Brethren

“ In the first place, it is an error to regard vague speculations of a Docetic tendency as constituting an integral part of the ordinary teaching of the Brethren. The non-theological portion of the community would always remain practically unaffected by them. Even in the minds of the leaders such tendencies had probably scarcely any bearing on their spiritual life. To think of the Brethren at large as nourished up upon these miserable questions is to misconceive the whole character of the sect. ”

“ But I deny that His favours are so indiscriminately bestowed as to constitute no criterion whatever of His approval.
In view of the history of Brethrenism, it is a remarkable thing that it still exerts no mean power of attraction. It is idle to seek the explanation of this outside the real excellences of the sect. The Brethren handle spiritual topics with an absolute fearlessness. There is no apologetic tone,—there is no prudent dilution of the spiritual by the secular,—in their ministry. ”

“ To apply a very simple test, which of all the smaller sects of Christendom has enrolled amongst its enthusiastic adherents such a company (to limit ourselves to men that are gone) as John Nelson Darby and Francis William Newman, George Muller and Anthony Norris Groves, Benjamin Wills Newton and Samuel Prideaux Tregelles?
In yet another respect special interest attaches to the story of the Brethren. On their narrow stage there are few of the tendencies of universal church history that have not been illustrated, and not many of its movements that have not been reenacted in little. ”

“ I am confident that I do not overstate the case for the Brethren; and surely nothing could be more futile than to seek to account for a movement that has exercised an influence so deep and wide, without the frankest acknowledgment that it must have contained elements of high excellence. The problem is to explain how a system, labouring under such great and palpable drawbacks, has for seventy years been draining the churches of a not contemptible proportion of their most spiritual members ”

“ Of these writers who belonged to the community of the Brethren, Brother Jan Blahoslav certainly enjoyed the greatest fame. His Historie Bratrská (History of the Brotherhood) , of which but scanty fragments have been preserved, was greatly praised by his contemporaries, not only for its erudition and profoundness it was based on the archives of the community but also for the pureness of its Bohemian style. It is one of the great merits of the Brethren that they bestowed great pains on the development of the national language. ”

“ We read elsewhere (p. 241) , “Eternal life is realised only in the Assembly; no one touches eternal life now except in that connexion”.
Probably the long habit of considering themselves the sole depositories of everything beyond the most elementary principles of Christianity had tempted the Brethren to seek to enlarge their peculiar province ”

“ If the Brethren disbelieve this, dare they say that their own missions disprove it? The assumption of Brethrenism is that God will work a standing miracle to accomplish that which He has in reality entrusted to the operation of those principles of organisation, subordination, and mutual responsibility with which the very existence of human society is bound up. ”

“ The Brethren sought to effect a fresh start without authority, precedent, or guidance beyond the letter of Holy Scripture. For them, essentially, the garnered experience of eighteen Christian centuries was as though it were not. Such an experiment in the hands of eminent men could scarcely fail to yield a considerable harvest of interest and instruction; and it has actually shed, if I mistake not, a flood of light on many of the obscurities and incredibilities of the history of the Church. ”

“ I have seldom, I think, conversed with any one not intimately acquainted with the Brethren, but what I have found that he understood Open Brethren to be so called because they admit Christians who are not ‘Brethren’ to the communion table, and Exclusive Brethren to have earned their title by the exclusion of all who did not belong to their own sect. ”

“ That we thus get a list of almost all the names of men who had taken a leading part in the movement before 1830 is a striking proof, not only of the fervour of the zeal of the first Brethren, and of their readiness to stake everything on principles of action that may now appear to us rather visionary, but also of their superiority to any ambition to found a new sect. To follow Groves to Bagdad, on a mission that must be deemed singularly unpromising, was the prevailing passion in Dublin. ”

“ And yet, withal, these stern Brethren were kind and tender-hearted. If the accounts handed down are to be believed, the villages where the Brethren settled were the homes of happiness and peace. As the Brethren had no definite social policy, they did not, of course, make any attempt to break down the distinctions of rank; and yet, in their own way, they endeavoured to teach all classes to respect each other. They enjoined the barons to allow their servants to worship with them round the family altar. They urged the rich to spend their money on the poor instead of on dainties and fine clothes. ”

“ Nevertheless, this interpretation lent colour to the accusations of their adversaries; though indeed it had no real organic association with their general scheme, for they stood with the first in upholding the great Protestant principle that justification is no more granted in consideration of works following regeneration than of works preceding it.
It is almost universally charged against the Brethren by their opponents, that they refuse to pray for the forgiveness of sins. ”

“ Another great evil attending the institution was that the coarser-minded members of the community could not see, even in the case of men of approved qualifications, that “faith-brethren” lived by anything but charity. They therefore felt free to criticise every item of expenditure within the preacher’s family, as if he had not as truly earned his pittance as they their own probably far ampler livelihood. It may be imagined in how degrading a position men who had made large social sacrifices to unite themselves with the Brethren might occasionally find themselves placed. ”

“ As the tide of Protestantism ebbed and flowed in various parts of the Holy Roman Empire, so the fortunes of the Brethren ebbed and flowed in the old home of their fathers. We have seen how the Brethren rose to prosperity and power. ”

“ Among the Brethren all work was sacred. If a man was not able to show that his trade was according to the law of Christ and of direct service to His holy cause, he was not allowed to carry it on at all. He must either change his calling or leave the Church. In the Brethren's Church there were no dice makers, no actors, no painters, no professional musicians, no wizards or seers, no alchemists, no astrologers, no courtezans or panderers. ”

