William Blair Neatby

“ Fully as we must recognise the gigantic failure of the attempt to embody it, we may yet admit that the conception is a striking and original one. But it is certain that nothing less than a monumental enthusiasm could have initiated—or, still more, could have sustained—a movement that aimed at realising so impracticable an ideal.
It has been often observed that, through a life of ceaseless controversy, devotional literature still remained Darby’s favourite occupation. ”

“ But the epoch of Exclusivism really derives its whole character, and therefore its sovereign explanation, from the personality of Darby. It is scarcely possible to write the story of the Brethren without bearing hardly on them. In their narrow and obscure sphere,—in their life of almost monastic seclusion, and, in ordinary circumstances, of scarcely less than monastic quietude,—they hardly have a history beyond the history of their quarrels. Consequently, they have come before the public in a light that does them a great injustice ”

“ What are we to think of the ecclesiastical position in which the atmosphere is so rarefied that a true Christian cannot long walk in it, unless he be endowed with an extraordinary spirituality? Such was not at the beginning the provision of the Lord for His flock. Is it too much to say that, for the luxury of breathing such an ethereal atmosphere, the leaders of the Brethren had neglected divine safeguards that our palpable infirmities have always called for, and had denounced the service of common sense as unworthy of the House of God? Dorman’s own words seem to justify the conclusion. ”

“ It is the sadder for the remembrance of the long fellowship in sacred toil, in loneliness, in bereavement, in hope deferred, during their devoted exile in the East. Cronin was a warm-hearted man and a fervent Christian, and he must be credited with acting from a sincere conviction, and at some cost to his own feelings. ”

“ But his courage, his administrative genius, and his force of will, had far more to do than all his acquirements with the ascendency he exercised—an ascendency that entitles him to no inconspicuous place amongst the born leaders of men.
Other leaders indeed have been equally absolute, but seldom in face of equal obstacles. Wesley, for instance, exercised an unchallenged autocracy over the Wesleyan Methodists of his own life-time, and avowed it with the most engaging frankness. But his followers were, on an average, men of far less striking personality than Darby’s ”

“ From this time our attention will be mainly focussed upon Darbyism; partly from the necessity of the case, since the Open Brethren—as those that refused to abide by Darby’s decree came generally to be called [3] —are in the proverbially happy condition of scarcely having a history; partly because Darbyism has been by far the most powerful and typical phase of the whole movement, and Open Brethrenism is best dealt with as a species of modified Darbyism.
The distinctive feature of Darbyism was of course the discipline it executed against the Open Brethren ”

“ To New Zealand, however, the controversy followed him, if it had not perhaps preceded him; and before long the discipline against Bethesda was executed in literally the ends of the earth.
It is not difficult to see how the system of the Open Brethren would work. As between one local church and another, their polity was simply that of the Congregational churches. Church A might disown church B without church C being compelled to disown either. This plan was to Darby the merest confusion. Every “meeting” to him was as much one with every other as it was one with itself. ”

“ The role of the ecclesiastic has often had a very injurious moral effect upon the men that have sustained it, and certainly the history of the rampant ecclesiasticism that was now introduced is singularly uninviting. A gross carelessness as to the truth of the case, and an almost cynical disregard of the rights of the accused, have been the central principles on which the persecution of the church at Bethesda has rested. ”

“ After all, it is nothing very new that a man should be profoundly convinced that he is doing God’s work on a great scale, and be filled in the depths of his soul with an answering enthusiasm, yet condescend at the same time to actions that would compromise much less lofty pretensions.
Fundamentally, the conception to which Darby de- voted his enormous energies for more than fifty years was a High Churchism that should disdain the common accompaniment of Ritualism, and should borrow from Protestantism an intensely Biblical element. ”

“ If a leader were too scrupulous to throw dust in simple people’s eyes after some such fashion, he might count on losing thousands of adherents. In equal honour with the name of Captain Owen I would associate the name of Henry Young. Young put forth A Plea for the Honour of Christ. ”

“ And again, even if this difficulty could have been surmounted, it was further needful to prove that all who became partakers in Newton’s evil deeds were to be considered equal partners, so as to ultimately compromise people who had never heard either of Newton or of his heresies ”

“ Darby broke in on the debate with an impatient, “Well, well, God has accepted his service and taken him home”. There are some people so small that all the heroism in the world exists in vain for them. Darby was not of their number ”

“ In June, 1849, Dr. Cronin wrote to Norris Groves, forbidding him the house, on the ground that Groves had made himself “a partaker of other men’s sins, and become obnoxious to the prohibition of John ii. ”