the proper ministries of the Church universal, and in being organized according to the original law of the Church as defined by St. Paul when speaking of the Body of Christ (1 Cor. xii.). They hold the one faith, the one hope, and the one baptism; and, without departing from the exact and literal teachings of the New Testament, they have added to these the larger statements of truth which have been the fruits of God's presence with his Church through all her generations.
'Having its origin among the Protestant Churches, and retaining all the great truths pertaining to the cross of Christ, for which the Reformation was a noble and successful struggle, this Catholic work has laid under contribution the rich stores of the Greek and Roman communions, and is leading the Church on into still deeper knowledge of the purposes of God contained in holy Scripture, by means of the living ministers of Christ and the revelations of the Holy Ghost, to the end of preparing her as a bride for the marriage of the Lamb.'
[1715] See A Brief Account of a Visit to some of the Brethren in the West of Scotland, London, 1831 (J. Nisbet); Robert Baxter (first a believer in the divine origin and then in the satanic origin of these gifts): Narrative of Facts characteristic of the Supernatural Manifestations in Members of Mr. Irving's Congregation and other Individuals, in England and Scotland, and formerly in the Writer himself, Lond. (Nisbit), 1833; Hohl, 1.c. (quoted in my Hist. of the Apost. Ch. § 55, p. 198). Comp. also Stanley, Comment. on the Epp. to the Corinthians, 4th ed. London, 1876, pp. 250 sqq.
[1716] When he adds, 'Oh foulest Circean draught, thou poison of popular applause! madness is in thee, and death; thy end is Bedlam and the grave,' he seems to cast a reflection on Irving's character which is not justified by facts; for Mrs. Oliphant's Life shows him to have willingly sacrificed popularity to his convictions.
[1717] 'They do not lay claim to the name Catholic Apostolic as exclusively their own, but they use it as a proper designation of the one body of Christ, of which they are an organic part, and they refuse to be called by any other. They do this on the ground that it is wrong to affix to the Church the name of an eminent leader, like Luther or Calvin or Wesley; or one founded upon some feature of Church polity, such as Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Congregational; or one derived from some peculiar doctrine or rite, as Baptist or Free-will Baptist; or one expressing geographical limitations, such as Roman, Greek, Anglican, or Moravian. The essential characteristic of a thing should be expressed by its name, and the Church has for its three chief features, Unity, as the only organism of which Christ is head; Catholicity, as having a universal mission; and Apostolicity, as sent by Christ into the world, even as he was sent by the Father. It is a significant fact that this name, adopted in the Nicene Creed, has practically every where been changed, as into the Roman Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, the Protestant Episcopal, or something still narrower and more sectarian.'--W. W. Andrews, in Biblioth. Sacra, 1.c.
[1718] From a conversation with a learned minister of that Church, to whom I mentioned this difficulty, I infer that he at least--I do not know how many more--regards its testimony as a partial failure, or merely as a temporary provision, to be superseded by a better one. Another writes to me in answer to the same question: 'We are quite ready to admit failure, great failure, so far as to the present effects of the movement upon Christendom. But intrinsically, and in relation to God's plans, we do not think it a failure.'