VI
The Strife at Plymouth in 1845

On his return from the Continent, Darby went straight to Plymouth. This place for a long time had been B. W. Newton’s sole residence, and the scene of his regular ministry. It had consequently become the one focus of effectual opposition to the theological and ecclesiastical views that under Darby’s powerful influence had gained a marked predominance amongst the Brethren generally.

The feud between Darby and Newton was no new thing. Within three or four years of the beginning of Brethrenism in Plymouth, Newton (if we are to trust Darby) had jealously isolated himself from the other Brethren in a spirit that Darby rather self-complacently contrasted with his own.[1] About 1840, if not earlier, Newton circulated some manuscript letters “far and wide,” “denouncing” the party that differed from him in prophetic and dispensational matters; and when Darby stated that he “could not see that the Spirit of God had led to or guided in” these denunciatory letters, Newton not only told him that all friendship between them was at an end, but was even with difficulty persuaded to shake hands with his old friend.[2] “Since then,” writes Darby, “the letters were constantly copied and circulated. From that time I was a good deal abroad, though I visited Plymouth. I saw clericalism creeping in, but at first thought it was merely from circumstances. The deaf people were placed round the table, and consequently the speakers were to stand at it. This soon evidently defined them. I saw the tendency, and sat in the body of the congregation, and spoke thence when I spoke. I was remonstrated with, but retained my position. On the last visit before the present one, finding the teachers always breaking bread [i.e., always officiating at the communion table], I urged some other doing it, or this union of the two things would soon be a regular clergy. Mr. H[arris][3] to whom I spoke (but as to all), made no difficulty, and something was done.”

Darby tells us that he “felt the Spirit utterly quenched”. If he went to the meetings happy, he returned miserable. He spoke to Harris, but got no satisfaction. Harris indeed remonstrated with him. But things were not yet at their worst. The following statement is significant:

“About three or four months before my return to England, I had a correspondence with Mr. H., one of whose letters, from the great change in its tone, convinced me that every barrier was gone at Plymouth; for he had long sought to keep himself free from the influence that ruled most things there. From that moment I felt that conflict and trial awaited me, though I knew not what:[4] but I was satisfied before God that nothing which could be ventured on would be spared.”

It will be observed that Darby implies that things were tranquil at Plymouth. Harris had been a barrier to the rising tide of clericalism, but at last he too was swept away. He still, however, felt able to invite Darby to pay them a visit. This is a totally different thing from Darby being summoned (as some have alleged) by a party of malcontents in the Ebrington Street Chapel. He manifestly came, rightly or wrongly, on his sole responsibility, and came foreseeing—or at least being in a position to foresee—that trouble must follow. As a matter of fact, it followed immediately. From the moment he decided to come, Brethrenism was doomed.[5]

A doctrinal divergence was the root of the quarrel, though ecclesiastical differences followed, and seriously aggravated it. Newton had published (in 1842, it is said) a book on the Apocalypse. Darby criticised it, and a war of pamphlets ensued. Both men wrote with warmth, and each by his own showing was justified in feeling warmly. Newton had “identified the Church and the Kingdom,” (up to a certain point, apparently), and Darby declared that this identification was “of the very worst moral effect to the saint”. Newton not unnaturally considered this a “very strong expression”; but he was quite able to rival it, for he gave out that the foundations of Christianity were gone, if the views of his antagonist prevailed. “Much,” he said, “as I value the light of prophecy, I would rather that the Church should go back into ignorance about it all, than that such a system should take the place of its former deficiency in knowledge.” But Newton, if severe, was decent in tone throughout. Darby’s first rejoinder is perhaps entitled to the same praise, but his second was rather rude; and as usual his too evident anxiety to score points tends to repel the confidence of the reader.

The chief question in dispute was the relation of the Christian Church to the Great Tribulation. Both parties were futurists, that is, they held that the fulfilment of the bulk of the Apocalypse is still future, and belongs to “the times of the end”; and they therefore both maintained that a great and unprecedented persecution awaits the faithful immediately before the revelation of the Son of God in glory. But whereas Newton held that the faithful in question were simply those members of the Christian Church that would be on the earth at that time, Darby insisted that the whole Christian Church would be removed to heaven by a rapture unobserved by the world, shortly before the outbreak of the Tribulation. He accordingly found the victims of the Tribulation in “another semi-Christian or semi-Jewish body,” as Newton put it, who “will be called out as witnesses to God before the end of the age”. Now this dispute seemed of immense practical consequence to men who anticipated the immediate end of the age. Were they to warn their disciples of an impending trial, far more terrible than the worst that the blood-stained annals of the Church record, or were they to comfort them with the assurance of their total immunity from it? Nor was this all. It is clear that the doctrine of the secret rapture is inconsistent with the descriptions given of the Second Advent in the prophetic passages of the Gospels. Darby therefore taught that these descriptions were given to the apostles, not as the founders of the Christian Church, but as the representatives of a faithful remnant in the midst of apostate Judaism,—to which character the witnessing body at the time of the end (composed as it will be of semi-converted Jews) is to answer. This involved a different view of the Gospels from that which had previously obtained among Christians, and materially altered the relations of the Church to the principles declared by Christ during his earthly ministry. A tendency accordingly grew up to treat large portions of the Gospels as “Jewish”. In particular, the law of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount was to a great extent transferred from the Church to the rather shadowy “remnant”. This tendency in turn linked itself with a growing repugnance to associating the idea of law in any shape with Christian standing—a repugnance that has widely given rise to a plausible (though not altogether just) charge of antinomianism against the Brethren.

