A history of the Plymouth Brethren/Chapter 8
The Strife at Bristol in 1848
At Bristol the zeal and faith of the Brethren—above all, of George Müller—had erected the noblest monument that any Christians could possess of either their philanthropy or their religion. The orphanages were already rising on the Ashley Downs. It is well known that in these orphanages many thousands of bereaved children have been fed, clothed, trained and put forth in the world, without the help of a penny of guaranteed income. Such an institution, maintained for sixty or seventy years, in which from the first day until now faith has stood in the place of building fund, sustentation fund and endowment, has an unique character amongst the achievements of Christian benevolence. In launching this enterprise philanthropy was secondary in Muller’s thoughts. His primary design was to show that there was still a living God on whom His servants might safely count; and perhaps, by the simple fact of his orphanages, Müller became the greatest preacher and the greatest apologist of the last century.
When Darby instituted a second meeting at Plymouth, the Church at Bethesda Chapel remained neutral, acknowledging both the rival communities. This was a possible course only so long as Darby simply denied all ecclesiastical status to Ebrington Street; but when, after the doctrinal controversy, he required the personal excommunication of each several member of the church, neutrality became impossible. The test was forced on Bethesda in April, 1848, when Captain Woodfall[1] and his brother applied for communion. These gentlemen, well-known friends of Newton’s, had been in the habit of communicating at Bethesda Chapel whenever they passed a Sunday in Bristol. Darby had a few firm adherents even within the flock of Müller and Craik, and some opposition was made to the application. Finally, Captain Woodfall was admitted, on the ground that he had been travelling on the Continent and might be presumed to be ignorant of the state of the controversy; but it was determined that Mr. Woodfall must first be visited, and his “soundness” ascertained. At Craik’s prudent suggestion the three objectors were appointed as visitors, and Woodfall was eventually admitted on their testimony.
These three men were Alexander, Stancombe (who in after years had cause to rue the day that he became a supporter of Darby’s programme), and Nash. They afterwards felt aggrieved that the burden of investigation had been thrown upon them, and discontent continued to smoulder.
“About the 20th of April, 1848, after the reception of Colonel Woodfall and his brother, Mr. Darby came to Bristol, and as usual called on Mr. Müller, by whom he was asked to preach the following Sunday evening at Bethesda. … In the intercourse between them nothing passed that indicated the course that a few days later Mr. Darby initiated. Mr. Darby stated his inability to preach in Bethesda, having previously engaged to preach somewhere on his road to Exeter. But notwithstanding this friendly intercourse, not many days after, he intimated publicly, at a large meeting of labouring brethren in Exeter, that he could no more go to Bethesda because the Woodfalls had been received. All were not prepared for this hasty manner of withdrawal, and it was asked whether any intimation had been given to those concerned, before so solemn an act as separation took place. This had not been done, though subsequently, on the remonstrance of others, Mr. D. did write a letter from Exeter to Mr. Müller, intimating his decision in the matter.”[2]
Darby’s action doubtless quickened the zeal of his three adherents at Bethesda, who ceaselessly urged the duty of holding a church investigation of Newton’s views. The other elders maintained a steady opposition to this proposal.
A great deal of energy was afterwards expended by Darby’s party in an attempt to prove that persons holding Newton’s errors were about this time admitted to communion at Bethesda. But this was not the case; the principle of personal examination was thoroughly carried out. Both sides were agreed that such admission would have been indefensible. Perhaps from the very first, the Brethren had held themselves bound to exclude for a variety of errors, that leave untouched all the doctrines of the three great Creeds. This view of Christian fellowship is therefore not peculiar to Darbyism. It was the boast of Bethesda and of all Bethesda’s sympathisers.
In the month of June Alexander seceded without in any way previously intimating his intention, and circulated amongst the congregation a letter assigning his reasons. In this letter he makes no charge against the Church with respect to any actual occurrence. His reasons for leaving are purely hypothetical; such and such things might happen, in the absence of the investigation he demanded.[3] It would certainly seem that Alexander was “thoroughly baptised,” according to the prayer of the seceding Scotch minister, “into the spirit of disruption”.
Alexander’s action forced the hand of the elders, and accordingly they summoned a church-meeting for June the 29th. At this meeting the famous Letter of the Ten was read by the elders, and sanctioned by the church.
If this document had been a concise subscription to all the heresies of Christendom from the days of Cerinthus downward, it could hardly have raised a greater tumult of execration. According to Trotter, some of its statements “tell a louder and more solemn tale in the ear of conscience than anything which has been advanced by those whom Bethesda looks upon as her adversaries”. Considering the nature of some of the things that had “been advanced” by those whom Bethesda came somehow or other to “look upon as her adversaries,” Trotter’s statement is a very bold one. It will be best to present a summary of the principles of the Letter.
