A history of the Plymouth Brethren/Chapter 10

by William Blair Neatby

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High Church Claims of Darbyism—The Walworth-Sheffield Discipline

Scarcely was the great disruption consummated when, in the year 1851, a pamphlet appeared that stands absolutely alone for the fearless independence with which it criticises Brethrenism from within. It bore the title of Unity, a Fragment and a Dialogue, and appeared under the initials of Captain Percy Hall.^[1]

Hall’s indictment may be comprised under three heads. He challenged the Brethren’s assumption that they alone assembled on Divine warrant; he denied that their ministry was strictly Scriptural, or that it was even essentially better than the ministry of other churches; and he charged them with neglect of the authority of the New Testament in their abjuration of all recognised government.

Hall lived to see the conceptions he denounced attain an ever more and more tyrannical sway over the mind of Darbyism; and his strictures are amply confirmed by an acquaintance with the system during the later years of Darby’s life. It will be convenient to illustrate Hall’s thesis from this standpoint.

The Exclusive Brethren were High Churchmen of the most pronounced type. No Anglo-Catholic could have a greater contempt for such a phrase as “denominational preferences”; and the Anglo-Catholic is a very fortunate person if he ever attains to an equally lofty and serene confidence in the exclusive claims of his own system. The moderation of Protestants has put them at a disadvantage. They have had no substitute to offer for the fascinating claim to an exclusive possession of Divine warrant. But the Brethren, hampered by no such drawback, have confronted the highest claims of High Anglicans with claims at least as lofty, and a confidence much more disdainful.

Not that the Darbyites claimed to be actually the Church of God on earth. If we receive their principles from the teaching of their great leaders, they repudiated such a claim. The Church of God, they said, is the aggregate of all believers in Christ; and a local church is a similar local aggregate. This invisible Church cannot, unhappily, be embodied, as things stand; but it may be “expressed,” and the Exclusive Brethren expressed it. Their meeting in any place was the sole “expression” of the Church of God there. It was Divinely recognised; nothing else was. It was graced by the promised presence of the Lord to two or three gathering in His Name; no other congregation, however apparently simple, Scriptural and godly, could have the Lord “in their midst” according to the terms of the promise. They allowed that the Lord, in the sovereignty of grace, might grant blessing in one or all of the other orthodox Christian communities, schismatical though they were; but they held that we must guard against supposing that such compassionate treatment was any condonation of their schism. If the extreme Anglican holds that, whatever excuses the “present confusion” may afford, a position outside Episcopal communion is in fact schism, the Darbyite, while not refusing to grant the indulgence of remarkably similar excuses, equally holds that every position (including of course the High Anglican’s) outside his own body is schism; and further, that it is schism maintained in the face of God’s convincing testimony to the unity of the Church, given in the shape of Plymouth Brethrenism.

The credit that we might be disposed to give to Darbyism for its moderation in not claiming to constitute the Church of God on earth must be seriously qualified by the extraordinary circumstance that it claimed the power to exclude from the Church of God by excluding from its own ranks. The theory was that any acknowledged Christian, though he had nothing to do with the Brethren, was inside the Church of God; but that the Brethren had the disciplinary power of the Church of God committed to them, because they alone met “on Scriptural ground”. Consequently, any person on whom they pronounced sentence of excommunication was by that act cast forth outside the Church of God on earth. Their claim in this particular is fortunately perfectly explicit; otherwise my statement might well be deemed incredible. Full proof of it will be found towards the close of the present chapter, in a brief account of a famous case of discipline in the early sixties.

Unhappily, the Exclusive party does not stand alone in the view that all non-Brethrenist worship is schismatic. Among the Open Brethren, a certain section (undoubtedly considerable, though I cannot say what proportion of the whole it constitutes) maintains the same opinion, and denies that any company of Christians meets in the name of the Lord Jesus, except those that practise open ministry. To such people it has proved vain to point out that they unchurch many a company of persecuted saints of evangelical faith, who, in defence of what the Brethren wholly believe to have been the truth of the Gospel, have worshipped in prison-cells, or in “dens and caves of the earth”. They refuse to recognise this as a reductio ad absurdum, and maintain that between the first and the nineteenth centuries no Christian assemblies had any status “before God”.

This was only to be expected. The mass of the Open Brethren, though they rejected Darby’s preposterous decree, were in their general point of view the followers of Darby, not only as against Newton, but even as against Müller.

At a conference at Freemason’s Hall (evidently in 1869), the late A. A. Rees of Sunderland—who, though not associated with Brethren, often attended their meetings—publicly asked the question “whether those Christians who met without open ministry, met in the name of Jesus”. “After a little silence,” Rees tells us, “one brother stepped to the front, and replied, ‘No; let us never give up our principle on that point’; nor was there any public protest against this answer, though after the meeting several Brethren expressed to me their dissent.” At the present time, as I am informed by one who knows the Open Brethren well, those who hold a less illiberal view constitute the majority. I sincerely hope this is so, though I cannot help thinking that in that case the majority sometimes allows itself to be “talked down”. At the same time, I am fully aware that there are many amongst them who maintain an unwavering and aggressive witness to more Catholic principles. It would be an interesting experiment if one of these excellent men would try how many subscriptions could be obtained amongst the communicants at “Open” meetings to Captain Hall’s explicit declaration,—“I am satisfied that any Christian of the sundry parties around us, except the close Baptists, could say, with a bold and free spirit, I meet with my fellow Christians in the name of the Lord Jesus simply”.