Darby’s doctrine, exempting the Christian Church from the judgments that both parties agreed in anticipating, was connected with a general disposition to magnify unduly, as Newton thought, the special privileges of the Church as compared with the faithful of the older dispensation. Newton strenuously upheld that Abraham and the rest of the faithful of old would form in heaven an integral part of the Church, the Bride of Christ. Darby resisted this as a view derogatory from the Church’s special glory, and roused apparently against Newton a great enthusiasm on behalf of her invaded prerogatives. Newton answered with tremendous severity. “I believe this,” he said, “to be only another form in which one of the chief poisons of corrupted Christianity will, if the statement be persevered in, be disseminated. I believe it to be setting the Church in a position which pertains to Christ alone. I believe it, therefore, derogatory to the glory of Christ—and I feel assured, too, that the evil results of this have already appeared, and that many minds are beginning to make the Church, and not Christ, the centre around which their thoughts about Scripture, and their arrangements of Scripture revolve.” The closing suggestion was certainly not wanting in shrewdness, as any one subsequently familiar with Brethrenism could testify.

Turning now to ecclesiastical matters, the principal charges against Newton were clericalism and sectarianism. Brethren that had sought to avail themselves of their right under a system of open ministry to address the church had been repeatedly hindered, it was said, by Mr. Newton or his friends. Even the beginnings of a settled order in ministry had been made, according to Darby ; for everybody “knew when it was Mr. Newton’s and when Mr. H[arris]’s day: and people took their measures for going accordingly”. This “regular alternation of two,” and discourses prepared beforehand, were principles quite at variance, in Darby’s belief, with “that dependence on the Spirit which characterised the profession of the brethren”. 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. When we read of the Plymouth meeting, and of the Bethesda meeting at Bristol, as not being Brethren’s meetings in the full sense, all that the statement amounts to (supposing it to be in some sense correct) is that Darbyism had gradually become the immensely preponderant principle, and that these meetings had undergone a somewhat different development. Plymouth indeed was plainly the metropolitan church in England, and it was naturally a galling thing for Darby that his principles, which so seldom sustained a check anywhere else, should fail to make headway there.

Darby also taxed Newton with trying to engross all power within the Church; with having, to that end, “got rid of Captain Hall” many years earlier,—a statement that must, in view of Hall’s independent character, be received with some reserve; with arbitrarily settling every particular in which he felt interested by his own authority, even in defiance of the opinion of all his colleagues,—and so forth. In these accusations there was probably a measure of truth. Long afterwards, amidst wholly different circumstances, Newton certainly showed the arbitrary temper with which Darby charged him. That first-rate men found it difficult to work with him, that he surrounded himself with those that were unable to withstand his imperious will, and with their help carried things at Plymouth with a high hand, cannot be positively asserted when we have little evidence beyond the accusations of his implacable foes; but it is at all events in keeping with his known disposition. Still, all Darby’s Narrative goes to show that the meeting was in a quiet condition. Darby’s comment was that they made a solitude and called it peace; but even this implies that at least there was no open discontent.

Newton, on his part, charged his adversaries with “radicalism”. Darby had by this time taken up very strong views against the formal recognition of elders. If a meeting were in a good condition it would recognise its God-given rulers; what it would do if it were not in a good condition, I am not aware that he explained. The pity is that he could not bring himself to avow frankly his change of principle. Of this characteristic infirmity Dr. Tregelles, discussing the events of 1845 a few years later, took a perfectly fair advantage. He tells us that, in 1831 or 1832, Newton was appointed Elder of the Plymouth meeting, with (he believed) a special duty to restrain unsuitable ministry; that Darby “requested Mr. Newton to sit where he could conveniently take the oversight of ministry, and that he would hinder that which was manifestly unprofitable and unedifying”; that Darby also, writing from Dublin, addressed a letter to “B. Newton, Esq., Elder of the Saints meeting in Raleigh Street, Plymouth”;[7] and that “on one occasion Mr. Newton had in the assembly to stop ministry which was manifestly improper, with Mr. J. N. Darby and Mr. G. V. Wigram’s presence and full concurrence”. Speaking from memory, I believe Darby recognised Wigram as occupying a similar position in his London meeting. Evidently then, if Newton prevented ministry much at his own discretion, he did not in that particular depart from general early practice. That Newton exercised his right tyrannically is perfectly possible, and would not surprise me, though I do not think that any proof that it was so is now available.[8]

But by far the bitterest of Darby’s complaints related to Newton’s alleged systematic effort to band together all the Brethren everywhere, so far as his influence could reach them, in resolute opposition to the school of doctrine of which Darby was the head. That such an effort was actually being made, and made strenuously, there is no doubt whatever. Newton was measuring with jealous care the support he might reckon on in pressing hostilities against Darby. He was losing no opportunity to discredit the dreaded teaching. Zealous ladies were circulating manuscript notes of his Bible readings far and wide, and were (it was stated) making things very unpleasant for all whose zeal for Newton was less ardent than their own. How far, on the other hand, such a course may have struck Newton as mere self-defence it is hard to tell, because of the scantiness of our materials for the fourteen years preceding Darby’s fatal visit to Plymouth in March, 1845.