The writers begin by declaring in the most unequivocal terms the orthodoxy of their own belief on the points raised in the Newtonian controversy.
They allege as their reasons for not having consented to a church investigation of Newton’s doctrines, that, in the first place, it was not to edification that people in Bristol should get entangled in the controversies of Plymouth; that, secondly, there had been “such variableness in the views held by the writer in question that it” was difficult to ascertain what he would at that time “acknowledge as his”; that, moreover, “Christian brethren, hitherto of unblemished reputation for soundness in the faith,” had differed as to the amount of error contained in the tracts, which were “written in such an ambiguous style” as to make the Ten shrink from the responsibility of giving a formal judgment; that the tracts were likely to be unintelligible to many in the congregation, and that there had seemed to be little probability that even the leaders would have come “to unity of judgment touching the nature of the doctrines therein embodied”.
Then followed the most fatal of all the clauses: “Supposing the author of the tracts were fundamentally heretical, this would not warrant us in rejecting those who came from under his teaching, until we were satisfied that they had understood and imbibed views essentially subversive of foundation-truth; especially as those meeting at Ebrington Street, Plymouth, last January, put forth a statement, disclaiming the errors charged against the tracts.”[4]
They objected strongly to being required to make the investigation, and felt that compliance “would be the introduction of an evil precedent. If a brother has a right to demand our examining a work of fifty pages, he may require our investigating error said to be contained in one of much larger dimensions.” The Letter concluded with a warning against “the evil of treating the subject of our Lord’s humanity as a matter of speculative or angry controversy”.
The Bethesda leaders afterwards stated that the letter was read to the Church with explanatory comments, without which, they maintained, it ought not to have been printed. They denied that the Letter was in any sense a formal definition of the ecclesiastical principles of Bethesda; it was only intended to meet a particular emergency. If the Letter really required any indulgence, no doubt the indulgence might fairly be claimed on these grounds.
The following incident rests on the authority of Henry Groves:—
“Shortly after the reading of ‘The Letter of the Ten’ to the church, Mr. Darby came again to Bristol, and had an interview with both Mr. Müller and Mr. Craik, in which he again urged the taking up of the tracts by Bethesda, and passing a church condemnation on them. … Finding their judgments were not to be changed, he sought to intimidate by the threat of separating from them all those believers in other places, with whom for years they had held Christian fellowship.”
Darby showed characteristic energy in putting his threat into execution.
“He went from one place to another, seeking to enforce everywhere the adoption of his course towards Bethesda. … Assemblies of saints one after another were placed under the bann [sic] of excommunication for no other sin than not being able to see that Mr. Darby was right, and Bethesda wrong. On reaching Leeds, he issued his lithographic circular, bearing the post mark of August 26, 1848, cutting off not only Bethesda, but all assemblies who received any one who went there.”
This circular is one of the great documents of Brethrenism, inaugurating as it does the unique discipline with which Mr. Darby’s name will be associated as long as he is remembered amongst men. The letter may be read in full in the Collected Writings.[5] It is a solemn trifling with facts, in the very act of pronouncing a wholesale sentence of excommunication. The least that can be said is that he was at no pains to verify his assertions, and that upon the very loosest (not to say upon an absolutely erroneous) apprehension of the circumstances that had occurred, he based a decree that was to spread strife, misery and shame, like a conflagration, to the remotest bounds of Christendom.
Another point of the greatest importance must be kept in view in reading this letter. Whatever the relation to Newton of the persons admitted at Bethesda, they were admitted at a time when Newton’s teaching was being held in suspense. The principal error had been abjured with expressions of penitence; the tracts containing the lesser errors had been withdrawn for reconsideration, and the results of the reconsideration were then unpublished. Bethesda was excommunicated for suspending judgment in the meantime.
