I am aware that these "historical documents" are valuable primary sources for research, but it seems to me, without taking up any of the many points raised, that Mr Humphery spent a great deal of time and effort by going on a fault-finding exercise, to look for and find fault with everything Mr Raven said and wrote.
There is a danger that over-occupation with the various controversies among “brethren” might ‘overthrow the faith of some’. Indeed, W T Turpin returned whence he came. Others went elsewhere. We are in a very broken and weak state now, especially in the UK.
Syd
The citation from FER comes from his paper on "The Person of the Christ." Elsewhere, in it he refuses the notion that, in becoming a Man, there was any change as to His Person. To quote another: "For the Person is not changed" (J N Darby, Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, Volume 5, page 230, footnote - Stow Hill edition).
So why his opposers read into it that he was dividing the Lord's Person? We are united to Him as the Christ, but are associated with Him as the Son of God, and even then, He had to become a Man that this might be. How could we be united to Him as God, i.e. in the Godhead? A rhetorical question, of course, which provides its own answer.
Another point in this paper by PAH, from the bottom of page 9 through to page 12, is his refusal to accept what FER states about Christians, while on earth, as being in "a mixed condition." I had always thought that we still have the flesh in us, and flesh as inhered by sin. Is this not so? Or had PAH managed to extricate himself from the flesh, and attain to a status of sinless perfection? I suggest that he was so bent on finding fault that he had not understood one word of what FER was saying.
The point is that we cannot apply to believers, while in their body here, that their walk, their entire Christan life, is always in full accord with how they stand absolutely in Christ according to the purpose of God. It would mean that all believers are completely sound in all areas of doctrine, never could fall into error, be incapable of sinning, live perfect and blameless lives. Hence, the flesh and sin that remains in the Christian for the time being must therefore be taken account of, though our eyes should be fixed on Christ and not on ourselves.