It was on this point that the quarrel came at once to a head. Darby wrote to Newton, objecting to his “having acted very badly towards many beloved brethren, and in the sight of God”. Newton asked for names and circumstances. “I confess,” Darby tells us, “I felt this miserable. He had been writing for six years to every quarter of the globe (Mr. Newton boasted of it at last before the brethren who came), saying, the foundations of Christianity were gone if brethren were listened to; sisters had been employed in copying these letters; tracts had been published, declaring that we all subverted the first elements of Christianity! and he asks for dates and circumstances. I replied, it was the sectarianism and denouncing of brethren I complained of. This, he replied, was a new charge! And as it involved all the rest at Plymouth in the charge as well as him, he would consult with them about it and meet, but demanded the dates or circumstances of the former charge, or its withdrawal. As I well knew, and any one could see, that it was a mere explanation and enlargement of acting badly towards beloved brethren, I declined further communication unless before brethren; the rather as he alluded very incorrectly to past circumstances, and I thought such correspondence very useless.” In such humour as may be guessed from this extract, the rival leaders met with thirteen others, selected on no formal principle, but including sympathisers with each. Darby repeated the charge of sectarianism. Newton’s self-control was generally admirable, but for once it seems to have failed him utterly. According to Darby, he “broke out in great anger, saying, that he waived all formal objections, that he did seek to make a focus of Plymouth, and that his object was to have union in testimony there against the other brethren (that is, as explained, and is evident, their teaching), and that he trusted to have at least Devonshire and Somersetshire under his influence for the purpose; and that it was not the first time I had thwarted and spoiled his plans”.

This circumstance derived its importance from the use that Darby subsequently made of it. Newton afterwards published, at the request of a friend, a report of what he had said at the meeting of the fifteen. This report contained no geographical details of the kind that Darby mentions. Newton states that the charge preferred against him at the meeting in question was, “A systematic effort to form a sect, and discrediting and denouncing those who do not adopt the opinions which form its basis”. He allows that he would be open to this charge if he refused to hold communion at the Lord’s Table, or if he insisted that all should hold his views of truth before they were allowed to minister; but he affirms that he had never done either the one or the other. He describes the theological position of his opponents, “which,” he adds, “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. At the same time, my hostility is against a system, not against individuals.” Newton can scarcely be said to make light of his determination to oppose Darbyism; nevertheless, Darby afterwards felt justified in accusing his antagonist of lying. This was the more remarkable that the opening words of Newton’s printed statement were: “You ask me to give you on paper the substance of what I said at our recent meeting”. (The italics are my own.)

That Newton really made at the meeting a reference to some of the western counties, I have very little doubt. The question of what he had said was one of the subjects of enquiry on the part of a considerable number of leading Brethren at a later stage of the quarrel. Darby asserts that his own account of the matter was then borne out by the witness who most favoured Newton, the “only modification” being “that, instead of saying that he trusted he should have at least Devonshire and Somersetshire under his influence for the purpose, he understood him to say, that wherever he could get influence in Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Cornwall, he should seek to do the same thing. Mr. N. himself at last said, as I understood, that as everybody said he did, he supposed he did say as alleged. Lord C[ongleton] at last asked Mr. R. [Newton’s supporter] whether, if he had read that paper, he should say it was an untrue account of the meeting. He replied he must, but that Mr. N. was so angry (so chafed, I believe, was the word) that he did not think he ought to be charged with what he did say.”

This is Darby’s narrative, and it is possible that Newton, Rhind, and Lord Congleton would all have demurred to the report. But even taken as it stands, it makes the charge of falsehood against Newton ridiculous; and it is amazing that Darby should not have seen how completely he stultified himself by publishing it.

This extraordinary charge was not brought forward without a long delay, and may have been altogether an afterthought. The quarrel dragged out its weary length from March to October. Newton’s incriminated letter bore date, April 18. On Sunday, October 26, at the close of the morning meeting, Darby detained the congregation at Ebrington Street Chapel, and told them that he “was going to quit the assembly”. He abstained from entering into details, as he puts it. “I … only stated the principles on which I went: that I felt God was practically displaced; and more particularly, that there was a subversion of the principles on which we met; that there was evil and unrighteousness unconfessed and unjudged.” An allusion to the suppression of a kind of informal committee meeting, called the Friday meeting, followed; and that was all.

Three weeks after his secession, Darby was invited to attend a meeting at Ebrington Street. The object of the meeting, which was held on Monday, November 17, was to enquire into his reasons for seceding; and he then made his first public complaint against Newton’s personal integrity. Thenceforward the charge was urged with a pertinacity to which few men would have been equal.

It was accompanied by several others. To some of these Darby himself attached little importance, and we may imitate his example with the most perfect safety; but there was one other on which he laid great stress. In the summer of 1845 Newton had published a letter that had for some time previously been circulating in manuscript. He expunged a paragraph that had “caused pain to some,” and inserted two new passages, “ negativing the two evil doctrines” that Mr. Darby had just been imputing to him. On the first page of the letter as published, these changes were referred to as follows: “The following letter was written some years ago, in reply to the inquiries of a friend, who resides in Norfolk. It is now published, with some omissions, and alterations, but in substance it remains the same.” Newton’s defence of this course was that the additions did not affect the substance of the letter, and that therefore the prefixed notification met the case.