“Beloved Brethren,
“I feel bound to present to you the case of Bethesda. It involves to my mind the whole question of association with brethren, and for this very simple reason, that if there is incapacity to keep out that which has been recognised as the work and power of Satan, and to guard the beloved sheep of Christ against it—if brethren are incapable of this service to Christ, then they ought not to be in any way owned as a body to whom such service is confided: their gatherings would be really a trap laid to ensnare the sheep. … The object of Mr. Newton and his friends is not now openly to propagate his doctrine in the offensive form in which it has roused the resistance of every godly conscience that cared for the glory and person of the blessed Lord, but to palliate and extenuate the evil of the doctrine, and get a footing as Christians for those who hold it, so as to be able to spread it and put sincere souls off their guard. In this way precisely Bethesda is helping them in the most effectual way they can: I shall now state how. They have received the members of Ebrington Street with a positive refusal to investigate the Plymouth errors. And at this moment the most active agents of Mr. Newton are assiduously occupied amongst the members of Bethesda, in denying that Mr. Newton holds errors, and explaining and palliating his THE STRIFE AT BRISTOL IN 1848 163 doctrines, and removing any apprehension of them from the minds of saints, and successfully occupied in it. …
“A paper was read, signed by Messrs. Craik and Müller, and eight others, to the body at Bethesda, in which they diligently extenuate and palliate Mr. Newton’s doctrine, though refusing investigation of it, and blame as far as they can those who have opposed it. I do not charge Mr. Müller with himself holding Mr. Newton’s errors. He was pressed to say in public what he had said in private of Mr. Newton’s tracts, and at first refused. Afterwards he declared that he had said there were very bad errors, and that he did not know to what they would lead. Upon what grounds persons holding them are admitted and the errors refused to be investigated, if such be his judgment, I must leave every one to determine for themselves. I only ask Is it faithfulness to Christ’s sheep? Further, while it is true that Mr. Craik may be by no means prepared to assert that Mr. Newton’s doctrines are all according to the truth of God, and that I have no reason to say that he is not sound in the faith, yet it is certain that he is so far favourably disposed to Mr. Newton’s views, and in some points a partaker of them, as to render it impossible that he could guard with any energy against them. The result is, that members of Ebrington Street, active and unceasing agents of Mr. Newton, holding and justifying his views, are received at Bethesda, and the system which so many of us have known as denying the glory of the Lord Jesus (and that, when fully stated, in the most offensive way) and corrupting the moral rectitude of every one that fell under its power—that this system, though not professed, is fully admitted and at work at Bethesda. … Now, beloved brethren, I see in Scripture that one effect of faith is … to make us respect what God respects; I do not therefore desire in the smallest degree to diminish the respect and value which any may feel personally for the brethren Craik and Müller, on the grounds of that in which they have honoured God by faith. Let this be maintained as I desire to maintain it, and have maintained in my intercourse with them; but I do call upon brethren by their faithfulness to Christ, and love to the souls of those dear to Him in faithfulness, to set a barrier against this evil. Woe be to them if they love the brethren Müller and Craik or their own ease more than the souls of saints dear to Christ! And I plainly urge upon them that to receive any one from Bethesda (unless in any exceptional case of ignorance of what has passed) is opening the door now to the infection of the abominable evil from which at so much painful cost we have been delivered. It has been formally and deliberately admitted at Bethesda under the plea of not investigating it (itself a principle which refuses to watch against roots of bitterness), and really palliated. And if this be admitted by receiving persons from Bethesda, those doing so are morally identified with the evil, for the body so acting is corporately responsible for the evil they admit. If brethren think they can admit those who subvert the person and glory of Christ, and principles which have led to so much untruth and dishonesty, it is well they should say so, that those who cannot may know what to do. I only lay the matter before the consciences of brethren, urging it upon them by their fidelity to Christ. And I am clear in my conscience towards them. For my own part, I should neither go to Bethesda in its present state, nor while in that state go where persons from it were knowingly admitted. I do not wish to reason on it here, but lay it before brethren, and press it on their fidelity to Christ and their care of His beloved saints.
“Ever yours in His grace,“J. N. D.”
On Darby’s own showing he had now receded indefinitely far from the only platform where, as he once held, “the fulness of blessing” could be found,—a “meeting … framed to embrace all the children of God in the full basis of the Kingdom of the Son”. No ingenuity in proving that Müller and Craik had made themselves obnoxious to “the discipline of the house of God” could get rid of the plain fact that two Christian leaders, whom all their fellow Christians were at liberty to honour “for their work’s sake,” were to be cut off with their whole flock from the Table of the Lord on ecclesiastical grounds. Leeds gave the lie direct to Dublin as pointedly as ever Geneva gave it to Rome; and this is equally clear whether we agree with Leeds or with Dublin, or with neither.
Two points are specially noteworthy. In the first place, the penalty for neglecting this decree was significantly indicated at the outset,—“it involves to my mind the whole question of association with brethren”. In the second place, at the close of the circular the whole of the subsequent discipline of Exclusivism was expressed in principle. The only question that stood over for settlement was whether, in the practical enforcement of the decree, there might be some flinching from carrying it out to its full extent. The early sequel will furnish an answer.
By making this exorbitant requirement Darby put a severe strain even upon his own wonderful influence. In the middle of September some men who were afterwards numbered with his followers were still in a contumacious frame. The Brethren of Bath requested that a meeting might be held at Bristol to enquire into the separation of Alexander, Stancombe and others from Bethesda. This was duly held, Bethesda being represented by Müller, Craik, Norris Groves (who happened to be in England at the time) and several others; the seceders by Alexander, Stancombe and two others; and the Bath meeting by Captain Wellesley (a nephew of the Iron Duke, and a man who had suffered severely for his principles as a Plymouth Brother), by J. G. Bellett, who had come to Bath for a time for the benefit of an invalid son, by Code, and by several more. The result was that the Bath Brethren determined, in palpable disregard of the circular, to receive “for the present” from “both parties in Bristol”.
