Plymouth Brethren

“ 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. ”

“ The Beginnings of Brethrenism—the Dublin Movement Twelve years ago Dr. Alexander, the present Primate of Ireland, described the warfare of his own church in the following remarkable terms: “The hill up which our little host must march is steep, and the hail beats in our faces. We hear the steady tramp of the serried ranks of Rome round us; the shout of the marauders of Plymouth rises, as they, ever and anon, cut off a few stragglers. We draw close, and grip our muskets harder.” ”

“ It is surely uncandid to deny that every scheme ever yet devised for ministerial support is encumbered with more or less serious disadvantages; but it is necessary to record the verdict of experience that deliverance from them is not to be sought along the lines of the well-meant, but eminently ill-conceived, procedure of the Plymouth Brethren. ”

“ Many Open Brethren fall into the same error when they hurl sweeping accusations against the position of all Christians that are not Plymouth Brethren, while they yet must see that many companies of such Christians are at least as favoured as themselves with tokens of God’s approval. ”

“ London was his birthplace, and “he was thus by accident of English birth, but otherwise was thoroughly Irish”. He came “of a highly honourable family”. His father was John Darby of Markley, Sussex, and of Leap Castle, King’s County, Ireland. From Westminster School, where he received his early education, he proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin, which is thus as much the academic parent of Plymouth Brethrenism, as Oxford of the Evangelical revival a hundred years earlier. ”

“ Plymouth Brethren, an anti-clerical body of Christians, one of the earliest communities of which was formed in Plymouth about 1830; they accept, along with Pre-Millenarian views, generally the Calvinistic view of the Christian religion, and exclude all unconverted men from their communion, while all included in the body are of equal standing, and enjoy equal privileges as members of Christ. ”

“ The writers that have made this subject their special province are generally extremely untrustworthy. They are commonly passionately prejudiced against the Brethren. For the most part they make the writings of altogether unrepresentative men the basis of their attack, and even these men they have misrepresented. [1] For example, in the principal book of this class, Reid’s Plymouth Brethrenism Unveiled and Refuted, many quotations are taken from Mackintosh, Charles Stanley, and a Dr. Davis, of Aberdeen, for every one taken from Darby or Mr. ”

“ He does so the more readily, as there is no single publication (as far as he is aware) that aspires, however humbly, to cover the whole ground of Plymouth Brethrenism.
Dr. Carson and many others have done good service in exposing and refuting the heresies and procedures of the system. But the author is not acquainted with any tractate, like the present, which a minister, for instance, could place in the hands of any of his people who might have been disturbed by the insidious assaults of the Plymouth Propaganda―as dealing with the whole question. ”

“ When he met Darby he had already relinquished on conscientious grounds all thought of ordination, and was thus prepared to adopt the new views on ministry and Church order. From this time until his secession from Brethrenism in 1847, he exercised his ministry steadily at Plymouth, except that for a few years, during which he held his Fellowship, Oxford claimed a certain portion of his time.
In 1832 the Brethren of Plymouth obtained a valuable recruit. J. L. Harris, perpetual curate of Plymstock, forsook the Church of England to unite himself with them. ”

“ 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 feel bound in conscience to oppose in every legitimate way. ... I desire to produce in the minds of the dear Brethren everywhere, the same strong sense that pervades my own, of the evil of this system—and this is one object of my labour everywhere. ”

“ But I would wish it to be understood that I do not think that any man can, with strict propriety, be spoken of as the founder of Plymouthism; though it seems fair to say of Groves that he had a larger share in its foundation than any one else, if we confine our attention to the very earliest period. It is necessary to add a word of warning against the first chapter of The Brethren, Their Origin, Progress and Testimony. Its author derived his information largely from Darby, but it may be charitably hoped that he extensively misunderstood his authority. ”

“ But according to the theory of Darbyism all Christians, whether they respond to this duty or not, are already, by the very fact of their being Christians, in fellowship with the Brethren. Were it otherwise, they say, the Brethren would themselves be only a sect. Though Christians may not prize or even know their privileges, yet every acknowledged Christian has the same right to sit at the Table of the Lord as the most venerable Plymouth Brother. The leaders insisted strenuously that there could be no membership with “Brethren” other than membership in the Church of God. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From this time therefore we must reckon him as wholly dissociated from Brethrenism, although he continued to attend his former meeting, and to take part in the ministry, when he happened to be visiting in Plymouth.
Scarcely had Newton departed when Soltau, Batten and William Dyer surrendered at discretion. By the close of the year they had all withdrawn from the Ebrington Street Church, and had published lengthy confessions of error and sin. Their honesty is greatly to their credit, even if their state of mind were perhaps somewhat morbid. ”

“ We are at last on solid ground. The meeting thus formed was permanent, and after about six months found a public location in a hired room in Aungier Street. The causes of this important step are variously stated. Boase, apparently following Miller, attributes it to a great increase in the numbers of the Brethren, consequent on the publication of Darby’s tract; but of this Bellett and Cronin know nothing. Bellett was averse to the change; Hutchinson was reluctant; Darby was absent from Dublin; Cronin and Stokes were eager for it ”

“ 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 ”

“ In addition to all that might very reasonably be urged against it by practical men, it has laboured under the more fatal drawback of a certain speculative sublimity that estranges ordinary minds. So effectually have these disadvantages operated that that principle, which may fairly be called the most fundamental that the Brethren professed, is now but little known among themselves, and seldom so much as guessed at by even well-informed outsiders. ”

“ Yet this old campaigner of the first days of Brethrenism was one of the bravest and most single-hearted men ever found in its ranks. He belonged, moreover, to the small class of theologians who find it easier to suffer for their convictions than to persecute. In the Plymouth schism of 1845 he had laboured to dissuade Darby from forming a fresh communion, and we have seen him shortly afterwards employed in a work of pacification at Bath; while his plea for a more comprehensive spirit towards the older denominations is unique in the story of the Brethren. ”

“ They may sometimes speak unwisely, illiberally, ignorantly; their system of ministry almost ensures the occasional entrance of the grotesque; but they speak as if religion were the one business of life, instead of allowing secular topics to encroach even upon the narrow limits of time ostensibly devoted to spiritual things. That they often compare favourably with their neighbours in this respect constitutes a main element in their strength.
The open ministry of the Brethren, whatever may be said for it on the side of pure theory, has been a very qualified success indeed in practice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of course, if Darby referred to the profession of the Brethren in the earliest years, his statement is quite erroneous, [6] and in view of his use of the preterite tense it is difficult to know what other meaning to assign to his words. His constant appeal to original practice, in his controversy with Newton, is indeed always futile. The Brethren started almost without defining anything, and every man was at liberty to work out the problem for himself. ”

“ Once the great world beyond was fairly shut out, Brethrenism really offered a carrière ouverte aux talents; and, above all, it offered a full ministerial career to capable men who were unwilling or unable to make the ministry their profession. And the great world was very thoroughly shut out by the genuine Darbyite. The world might not value his treasure; but the least insight into it was more than the world could buy from him. The contempt with which others too often looked down upon the Brethren contained a suspicious alloy of anger ”

“ 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. ”

“ This twofold position was negatively expressed in their favourite dictum that the Church of England was too broad in its basis, and the dissenting churches too narrow. The charge is too vague to be of much consequence. Indeed by shifting their point of view slightly they might have found that the Church was too narrow and Dissent too broad. The point of the saying is merely rhetorical. What is actually expressed is, on the one hand, the Brethren’s abhorrence of national Christianity, with its assumption (as the Brethren understood it) that every Englishman is a Christian ”

“ 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. ”