Darby, on the contrary, alleged that nearly a quarter of the printed matter was not in the manuscript letter at all; “that the new matter consisted of reasonings against the doctrines he was charged with holding now as to the authority of teachers”. Darby therefore considered that the published letter made the charges appear “most wanton and unfounded, inasmuch as six years ago the person charged had actually written against the things he was now charged with”. There is perhaps some little force in the complaint; and in such delicate circumstances Newton ought certainly to have been perfectly explicit in distinguishing the new matter from the old. But, in view of the notification that was prefixed, the imputation of bad faith was on the face of it absurd. It was also with good right that Newton said in his own defence, “Surely, if there had been any intention on my part to deceive, it would have been a strangely foolish thing to print the letter at variance with the MS. when the MS. was in everyone’s hands”.

Darby made no attempt to communicate these charges to Newton before advancing them in public. His excuse was that Newton at that time held no communication with him. This could hardly have prevented his sending Newton a written statement of the charges and requesting an explanation, before publicly assailing the acknowledged leader of a very large Christian community—not to say a personal friend of fourteen or fifteen years’ standing—with accusations of a grave moral character, the like of which had never been imputed to him before, by friend or by foe.


These startling events being noised abroad, leading members of the community of the Brethren flocked to Plymouth from all parts in order to investigate the circumstances. The investigation actually began on Friday, December 5, ten Brethren (not counting Darby or Newton) being present. Of this number three were believed to have been invited by Newton; two (Sir Alexander Campbell and Mr. Potter) were invited by Darby; two (Code and Rhind) by Soltau, Newton’s principal lieutenant in the trouble that followed, but one who through the preceding quarrel had sympathised in some particulars with Darby;[9] two (Wigram and Naylor) were uninvited; and one (Parnell, who had by this time succeeded to the peerage as Lord Congleton) was invited both by Darby and Newton. It is a striking tribute to the love of truth and fair play with which Congleton is, I believe, usually credited, that two rivals so bitterly at strife should have concurred in soliciting his presence. He had returned from India with Cronin in 1837, feeling that there was not such prospect of success in the mission as to justify him in remaining.

Of the uninvited men Wigram was, by Darby’s own account, “considered an adversary to Mr. Newton,” and Naylor was apparently regarded in that light by Newton himself. Sir A. Campbell had formerly belonged to the church at Ebrington Street, but had removed to Exeter. He disapproved of Newton’s line of things. Of the other men, Code, long well known amongst the Brethren as “Code of Bath,” was the most interesting. As a curate of the Church of Ireland he enjoyed the very high esteem of his diocesan, good Archbishop Trench of Tuam; but in the beginning of 1836, under the influence of Darby and Hargrove,[10] he resigned his curacy. He was not, however, a pronounced partisan of Darby’s, and exerted himself at Plymouth in the interests of peace.

The investigation was a most curious proceeding, and barren of everything but fresh occasions of strife. The functions of the board of investigation were left totally indefinite, and no less so its scope of enquiry. It had certainly no judicial authority, and its almost haphazard constitution should have precluded the idea that it was a board of arbitration. Indeed, before it assembled, Darby’s action had ensured its futility. Lord Congleton had arrived in Plymouth some little time before, and on the 26th of November he and three others, at Newton’s request, addressed a letter to Darby, suggesting that Darby should choose four brethren to meet an equal number nominated by Newton, “to enquire into and report on the charges said to have been made … on Monday the 17th, etc.” Darby refused. “I thought it,” he says, “a worldly way of settling it. Nor can I yet see that, when a person is charged with sin in the church, it is a scriptural way that he should name four persons to investigate it, and the one who has charged him four more. Indeed I was justified in this by every spiritual person I know before whom it came.” Darby was determined to bring the matter before the Church, and consequently attached no authority to the proceedings of the board of ten, though he consented to meet them, presumably for the purpose of enlightening them as to the facts. It was afterwards a subject of furious dispute[11] to what conclusion the ten investigators had come. As a matter of fact they came to none. It is true that at one time, five of the ten, Campbell, Lord Congleton, Code, Potter and Rhind, signed a statement that “the brethren who investigated matters … were entirely satisfied that Mr. Newton had no intention to deceive or mislead in the letters referred to, though through being over cautious on the one hand, and deficient in carefulness on the other, he had laid himself open to accusation”. Wigram, who treated this document with great contumely, could only deny its allegation in so far as it related to himself. He said that he had not known that it was being drawn up, and did not agree with it. This was at most an oversight on the part of the signatories; and indeed it is certain, from Wigram’s own statement, that at one part of the investigation even he inclined to the same verdict. The document was not published, but its suppression was not due to any change of view as to the judgment it expressed. Campbell “said before a hundred and eighty persons, that within three days of the suppression, he felt he could not sign it, and that his judgment is now opposed to its contents”. This statement is Wigram’s, and it was all he could urge; but even this makes it plain that Campbell could still have signed it when it was suppressed; and it does not affirm (indeed it seems designed to avoid affirming) that Campbell denied its allegation. And on the 1st of January following, Campbell sent a letter to the church at Ebrington Street, calling on them to make an investigation corporately; and, referring to a refusal already made to permit such investigation, he says, “I renounce all participation in such proceedings, not because I judge Mr. Darby’s accusations correct [italics my own], but, because the only door, by which he could return among you, has been shut”. The language is ambiguous, but it seems designed to convey a disagreement with Darby’s views.