It will be observed in the circular that Darby felt unable to go the length of stating that Craik was personally “unsound”. In the following October Wigram made a gallant attempt to fill up this unfortunate gap. He lets us know that he acted under a strong sense of duty. “I cannot hold myself guiltless before God or His saints, unless I raise my voice concerning statements made by Henry Craik, co-labourer with George Müller in Bristol. … I do not accuse himself of being a blasphemer or a heretic; I hope better things. But I do challenge his statements as blasphemous and heretical.”[6]
The following is the incriminated passage. It was taken from Craik’s Pastoral Letters.
“The ark was formed of shittim wood: the hard, sweet-smelling acacia of the wilderness. The tree from which the sacred chest was made, had grown up and been nourished by the rain and sunshine that sometimes cheered the wastes of the desert; so Jesus, as to his humanity, grew up in the wilderness. He was a root out of a dry ground. He breathed the same air, and was nourished by the same food, by which mere creatures are sustained. The winds of this desert world blew around Him, and as the tender sapling gradually grows to maturity of height and vigour,—so Jesus advanced through the several stages of infancy, childhood, and youth, to a state of maturity in age and stature. The acacia wood is said to have great power of resisting the inroads of corruption and decay; so the humanity of the Lord Jesus was free from the slightest taint of moral evil, and his body was preserved from all taint, even of external corruption.”
To enable the reader to test his skill in the detection of heresy, I have given the passage as it appears to have been originally published, without the use of the italics by which Wigram indicated the most terrible passages. These were, “He was a root out of a dry ground,”—“and was nourished by the same food, by which mere creatures are sustained,”—and the whole of the last sentence, beginning, “The acacia wood is said”.
Wigram laid stress on the fact that by the Letter of the Ten the whole church at Bethesda stood committed to all these heresies. He contended that Christ was as a root out of dry ground only to the eye of an unbelieving world; and “of Henry Craik I still desire,” he says, “to hope better things than that the Nazarene … would have been ‘as a root out of a dry ground’”. A further complaint was that “where Scripture says He, referring to the person of the Christ, God manifest in the flesh, the statement says, ‘his humanity,’”—although as a matter of fact the statement says nothing of the kind. The other italicised words gave rise to painful suspicions, but Wigram still entertained hopes of some satisfactory explanation of them.
Wigram added as a makeweight that he had been told, in a letter from Bristol, that Mr. Craik had “said with great warmth the other day, that J. N. D. and his followers made too much of the humanity of the Lord Jesus, and that he believed if the Lord had not been crucified he would have lived to be a shrivelled old man, and have died a natural death”. Wigram had also heard that Craik had said that “if the Lord had taken arsenic he would have died”.
The first point in Craik’s reply to this attack is as follows: “That Mr. W. wrote the tract while living in the neighbourhood of my house, i.e. , half an hour’s walk from Kingsdown; yet never availed himself of the opportunity of personally enquiring as to the fact of certain expressions [having] been employed by me.” (The italics are apparently Craik’s.) Wigram’s answer is one of the curiosities of literature. He knew Craik, he tells us, to be “under a delusion,” and identified with “a system which makes every one in it to be reckless as to truth”. If he abstained from asking questions it was from charity, since Craik might have been “tempted to the sin of evasion and deception”. He further deemed that it would not have been “common honesty to have asked for evidence,” when his judgment was already formed.
Craik admits having made part of the statement attributed to him by Wigram’s correspondent, but positively denies having used “the grossly objectionable expression” with reference to Christ becoming “a shrivelled old man”. As for the rest of the statement, it had been made “in a moment of excitement,” and “at the same meeting confessed as sin before the brethren, and acknowledged as such before God in prayer”. Wigram partially accepts this explanation, though with no great heartiness, but affirms that the incident in question had not been the gravamen of his charge, and lays all the stress on the quotation from the pastoral letter, and on Craik ’s reply on that head. By this reply, according to Wigram, Craik was hoplessly committed.