“ The meetings were truly precious to the soul, and night after night did I retire to my room at Powerscourt House in a deep sense of how little a one I was in Christ, in the presence of so much grace and devotedness around me through the day.”
In all this preoccupation with the study of unfulfilled prophecy, the Brethren never in any single instance fell into the snare of “fixing dates”. They strongly opposed all the ill-starred attempts of the kind that many of their fellow-students have made. ”

“ The lofty sentiment only too readily and too frequently degenerated into a mere supercilious contempt for others. But the calm assurance of superiority, whether well or ill founded, seldom fails to ensure a corresponding bearing; and even in their decadence the Brethren have not altogether ceased to exhibit the traditional bearing of happier days. ”

“ At the close of his pamphlet he declared his conviction that the chief effect of the Brethren's religion was to fill the mind with absurd ideas about the Side-Wound of Christ, and rivers and seas of blood; and, therefore, he earnestly besought all Methodists who had joined the Church of the Brethren to quit their diabolical delusions, to flee from the borders of Sodom, and to leave these Brethren, loved the darkness and rejected the Holy Scriptures. ”

“ And yet, on the other hand, we know enough to enable the historian to paint a life-like picture. For us the important question is, what did the Brethren teach their children? If we know what the Brethren taught their children we know what they valued most; and this we have set before us in the Catechism drawn up by Luke of Prague and used as an authorised manual of instruction in the private homes of the Brethren. ”

“ As the Brethren came to be known as good workmen, other magnates speedily followed the king's example; for particular places particular "concessions" were prepared; and thus the Brethren were encouraged to extend their "settlement system." Instead, therefore, of advancing from town to town, the Brethren concentrated their attention on the cultivation of settlement life; and before many years had passed away they had founded settlements at Niesky, Gnadenberg, Gnadenfrei, and Neusalz-on-the-Oder. ”

“ Again and again the Brethren sent deputies to see the great Protestant leaders. At Wittenberg, Augusta discussed good morals with Luther and Melancthon; and at Strasburg, Cerwenka, the Brethren's historian, held friendly counsel with Martin Bucer and Calvin. Never had the Brethren been so widely known, and never had they received so many compliments. Formerly Luther, who liked plain speech, had called the Brethren "sour-looking hypocrites and self-grown saints, who believe in nothing but what they themselves teach." ”

“ In spite of its unselfish purpose, the Brethren have occasionally been suspected of sectarian motives. At one time the Russian General Consistory forbade the Brethren's Diaspora work in Livonia {1859.}; at another time the Russian Government forbade the Brethren's work in Volhynia; and the result of this intolerance was that some of the Brethren fled to South America, and founded the colony of Brüderthal in Brazil (1885) , while others made their way to Canada, appealed for aid to the American P.E.C., and thus founded in Alberta the congregations of Brüderfeld and Brüderheim. ”

“ It does not appear how much further things moved in the direction of Groves’ other views. Certainly nothing like a stable church of Brethren was formed, for after the early death of Rhenius in 1838 most of the seceding Christians returned to the Church of England. [2] So far, Groves’ labours had done little for the extension of Brethrenism as an ecclesiastical system. Subsequently a very vigorous and extensive work, substantially on the lines of the Brethren, sprang up in the north of Tinnevelly, under the leadership of a disciple of his, named Aroolappen. ”

“ Justification by faith only has had no more strenuous upholders than the Brethren; indeed, their tendency was rather towards antinomianism than in the opposite direction.
It is true that the Brethren did not allow that a sinner is justified as being deemed to have kept the law that Christ kept for him, but maintained, on the contrary, that he is justified wholly as being associated by faith with Christ in the expiation of the breach of the law. They insisted that in Romans iv. 6-8 St. Paul identifies the imputation of righteousness with the non-imputation of sin ”

“ There is very little pure theory anywhere, and it is probable that the Brethren were largely influenced by what they saw, or thought they saw, of Christians almost secularised by absorption in political aims. Granting, as we surely must, that this is a real danger, it may be doubted if the Brethren took the best measures to heal the disorder. Total abstinence is not the universal panacea. ”

“ Those who have recognised that Brethrenism followed at the first a genuine spiritual impulse in its revolt against a Church crippled by party spirit and deadened by secularity, have perhaps felt surprise that its authors should not have found solace and satisfaction in the circle where the ardour kindled by the revival of the eighteenth century still glowed. ”

“ But his mind was independently moving in the common direction of the early Brethren, and connexion with an organised society soon became impossible to him. Groves’ early pamphlet on Christian Devotedness fell into his hands, and influenced him powerfully. In 1830 Müller accepted a call to the pastorate of a church at Teignmouth, at a stipend of £55 a year; and it was here that the principles soon to be known as those of “the Brethren” began to take definite shape in his mind.
He became extremely suspicious of “human direction” in “the things of God”. ”

“ Furthermore, when we pass from Darbyism to Open Brethrenism, we leave utterly behind us the supercilious contempt for aggressive evangelisation. Both at home and abroad the Open Brethren give themselves to mission work with ardour. Their stations are dotted over the face of the whole earth. ”

“ No one could leave the house without the pastor's permission, and the pastor himself could not leave his parish without the Bishop's permission. If he travelled at all he did so on official business, and then he lodged at other Brethren's Houses, when the Acoluths washed his feet and attended to his personal comforts.
The Brethren's rules struck deeper still. As the Brethren despised University education, it is natural to draw the plain conclusion that among them the common people were the most benighted and ignorant in the land. ”

“ Clarence Stuart of Reading, a Brother whose reputation for learning and piety stood high among them. His offence was that he taught that the “standing” of a Christian is complete through his faith in the Atonement, independently of his personal union with Christ as risen from the dead; that this union is a “condition” of added privilege, and that it had been an error of the Brethren not to distinguish duly between “standing” and “condition”. ”