On the other hand, even Darby and Wigram are not able to say that any member of the ten, at the time of the investigation, accepted Darby’s charges as made out. The five signatories, indeed, all resolved to work from within the congregation at Ebrington Street, in the hope of curing the disorders that they conceived (rightly, from the point of view of Darbyism) to exist there,—all of them considering Darby’s secession “a great mistake”.[12]

The real reason for the suppression of the “verdict” was that the person on whose behalf it was drawn up declined it, doubtless thinking it did not go far enough in his favour. Newton’s conduct in this particular was greatly regretted by Congleton; and certainly, whether it was right or wrong, it was unfortunate in the extreme. It is likely that Newton felt that if it was an acquittal of himself, it was still more an acquittal of his accuser. This was true, and, in my judgment, a great injustice to Newton; but he was pitted against a foe who held a strong advantage, and would use it without mercy; and a prudent course was to be recommended to the weaker party.

It is impossible not to feel for Newton. Darby had refused his very fair and reasonable proposal for arbitration. The investigation of the ten had fallen through. All that remained was Darby’s appeal to a church-meeting at Ebrington Street. This Newton and the other leaders of the church disallowed. An investigation by the church was not, from their point of view, a desirable course; and assuredly it was not one that Darby had the least right to insist on. He had voluntarily put himself outside the communion of the church, and had therefore clearly no claim to be heard before it. Neither was he, as Newton’s accuser, entitled to refuse any reasonable suggestion that the accused might make with a view to clearing himself. Newton must have felt that a right of selection lay with himself, and that Darby was determined to secure every possible advantage over the man he had defamed. That this should rouse a spirit of opposition in a man of Newton’s temperament may possibly be an occasion of regret, but scarcely of surprise.

But this is not all. Darby’s tactics were seldom faulty. Arbitration could not have been of any use to him. A board of arbitrators, properly selected and bound to find a verdict, must have acquitted Newton. But Darby’s power over a public assembly, even to the end of his long life, was marvellous. If Newton had consented to argue the question of his character before the whole church, he would have put a formidable weapon into his adversary’s hand. Darby would probably have failed to get a verdict, but he could hardly have failed to gain some more adherents; and all that he gained Newton would have lost. If, on the other hand, Darby were refused access to the Church by its leaders, he had now no other means of gaining it. The leaders afterwards took the ground that there was no case to go before the Church. “We were, indeed, most painfully surprised at a brother’s extracting such charges from such facts; and we felt that we had nothing to lay before the saints; except indeed we expressed to them what must have been a crimination of our brother Darby.” “We hoped,” they add, “that his making such charges was nothing more than a result of the strong excitement under which he always spoke of things and persons here;” and they refer to the fact that Newton “had been known” in Plymouth “during his whole life,” but “that hitherto no moral charge had ever been brought against him”. Undoubtedly they had high views of the functions of leaders, and the strongest objection to making churches deliberative assemblies. At last, on the 17th of December, 1845, they issued a note informing the Church that in their judgment the charges had been “most satisfactorily answered,” and that they believed Newton to be “entirely innocent of the imputations”. This was signed by Soltau, and endorsed by Batten, William Dyer and Clulow.

But Darby had them at such an advantage that it would probably have been their wisest course to waive every objection and give the discussion the fullest publicity. Congleton took a very serious view of the refusal. “If Mr. Newton had consented to the proposed further investigation, and the result had been division, on no better grounds than what I conceive Mr. Darby stands on, the blame of such division would have been wholly with Mr. Darby; as it is, the blame is partly with Mr. Newton, therefore I cannot go with either of them.”

Whether Newton were wise or unwise,—even whether Darby were righteous or unrighteous,—may be treated as a secondary question now. The important point is that the Brethren in their first great emergency found themselves absolutely unprepared to grapple with it. They had no constitution of any kind. They repudiated congregationalism, but they left their communities to fight their battles on no acknowledged basis and with no defined court of appeal. If once the sense of fair play (one would be ashamed to speak of spirituality) broke down, there was no check on the most arbitrary temper. The Brethren were never weary of denouncing “system,” but they made haste to demonstrate that the worst system can hardly be so bad as no system at all.

Darby had hitherto abstained from observing the communion independently. Soon after the investigation he felt relieved from all scruple. On the 28th of December he “began to break bread, and the first Sunday there were … fifty or sixty”. Wigram openly supported him.


No time was lost in transferring the strife to London. On Sunday, January 11, 1846, Lord Congleton publicly charged Wigram at the morning service at the Rawstorne Street meeting with helping Darby in making a division at Plymouth. It is pleasant to record that Congleton had first gone to Wigram privately, once alone, and then accompanied by a witness. The meeting seemed reluctant to take the matter up, and Congleton therefore stood aloof. He was not a supporter of the Ebrington Street Church, for he felt that there was “a sectarian and clerical spirit” there, though “that did not constitute grounds for leaving”. Yet he would not “break bread with them,” because “they did not do all they might have done to prevent the division”.