If this were a mere bickering between two men but little known to the present generation it would be unpardonable to allot it any further space in a historical summary like the present. But it is in reality very much more than that. It defines the battlefield of Darbyism during the whole of the generation following, and even to a great extent down to the present day. Craik, in his reply, had used the following language: “What I asserted was that our blessed Lord, having life in Himself, could have prolonged His life for ever if He had so chosen. Secondly, that He could not by any possibility die but as the sacrifice for sin; but that He was so truly human that poison, or the sword piercing His heart, would have destroyed the union between His soul and His body, had He not put forth His power to prevent the natural result. If this be denied, it seems to me that the faith of the Catholic Church (in all ages) is repudiated; and the necessary inference would be, that the Blessed One did not take our flesh, but flesh and blood essentially different from ours.” He also said, “I have ever maintained that He was in all things made like unto His brethren, sin only excepted; that the flesh which He assumed was the flesh and blood of the children; that the physical or chemical properties of His body were the same as ours”.
The controversy had now entered on its final stage, and it is important to give it careful definition. The followers of Darby allowed it to be believed that men like Newton and Craik had taught that the ordinary means of destruction would have availed against the life of the Saviour, without respect to His own will in the matter. The truth is that Newton and Craik repeatedly, and in every variety of phrase, affirmed that the issues of life and death for Himself lay, under every possible physical condition, in His own will. They taught that on the impossible supposition of His body sustaining an injury that would in the case of another man be mortal, death would have ensued unless for miraculous intervention; but that this miraculous intervention lay within His own power as much as within the power of God the Father. For this the Darbyites have treated them for more than fifty years as heretics. I have been told by a very responsible informant that they affixed a further stigma on Craik for saying that Christ was taken into Egypt to escape the sword of Herod. They refused to see that the first Gospel was the original fount of this heresy. To Wigram there was “no reverence in talking of the physical or chemical properties of the Lord’s body”; though if there were irreverence in the discussion Wigram should have remembered that it was he that had raised it. He did not see that Craik was merely stating, in opposition to an incipient Docetism, the real humanity of the body of Christ, “sent in the likeness of sinful flesh”. Indeed Wigram exposed his total want of the requisite theological knowledge by observing, “A resurrection body will be truly human, yet not subject to such things”; as if a resurrection body were flesh and blood (1 Cor. xv. 50), or else as if Christ did not take part of flesh and blood (Heb. ii. 14).
The Darbyites (and indeed the Open Brethren are not clear in the matter) should have considered what their position involved. If Christ’s body had not the physiological properties of our own, the statement that he died “the death of the Cross” becomes unmeaning. A year or two ago I heard an address from a Brother of the Open section, who actually taught that Christ did not die from crucifixion, but by a mere miraculous act. The good man was certainly not a responsible teacher, nor did I ever know a man of weight to set Holy Scripture on one side with quite so much definiteness and completeness; but I have heard much that glanced in the same direction. Newton had a sense of this peril, and in spite of his serious errors, he was quite entitled to feel in other particulars that he was standing in defence of the Catholic faith. And if in condemning Newton’s errors Craik were (as Wigram implies) slower and quieter than Müller or good Mr. Chapman of Barnstaple, the reason probably was that, being a far better theologian than either, he was able to take account of more tendencies than fell within their narrower range of observation; and judged that too absorbing a preoccupation with errors on the one hand was blinding the Brethren to the approach of errors just as serious on the other.
This feeling is perhaps reflected in the following extract from a letter that Craik wrote about this time:—
“According to the light I have, both parties are so far in the wrong that I have no wish to be identified with either. I wait for further light, and my prayer is, ‘Hear the right, O Lord’. Should it turn out that Mr. Newton’s errors are only those of a rash speculative intellectualist, who is yet sound at heart and seeking to honour Christ, it will be no cause of regret that I have refused to have fellowship with those who have been seeking to crush rather than to recover him; if, on the other hand, it should appear that after all his long course of service he is really an enemy to the cross of Christ, it will be no cause of regret that I have been rather too slow to believe so terrible a charge. Until George Wigram be subjected to discipline, I shall not feel it any cause of sorrow to be standing in separation from a body where such a course is tolerated.”
What did Darby think of Wigram’s latest achievement? Probably he estimated it at pretty much its true value. It is impossible to consider Darby a very precise divine. Though he had undoubted power, it was rather as the mystic than as the systematic theologian. Still, he had plenty of theological learning of most kinds, and could scarcely have been deceived as to the character of Wigram’s hapless performance. At a meeting in Dublin in 1852, as I learn from one who was present, he was questioned about his action in regard to the discipline against Bethesda and its adherents. “When some reference was made,” my informant writes, “to the charges against Mr. Craik, he said, as I distinctly remember, that he knew nothing about it—that Mr. Wigram sent him his tracts, and that he put them at the back of the fire.” This implies that he had some inkling of their contents, even if we are to understand that he did not read them. But it was clearly impossible for Darby to wash his hands of the whole business in that way. Wigram’s charges against Craik became, as every Exclusive (at any rate in my time) knew perfectly well, a very important weapon in the armoury of Darbyism; yet Darby, if he had chosen, could have put an end to them at any time, for good and all. The fact was that Wigram and his like—men that never flinched from doing their chief’s work, however tedious and disgusting it might be—were indispensable to Darby, as such men are to every party leader; and he simply could not afford to disown them. Probably too he thought that they were warring in their blundering way against a real evil, and had better not be discouraged. However that may be, Wigram’s caricatures took a firm hold of the popular imagination; and while Darby was writing to Craik, when Craik lay dying in 1866, “calling him his ‘dear brother,’ and wishing that ‘although ecclesiastically separated from him,’ he might be blessed with every blessing, as the Lord might see he needed in his present circumstances,” Darby’s followers were simply noting the passing of a heresiarch. It is very likely, and much to be hoped, that Darby’s kind note was dictated by some feeling of compunction.
