William Blair Neatby

“ This sentence gave great offence, and Darby endeavoured to shield himself by a footnote, which does not greatly alter matters. Dorman’s criticism is just. “His adding ‘as a perfect being to learn it for others,’ is not of the least force; because it involves the absolute contradiction of what is affirmed. For a moral condition is a moral condition; and there is but one way of passing through it.” Apparently both Newton and Darby found themselves precipitated by their system on a conclusion against which their heart and conscience cried out. ”

“ Elsewhere he says of his opponents, “I am inclined to suspect that, not being in communion with Christ in the matter, Satan has deceived them by the ambiguity of the word ‘suffering’. ... But if they had been seeking the truth and edification simply, they would not have been thus deceived.” The devil is constantly in requisition to explain the perversity of his critics. “The attempt to connect my doctrine with his [Newton’s] is folly or worse—an effort of the enemy to palliate or cover his work.” ”

“ At the present day there are good men that imagine they can dispose of all charges against Darby’s tracts by reading them for themselves in his Collected Writings. Occasionally they do read them, and pronounce him innocent. Probably they would read Newton’s old tracts with equal satisfaction, if they read them without knowing that Newton had written them. Bellett read them with approval, and afterwards joined a party that had no rationale for its existence except its “testimony” against the tracts he had approved. ”

“ For beauty of thought matched with beauty of expression, for frequent depth of spiritual and psychological insight, for an intense and glowing devotion to Christ, his writings have a great and abiding value. ”

“ When I think of such men as Bickersteth and Hewitson, and of such labourers as the missionaries abroad, as the teachers of the ragged schools in London, or as the clergy in the West of Ireland, I am at once ashamed of myself, and desire to honour both them and their work. ”

“ It was with a singularly bad grace that Darby continued to take the loftiest ground. With an evident reference to Dorman’s suggestion of an irenicum, he writes in the introduction to the edition of his Sufferings that appeared in 1867, “I reject Bethesda as wickedness, as I ever did. ... When the blasphemous doctrine of Mr. Newton ... came out, Bethesda deliberately sheltered and accredited it. ... It is all one to me if it be a Baptist Church or anything else, it has been untrue to Christ, and no persuasion, with the help of God, will ever lead me a step nearer to it.” ”

“ If I have to take my adversaries up because they still carry on their warfare, and Satan is using them for mischief, I here declare I will not spare them, nor fail, with God’s help, to make plain the tenets and doctrines which are at the bottom of all this. ”

“ The following passage shows that Darby had attempted a very common means of intimidation. It seldom was encountered, unhappily, with such unbending sternness.
“Any talk to me about approaching Newton’s doctrine, because I cannot agree with yours, and drawing towards ‘Bethesda’—and danger of losing my moral integrity in doing so—I honestly tell you is lost upon me. I think such things are unworthy of one Christian to impute to another; and it is the direct way to reduce all the power of conscience to a name.” ”

“ No imputation either of arrogance or of pitilessness to Darby can well go beyond what his own published references to this controversy will bear out. Hall had been his friend for thirty-five years; Dorman for twenty-eight. Both were elderly men, sacrificing the friends and associations of a lifetime, when they could have neither the time nor the heart to form fresh ones. In Dorman’s case, as he had lived (at least to a great extent) by his ministry, serious pecuniary loss was added. ”

“ Mackintosh sufficiently refuted his own magniloquent phrases by the following instructive passage:—
“Alas! alas I we often see men on their feet in our assemblies whom common sense, to say nothing of spirituality, would keep in their seats. We have often sat and gazed in astonishment at some whom we have heard attempting to minister in the assembly. We have often thought that the assembly has been looked upon by a certain class of ignorant men, fond of hearing themselves talk, as a sphere in which they might easily figure without the pains of school and college work.” ”

“ Darby had let loose a flood of odious speculation on the sufferings of the Saviour, which, whether it were heresy or not, was certainly sacrilege. [11] This I prefer to pass over, but an article in the Bible Treasury for August, 1866, cannot be so lightly dismissed; for we read in it that Christ “entered into all the darkness and the wrath of God, but before He went out of the world He had passed through it all, and went out in perfect quiet. The work is so perfectly done that death is nothing. ”

“ A far weaker man than Dorman might well have given a good account of so feeble an antagonist. Much more important is the powerful and eloquent denunciation of Darbyism. Referring to the excommunication of the whole meeting at East Coker “for having received to the Lord’s Table persons who were judged to have implicated themselves with ‘Bethesda,’”—and treating the excommunication as typical of the whole system of Exclusive discipline,—he justly says:“I make no further comment upon it beyond saying that no legal fiction ever went half its length in absurdity ”

“ Though Newton guarded himself by reiterated declarations of the perfect sinlessness of all Christ’s experiences, this severe criticism of his words was not undeserved; but Darby fared no whit better when he ventured on the same perilous quest. He says that “man may be looked at morally in three conditions,” i.e., conditions of suffering. ”

“ Stancombe had left the peaceful communion of Bethesda to follow Darby’s standard. Like Dorman he had for the second time to sacrifice his cherished associations to the claims of conscience. Von Poseck’s was an interesting story. He came of a noble Pomeranian family, and as a young man suffered imprisonment for a refusal to serve in the Prussian army. From prison he addressed to the King an appeal based on the principle of religious toleration. ”

“ Bellett, like Groves, gave the keynote of his life in one of his last words,—“Oh, the Man of Sychar!”
It is natural to think of this good man as “taken away from the evil to come”. At the time of his death a fresh and very serious storm was brewing. In 1858 and the following year Darby had contributed a series of papers on the sufferings of Christ to the Bible Treasury—a new organ of the Brethren, destined to run a long course, not yet complete, under the able editorship of Mr. ”

“ But for Darby’s tracts, however, he would have “gone on” with his party “in sadness indeed, and with the oppressive conviction that” his “great theory of subjection to the Holy Spirit, as dwelling in the Church on earth, was practically abandoned”. But Dorman had not so far shown any sign of disaffection, although circumstances had probably, unperceived by him, been loosening his moorings to Darbyism. Hall was before his friend in taking action. In 1865, after three years’ uneasy silence, he engaged in correspondence with Darby, but ineffectually. ”

“ There are one or two of these that were scarcely “leaders”. ↑ Dorman now begins to do Newton rather belated justice. “In justice I am bound to say, that amidst all the apparent confusion and contradictions of his statements about the position and experiences of the Lord Jesus in connexion with Israel, his care to guard against imputing to Christ the presence or possibility of actual sin, is a plain proof that, however wrong his doctrines, it was no part of his intention to defame Christ.” ”