Wigram continued to exercise his virtual leadership at the Rawstorne Street meeting as before. Darby, who was equally involved in Lord Congleton’s charge, was received there without enquiry. In April there was a meeting at Rawstorne Street of “brethren from other parts”. Congleton attended this meeting and made a statement “substantially the same as that contained in the last part” of a letter he had sent beforehand to one of the conveners. This was as follows: “I consider that Mr. Darby, after withdrawing from communion, Sunday, October 26, 1845, giving certain reasons, did publicly slander and defame, in Ebrington Room, Monday, November 17, 1845, his neighbour, his Christian brother and his fellow-minister in the word, and thereby caused a great breach and division in that gathering. … That Mr. Wigram helped him, etc.” These charges were left uninvestigated.

In October Wigram addressed to the Rawstorne Street meeting a violent printed attack on Newton, alleging (presumably as the principal charge) the discrepancy between Newton’s account of the April meeting and Darby’s, and claiming confirmatory evidence on Darby’s behalf. Passionately as the charge is urged, it breaks down ludicrously. Mr. Newton, he tells us, had circulated an explanatory paper, “most specious and artful,” but proving “to any simple mind … not untruthfulness only, but a jesuitical mode of acting, which is most painful”. Wigram intimates that he has further evidence in reserve, (a favourite artifice throughout this odious warfare), which presumably was to be produced if the first instalment failed of its effect. As he can hardly be suspected of not putting his strongest points forward in the first instance, we need be at no loss to judge of the rest. He closes with the startling announcement that he “would rather expose” his “family circle to the results of the friendly intercourse of any Irvingite teacher, or a Roman Catholic priest, than of any one of the five,”—to wit, Newton and his four colleagues.

The most significant paragraph in the letter is the following: “But I must add, that the ‘Narrative’ published by Mr. Darby seems to me to put the question upon other grounds, and in some measure, therefore, to neutralise this, because it makes the question not ‘Has —— told a lie and not repented of it?’ but rather, ‘Is not —— led by a lying spirit, and, through a lengthened course of actions, trying to bring in something like Romanism?’”

Darby, in like manner, held that there was unquestionably at Plymouth “a spirit of delusion from the enemy at work,” and that “terrible as such a thing no doubt is, it is a comfort in one point of view that it accounts for otherwise unaccountable things”.[13] This much-needed hypothesis became a notable weapon in the hands of these two ecclesiastics. It helped to make credible their accusations of falsehood against men of notoriously honourable character, and must be pronounced a most detestable device for taking away the rights of an accused person, and for opening the floodgates to indiscriminate calumny.

Dr. Tregelles was at that time prosecuting in London the great work on the sacred text by which he has made all Christendom his debtor, and had been for several years associated with the Rawstorne Street meeting. In his opinion Wigram ought to have been called upon “to repent of his sin in publishing … such a thing”. It does not appear that he publicly expressed his opinion. At all events nothing was done.

It was deemed however that this “masterly inactivity” should stop short when Mr. Newton’s faults came in question, and in November a letter was sent to him inviting him to answer to Darby’s charges before the assembled saints at Rawstorne Street. It might be presumed that Newton had at the least applied for communion there, but this was not the case. He had come up to London and had held some private Bible-readings. In conversation he expressed a wish “to satisfy the minds of any brethren as to the charges made against him”. It was private explanation that he contemplated; but some of the Rawstorne Street Brethren took the opportunity to propose a public investigation. Newton replied that the ministering brethren at Plymouth, following the ordinary usage of their church in such cases, had published a document exculpating him; and that the ten investigators of the previous December had “all with the exception of Mr. W[igram] declared that” he “was free from the charge of moral dishonesty”; and that “after all this” he did not feel that he could “be properly asked to plead again”. He received however a second summons, in a most curious letter, dated November 20, and signed by W. H. Dorman.

William Henry Dorman was one of the ablest and most interesting men ever connected with the Brethren. He had been minister of Islington Independent Chapel, and filled that important post with great acceptance. In 1838, while still quite a young man, he resigned, and cast in his lot with Darby. His accession was important to the Brethren, for they were wont to obtain far fewer recruits from the Nonconformist ministry than from the clergy of the Establishment. At first Dorman worked at the Rawstorne Street meeting; but he was now residing at Reading. This did not hinder him from taking a leading part in all the disciplinary proceedings against Newton. The following passage will give an idea of the position taken up by the London meeting:—

“Let me ask you, therefore, to say whether you are prepared to meet Mr. Darby and others concerned in this question in the presence of the saints at Rawstorne Street: where your visit and expressions of willingness to meet investigation have brought it on. I beg to say very distinctly I do not write to brethren at Plymouth for any opinion as to the scriptural mode of proceeding in this investigation—not because I despise their judgment, but because the only satisfactory course for me to pursue, if I am charged with evil, is openly and fairly to answer those charges, when I am required to do so by the Church, whose province is to judge the evil: and not to be raising questions about the competency of the tribunal.”