By the month of November the elders of Bethesda found the pressure too strong, and resolved to examine the tracts. Their opponents absurdly took this as proof positive that they had previously been to blame for not examining them. A feeble defence was put forth by their friends, where no defence was needed. It was said that Newton having now issued his Letter on the Lord’s Humanity, it was possible to know definitely what he held. But this does not explain the change of front, for Newton’s Letter had been in circulation for several months when the decision to investigate was adopted. Bethesda has often suffered from a timid and misguided advocacy. The change of conduct does not necessarily imply even a previous error of judgment; it may have depended altogether on the altered circumstances.
The investigation seems to have been laboriously thorough. Seven church meetings were held between November 27 and December 11, 1848.
“At the first two or three meetings Mr. Müller read from the tracts, page after page, pointing out as he went along what inferences were legitimately deducible from what was read, and which, if they were allowed, would vitiate the atonement; and while these inferences would be disallowed by Mr. Newton, in judging of his views, they must, if legitimate, necessarily be their guide in leading to a decision on them. During the remaining four or five meetings sixteen other brethren spoke. … The result of these deliberations was, that the following conclusion was arrived at: ‘That no one defending, maintaining, or up- holding Mr. Newton’s views or tracts should be received into communion’. Of this decision Lord Congleton writes: ‘This conclusion was given out two or three times by the brethren Groves, Müller and Craik’.”[7]
This declaration, on the most charitable construction, was very unfortunately worded. If it merely meant that people defending the doctrines that were stated to be found in the tracts would not be received, it declared that Bethesda would do as it was already doing. If, on the other hand, it announced a change of policy, the change could only consist in requiring of all candidates for communion that they should entertain the same opinion as the church at Bethesda, not on the theological points, but on the meaning of Newton’s writings. The Jansenists long before had been willing to condemn the “five propositions”; but this was not sufficient; the Pope required that they should also declare that the five propositions were to be found in Jansenius. It is surely plain that a mere question of fact (revelation apart) should not be made de fide.
Nor is this all. Such of Newton’s friends as had been admitted after examination now withdrew. About the end of January, 1849, Captain Woodfall went to Newton’s old congregation, now removed from Ebrington Street to Compton Street, and took the communion there. Now, the statement of that church’s views, issued in January, 1848, had been accepted in the Letter of the Ten as “disclaiming the errors charged against the tracts”. The elders of Bethesda, nevertheless, condemned Woodfall’s act, and a church meeting was called for Monday, February 12. At this meeting “Captain Woodfall read out a resignation on behalf of himself and his brother,” using in the course of it the following expression: “We consider the regulations that have been, and will be virtually acted out, do effectually hinder the Christians at Compton Street from even applying for fellowship at Bethesda”. Lord Congleton explains that, apart from this resignation, Woodfall would not have been excommunicated, as he was not known to hold Newton’s errors; but, had he “repeated the act, he would have been publicly reprimanded; and if he had done it a third time he would have been put out of communion”.
One could hope Lord Congleton was mistaken, but he speaks quite positively, and he had every means of knowing. Assuming for the moment that persons actually holding Newton’s views ought to have been excommunicated, as both sides agreed throughout, the earlier principle of the church at Bethesda was the only one reconcilable either with equity or with the principles on which Brethrenism had been inaugurated. This principle had been to receive the “personally sound”. Two considerations called for this individualising treatment. In the first place, in churches where errors of a more or less abstruse character are taught, the bulk of the congregation will generally be found to know nothing about them. In the second place, there are many people who might regard the doctrines with abhorrence, without feeling justified in resorting to a suspension of ecclesiastical relations. In the case now in question, Episcopalians would take such a view almost universally, since the Creeds were not denied, but on the contrary very strenuously upheld. Now Brethrenism had started with scarcely any other definable principle than that all such ecclesiastical differences must be ignored. In the confusion that the immense variety of views as to the basis of church fellowship had produced in Christendom, the Brethren had sought to find a platform where all could meet, leaving behind them (were it only for the passing hour) the principles that divided them. The Bethesda congregation, unhappily, seemed now to sanction, up to a certain point, the separatist principle of their adversaries.
Bethesda afterwards fell back on its earlier decision, admitting every person that reached its particular standard of orthodoxy, without regard to his views of what he might (or should) tolerate in his ecclesiastical relations elsewhere. This principle was clearly enunciated by Müller’s assistant, Mr. James Wright, in answer to enquiries addressed to him in 1883; and the principle was then accepted by the Exclusive party as evidence of the incurably corrupt condition of his church.
The conclusion of the investigation did nothing to better the case of Bethesda in the eyes of its persecutors. The “independent” principle was still admitted; and (we may surely add) Darby’s decree was still refused. Yet Darby himself wavered. In July, 1849, he called on Müller at “the New Orphan House, No. 1 , ten minutes before one o’clock”. They shook hands, and Darby said, “As you have judged Newton’s tracts, there is no longer any reason why we should be separated” . Müller answered, “I have this moment only ten minutes’ time, having an important engagement before me; and as you have acted so wickedly in this matter, I cannot now enter upon it, as I have no time”. Darby rose and left. They never saw one another again.[8]
Of all the incidents in Darby’s chequered career, this is distinctly the most damaging to his reputation, for he left Müller’s presence only to enforce to the last letter the decree that he had just declared obsolete.
Müller and two of his colleagues had received in June an application from “a number of brethren at Rawstorne Street, London, and elsewhere,” professing to act “as separate individuals,” asking for a meeting open to all parties concerned, to be held “either in Bristol or elsewhere”. Müller’s reply bears date July 18, and may therefore fall either before or after his last interview with Darby. He writes: “We are ready to afford full explanation of the course that has been adopted at Bethesda to any godly enquirers who have not committed themselves as partisans of Mr. Darby and Mr. Wigram, but … we do not feel warranted in consenting to meet with those who have first judged and condemned us, and now profess to be desirous of making enquiry. We think it well plainly to state, that were such brethren even to profess themselves satisfied with us, we could not without hypocrisy accord to them the right hand of brotherly fellowship. If they agree with the course followed by Mr. Wigram and others, there can be no fellowship between us and them; if they disapprove of that course, we feel that they are bound first to call to account those who have been manifestly guilty of following a course tending to division, and of grossly slandering their brethren.”
Meanwhile the execution of Darby’s decree was going rapidly forward. In the preceding spring, a division had been forced at Bath under the influence of Wigram and Sir Charles Brenton, the translator of the Septuagint. Bellett and Captain Wellesley tried in vain to keep up the neutral policy on which the meeting had decided, and Captain Hall paid a visit from Hereford in the interests of peace generally. Wellesley was considered “an exceedingly dangerous person,” because though he deemed Newton’s tracts erroneous he was not able to see the “extreme danger” in them that some saw. About the same time “it was required of brethren in Orchard Street, London, that they should refuse Christians coming from Bethesda. They declined compliance and were at once separated from by Mr. Darby’s followers”.[9]
Not a little of the fury of the persecution fell on one whose long services and broken health might have pleaded for exemption. Early in 1849 Norris Groves visited the meeting at Tottenham, and took the communion there. The meeting was one of some importance in the neighbourhood of London, because of the high regard in which its leaders, the brothers John and Robert Howard, were held. John Howard made his mark as a man of science, and was honoured with a Fellowship of the Royal Society. In the days preceding the Plymouth quarrel he had been a well-known preacher among the London Brethren. His judgment was strong against Newton’s line, whether in doctrine or in church management, though it is uncertain whether he ever approved of Darby’s proceedings. Robert Howard, at the time of the Bath meeting, was probably inclined to go further in support of Darby than either he or his brother afterwards found it possible to do. Indeed Darby’s circular alienated many influential men who might have tolerated, even if they could not have approved, his strange course at Plymouth.
When it became known that Groves had been admitted at Tottenham, Dorman wrote to John Howard, intimating that Tottenham came under the ban of excommunication. The ground of action was that Groves was “identified” with the “condition of things at Bethesda”. Ere long this would have been quite enough of itself, but as yet a makeweight was still of some value. Dorman accordingly added,—“more especially as he has been challenged on the score of holding and teaching false doctrines, and on other grounds, by brethren whose judgment I feel bound to respect”.
To this intimation Howard replied, asking Dorman if he were prepared to substantiate these charges before the church and in the presence of the accused. Dorman replied that he was willing to give account of anything he had said, but “at a proper time and in a proper place”. Tottenham could not be such a place, “in my present position towards it,” as Dorman euphemistically puts it. He expressed a hope that an investigation might be held at some other place, such as Bristol. Howard’s reply was pungent. “Your present position is that of one who brings charges … against a brother, which you refuse to substantiate, raising questions about the tribunal before which you are summoned, i.e. taking the very course you so strongly condemned in Mr. B . W. Newton”.