It is hard to imagine how a man of Dorman’s intelligence came to persuade himself of the propriety of taking up such an extraordinary position. Everything, as a matter of fact, turned on the competency of the tribunal. As Tregelles said, “It is no answer to say that he [Newton] had come within your jurisdiction by reading Scripture at the house of a sister in Pentonville”. “Surely the difficulty must have been great,” he adds, “before this was assigned as a reason.”

Can Dorman have held that an accused person was bound to plead before any self-constituted tribunal that might choose to send him a summons? Plymouth Brethrenism, it is true, originally rejected local membership, and held that any Brethren coming from a distance had a full right to enquire into local dispute;[14] but even this stopped far short of asserting that it was competent to any meeting in the country to summon before it any accused member of any other meeting. It is perhaps not difficult to detect an undertone of misgiving in that sentence of Dormant letter which I have printed in italics. The pretext could hardly have thoroughly imposed on a such duller man.

The subsequent course pursued at Rawstorne Street is almost incredible. Dorman had requested an immediate reply on the ground that Darby had been asked to stay in London until it came. Soltau accordingly, on Newton’s behalf, sent a short note on the 25th,[15] intimating that the reply, which he promised to despatch “with the least possible delay,” would be a refusal. Dorman actually took advantage of this courteous intimation to withhold the real reply altogether. Without even waiting for it, he informed the Rawstorne Street meeting that Newton had refused; “adding that, without judging upon the charges, a person that refused to meet them must lie under them—that he could not receive reasons for not meeting them; … that after what had passed, if Mr. Newton came to Reading or Oxford, … he as an individual would not break bread with Mr. Newton”. The full reply—a very long document—reached Dorman on the 27th. Dorman intimated to Clulow that it would not be used, and the Brethren at Rawstorne Street took action in ignorance of its content—that is, in ignorance of Newton’s real answer to their citation. If the church knew that such a document was in the hands of their leaders they shared the responsibility of this most high-handed proceeding.

The action took the form of “a last appeal,” professing to emanate from the “saints … at Rawstorne Street”—the document not mentioning that there were some who dissented. This “appeal” was signed by Gough and Dorman. Newton and his colleagues replied in a courteous and dignified note, giving “the most firm and decided negative”. This bore date December 9, 1846.

Four days later Dorman and Gough signed a note on behalf of “the saints at Rawstorne Street,” refusing Newton “fellowship at the table of the Lord” until he should recede from his contumacious attitude. Newton’s colleagues thereupon issued, on Christmas Day, a Remonstrance and Protest respecting the act of exclusion, which they treated as a sentence of excommunication.

One of the many extraordinary features of this affair is that the second citation (according to Tregelles, who appeals to Gough as being thoroughly aware of the fact) and the final judgment (by Darby’s own showing) were not unanimous. Yet Darby could express earty disapprobation of Dissent for settling things by majorities. This he constantly condemned as a most carnal proceeding; and even in his Account of the Proceedings at Rawstorne Street, issued after the conclusion of the whole matter, he is not ashamed to write as follows: “Among the dissenters they vote … and a majority determines the matter. … It is a mere human principle, such as the world is obliged to act on, because it has no other way of getting out of its difficulties. But the church of God has. It has the presence and guidance of the Holy Ghost.” It is instructive to see that this boasted principle was quietly ignored when an irremediable want of unanimity threatened a deadlock in the proceedings against Newton. The course adopted differed from the procedure of Dissenters, only in that the document issued by the majority contained no allusion to the existence of a minority; whereas in the documents of Dissenters a more open course is commonly pursued.

The prosecuting party did not accept the view of Newton and his friends, that the exclusion was tantamount to an excommunication. All that can be said is that if it was not an act of excommunication it was a gratuitous impertinence. Newton had not applied for fellowship, and therefore the church was not under necessity to decide on his case in order to guide itself in an actual emergency. If excommunication was more than the church intended, its decision was merely a totally uncalled-for intimation to Newton that if he did present himself he would be refused. Tregelles was surely justified in saying, “I have no doubt, but that it is supposed that the sentence is to act as an excommunication; but do you expect to find Christian men in general to acquiesce in such an issue from such proceedings? The whole is null and void, both before God and before His saints.”[16]

About the course pursued at Rawstorne Street, there can be only one opinion; but there is a possibility of rational variations of judgment on the question whether Newton would once again have done better to accede (of course under protest) to the proposals made to him. Yet on the whole a verdict must be recorded in his favour. Whatever his actual motives, a perfectly lawful prudence would have fully justified him in refusing the Rawstorne Street people as his judges. Their proved partiality disqualified them. They had persistently neglected to entertain serious charges, alleged by a man of weight among them, against Wigram and Darby. They had received without remonstrance Wigram’s disgraceful Address, in which Newton and all his friends were most recklessly aspersed; and then they proceeded to summon Newton before their tribunal, on his mere appearance at some houses of Brethren in the neighbourhood. What would have been the result of obedience to the summons? Probably, that Darby would have found the very weapon he was seeking—the verdict of an assembled church given against Newton on the moral charges. Once more, Newton was bound to lose whichever way things went. He was fighting his battle against hopeless odds; still, at the juncture in question, there can be little doubt that he chose the less of two evils.