Howard recommended Groves to test the sincerity of Dorman’s expression of willingness to confront him at Bristol. Groves followed the advice, but without avail. Dorman informed him that the grounds on which his reception at the Tottenham meeting were objected to were “entirely of a public nature connected with Bethesda, and not in any way personal”; and reserved any further answer until a meeting could be held for the general investigation of the Bethesda question. Groves naturally directed Dorman’s attention to the distinctly personal objections that had been alleged in the letter of excommunication addressed to Howard. “The attempt,” Groves now writes, “to mix up your accusations against me, and the consideration of them, with the case at Bethesda, so as not to give me a hearing, till after that complicated question has been heard and decided on, I cannot but consider calculated to throw a doubt over the sincerity of your professed wish to have everything clear, by annexing an impossible condition to it.”
The closing paragraph is another proof of a curious sagacity in Groves, notwithstanding the somewhat dreamy and enthusiastic turn of his mind. “The time will come when, if you refuse, you will experience the truth of this. ‘As you render unto others, so it will be rendered unto you.’” The prediction found a striking, if not a perfectly literal fulfilment. From 1846 onward we have seen Dorman the relentless minister of Darby’s despotism. Within twenty years from that date he had fallen himself before the same ruthless stroke. A fate, kindly cruel, gave him the opportunity of redeeming his fame, and well he availed himself of it.
Meanwhile his attitude is not admirable. “I have but little,” he says, “to add to my former letter, except to state still more explicitly that I am apart from Tottenham, on the ground of your having been received to fellowship there as one entirely identified with the present condition of things at Bethesda. … Therefore, when I meet you, it will be on this solemn ground, and not on a matter of individual concern. … You must excuse my adding more, as I have reason to distrust this whole proceeding.”
Groves replied with some pardonable heat.
“You conclude your note … by saying, ‘you must excuse my adding more, as I have reason to distrust this whole proceeding’. If you have, why do you not come forward like a Christian man, and prove its character? I believe, so far as you are connected with it, and your friends, you well may distrust it; and when it is all before the Church of God, as it all shall be, I believe they will mistrust it yet more. … I again ask you what part of my conduct you complain of. Again, I want to know from you where and when I have taught the false doctrines imputed to me. … I again want to know what your ‘other grounds’ include. By this multum in parvo phrase … what do you mean? What I want is, to meet you and the originators of these slanders and false accusations against me, face to face, for it is time this wholesale dealing in calumny and slander, to ruin the Christian reputations of those who are opposed to you, should be put an end to; and that no shuffling about meeting those who have been thus wronged should be admitted, under the cover of a few sanctimonious phrases, which seem to imply that no one cares for the honour of the Lord of Glory and His church but you and your friends. … If … righteousness has so fallen in the streets that you cannot attain unto the standard of Christian morals, of first communicating a brother’s faults privately to himself, before you expose him publicly, at least seek not to. sink below heathen morals, by, when you have cast a dishonour on his name, refusing to meet him, either to establish what you have said, or allow him to clear himself.
“I can only say, dear sir, that I deplore the fact that a man of your standing in the church, and one who has so often built up others in Christ, should now by your example in conduct be so acting, as to demoralise and distract the whole of that portion of the church of God to which your influence extends.”
Neither Groves nor Craik reached the standard of Newton’s almost matchless self-control, but it cannot be said that they exaggerated one whit the evils against which they bore their indignant protest.
- ↑ Called Colonel Woodfall in Henry Groves’ Darbyism. I follow Lord Congleton.
- ↑ The quotation is from Henry Groves’ Darbyism. Groves read the first draft of his work both to Craik and to Müller. He held it over for a time at their request, “lest it should appear indirectly like an act of self vindication,” ultimately publishing it on his own responsibility. Its statements therefore carry great authority as to things that happened at Bethesda itself.
- ↑ The whole letter is printed in Wigram’s Present Question, p. 13.
- ↑ See chap. vii., p. 141.
- ↑ Doctrinal, vol. iv., p. 253.
- ↑ An Appeal to Saints that remain, etc., p. 5.
- ↑ Henry Groves, op. cit., p. 44.
- ↑ I have taken the speech of each of the interlocutors from an autograph letter of Müller’s, addressed to Mr. Henry C. Crawley, and bearing date, “Breslau, Germany, April 30, 1883”. Henry Groves, who wrote the first draft of his Darbyism in 1863, and published the first edition in 1866, gives the speeches with a few immaterial variations.
- ↑ Divers Weights Brought out and Broken, by D. W., p. 2.