  1. “I should not have so acted without my brethren. I should have rejoiced to have my views corrected by them when I needed it, and learn theirs; but there it was, and there for my part I left it.” Darby’s Narrative of Facts, Coll. Writ. Eccl., vol. iv., p. 21.
  2. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this account. The circumstances in question, and many that follow, are stated on the authority of Darby’s Narrative of Facts Connected with the Separation of the Writer from the Congregation Meeting in Ebrington Street. It is right to say that some people whose judgment is entitled to respect have considered that this tract is anything but a narrative of facts. I am not prepared to speak positively. The tone of the tract inspires no confidence. On the face of it, it is the work of a passionate partisan; and even if the writer had the fullest intention to speak the truth, it is very doubtful that he was in a state of mind to know what the truth was. Any reader of the tract can see for himself that Darby never fails to throw the benefit of the doubt into the scale against his rival; that he attempts to discredit him by dwelling on acts of his supporters with which he may well have nothing to do; that no tittle-tattle is too paltry to be pressed into the service against him. It must therefore be treated as a party-pamphlet, of a more than usually unreliable order; but I am not certain that we have to go further. Even if the tract be positively untruthful, it would not affect my narrative; for I have only followed it where the writer could have no interest in making an erroneous statement; except in a few instances (such as the above), in which I give distinct warning that I am only repeating Darby’s statements.
  3. See p. 53.
  4. The italics are mine.
  5. An anonymous tract, dated January 29, 1846 (conjecturally attributed to Richard Hill, a seceder from Ebrington Street Chapel of Darby’s party), states that Darby came to Plymouth, “it appears with no intention at all”. This quaint phrase probably means “with no definitely formed plan”. The writer was contradicting the assertion that Darby saw that Plymouth was the centre of opposition to his views, and came “to break it up”; and proceeds: “His own remark to me, in disavowing such a previous intention is: ‘people have no idea that one cannot venture to act without the Lord, and that one has no plan but to do His will, as one may discover it’.” This is a rather bold assumption of spiritual superiority, though quite in keeping with a great deal of Darby’s writings. Whether Darby was entitled to make such a claim, the reader must judge from the sequel. It does not seem to me to affect the statement I have made in the text, for it is not likely that Darby should have come with a definitely shaped plan. He came apparently to raise a fresh “barrier” against the tide of clericalism, and also (beyond a question) of Newtonian doctrine. No doubt it was left to circumstances to determine the rest.
  6. Chap, ii., p. 35, of this work.
  7. This was the meeting-place till 1840, when the church removed to Ebrington Street, retaining the old room for mission work, prayer meetings, etc.
  8. Dr. Tregelles gives the following extract from a tract written by G. V. Wigram in (as he believes) 1844.
    “E.Do you admit ‘a regular ministry’?
    “W.If by a regular ministry you mean a stated ministry (that is, that in every assembly those who are gifted of God to speak to edification will be both limited in number and known to the rest), I do admit it; but if by a regular ministry you mean an exclusive ministry, I dissent. By an exclusive ministry I mean the recognising certain persons as so exclusively holding the place of teachers, as that the use of a real gift by any one else would be irregular.”
  9. I follow the Narrative of Facts, deeming it on this point sufficiently trustworthy to warrant the statement in the text.
  10. Hargrove had himself been a most successful minister of the Irish Church. He joined the Brethren in 1835, and died in fellowship with the “open” party in 1869, at the age of 76. He was an advocate of some restriction on open ministry, and was severely animadverted upon by Darby in consequence.
  11. The expression is fully justified by the rabid tone of Wigram’s tracts. I say it with regret. Wigram has left a memory that his friends still cherish with love and reverence, and I have already striven to do justice to the labours and sacrifices by which he conferred eminent advantages on English-speaking students of the Bible; but his numerous controversial tracts between 1845 and 1850 cannot be read without sorrow and shame. It is a bare act of justice to his opponents to make this statement, for their conduct cannot be duly estimated without some idea of the provocation they received. If they had been guilty of all that was imputed to them, it would have been far from justifying the unrelenting animosity, the positive scurrility, with which they were pursued.
  12. Congleton, Reasons for Leaving, etc., p. 21.
  13. Letter to the Saints meeting in Ebrington Street, p. 118 (Collected Writings).
  14. This principle does not seem to have been at any time acted on at Bethesda, Bristol, and Newton’s attitude towards it was vacillating, to say the least; but Darby might fairly claim it as an original principle of Brethrenism.
  15. Darby, Coll. Writ. Eccl., iv., p. 132, says “24th”.
  16. I here append, as an interesting relic of a great scholar and true-hearted Christian man, a copy of the protest by which Dr. Tregelles dissociated himself from the disciplinary proceedings of Rawstorne Street. The protest was entrusted to Gough, and it is gratifying to learn that it was duly read by him.

    “As a Christian long in fellowship with the Christians meeting in Rawstorne Street, London, I do solemnly, in the fear of God, protest against the character, objects, and competency for disciplinary action, of the meeting purposed to be held there to-morrow evening, as being wholly contrary to the word of God, and the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ; so that any disciplinary proceedings issuing from such a meeting, even though professedly in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both before God and as affecting the consciences of saints, would be wholly null and void.
    S. Prideaux Tregelles.

    14 Alfred Street, Plymouth,
    December 10, 1846.”

    Darby and Wigram were very angry with Tregelles for his tract on their singular proceedings. However, I apprehend that his character stands far above the reach of their intemperate imputations.