The central point in the system of the Brethren, and that which emboldens them to put in such exclusive claims, is liberty of ministry,—or perhaps I ought rather to say, the association of liberty of ministry with the observance of the Lord’s Supper. The want of this as a settled practice disqualifies all other communities. This is the real differentia. Some of the Brethren would wish no doubt to go deeper. They would say that they alone claim a true Church basis, as meeting in Christ’s name; and that other denominations are self-excluded by owning their several denominational titles. But this is utterly futile, not only because it is intrinsically absurd,^[2] but also because in exceptional cases of isolated evangelical communities, less encumbered with denominational designations than the Brethren themselves, all recognition is equally withheld if liberty of ministry be lacking.

Darby treated open ministry as an inference (vital indeed in its importance) from the deeper principles underlying a right conception of the Church; but, as we have already^[3] partly seen, he never reached any intelligible formula. The following is one of his most interesting attempts.^[4] It occurs in his controversy in Switzerland with R. W. Monsell.

“I do not contest the point, that in Congregationalism there was at first liberty of ministry, but that had scarcely any duration. That liberty has existed and still exists among Quakers; but whilst admitting the liberty of ministry, the work of the [Plymouth] brethren rests on much broader foundations. While taking as a foundation the great truths of the gospel, here are the principles which distinguish it: the unity of the Church by the power of the Holy Spirit come down from above, the witness of a perfect redemption, accomplished by Him who is seated there at the right hand of the Father. It is by reason of the presence of this Spirit, acting in the members, that there is liberty of ministry according to the measure of His energy and of His gifts (a liberty regulated by the word).

“This is the first principle. … It is on this foundation that we meet, admitting in consequence every Christian.”

I do not stop to enquire in what purely conventional sense the claim contained in the last clause can have been made in the year 1849. But it is to our present purpose to observe that the “distinguishing” principles that Darby specifies were, as a matter of fact, the common possession of Protestants before the Brethren were thought of, and that therefore this formal declaration by the greatest of the Brethren leaves us absolutely where we were before.

At any rate, the Brethren regarded liberty of ministry as the central feature of primitive practice; deeming it bound up, not so much with the prerogatives of every Christian man, as with the rights of the Holy Spirit “within the assembly”. It was exclusively His to guide to the moment for the exercise of any kind of ministry, down to the giving out of a hymn ; and except in the case of a hymn or the reading of Scripture He more or less determined the form of each exercise, whether it were worship, supplication, exposition, or exhortation. To what precise extent, however, the ultimate form proceeded from His guidance was left indefinite. The Brethren never expressed an intelligible opinion on that subject; they certainly stopped short of claiming inspiration, and yet they tenaciously held that each speaker ought to receive the word from the Spirit, who would communicate by him.

It is again difficult to discover the via media that the Brethren flattered themselves they had found. Darby’s language, if it were the only evidence before us, would justify the conclusion that the Brethren claimed inspiration. “This is the real question, … whether I am to look to God or to man—to God’s presence in the assembly, or to man’s competency by acquired attainments. Can I be satisfied with the latter without some very clear proof that the former is not to be sought—that God has abandoned the assembly of His saints? For if there, is He not to make His presence known? If He do, it is a manifestation of the Spirit in the individual who acts; it is a gift, and if you please, an impulse. It is God acting: that is the great point.”^[5]

Nor were such speculations uninfluential in practice. The notion of a quasi-inspiration took firm hold of the minds of the Brethren generally. If two Brothers began ministering simultaneously, (which necessarily happened tolerably frequently, though not often to any distressing extent), it was always assumed that one at least was to blame for not being “in the Spirit”. A censorious person would doubtless lay the blame on his rival. A humble-minded person would be grievously distressed in his conscience lest it should be he that had marred the harmony of “the Spirit’s action in the assembly”.

Moreover, the Brethren had a horror of discourses prepared beforehand for delivery at an open meeting; and even extended their dislike of premeditation to the case of sermons and lectures previously announced. An ex-Newtonian, T. P. Haffner, issued a “confession” about the same time as the other penitents of the same school. In this document he justified Darby’s charge of “the practical denial of the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church,” alleging that Newton had said to him that “before coming to the Lord’s Table, he [Newton] did not see it at all wrong to be prepared with what he had to say to the saints”. “This, beloved friends,” proceeds the repentant Haffner, “shocked me much, very much, at the time, and shook my confidence: but oh! with what humiliation do I now appear in the presence of God, for having so long retained in my bosom the knowledge that our poor brother did thus practically deny the present leadings and guidance of the Spirit of God, (however much it might have been held theoretically), without having ever called on others to join with me in prayer for him, etc.”

I myself well remember a brother, who had been publicly corrected for a preposterous exposition, consoling himself afterwards by the assurance that “the Spirit had given him the word”. His critic’s comment was that “the Spirit did not give erroneous expositions”. That is to say, the plea of the discomfited teacher was ruled out on merely à posteriori grounds, and not as being untenable in principle.

The position of the Brethren has been assailed on two principal grounds. It has been said that the primitive model of public worship and ministry is inapplicable in our situation, and further, that the Brethren do not conform to it. An order suited to the state of churches endued with supernatural gifts is not, it would seem, obviously obligatory, or even probably suitable, in the case of churches from which all such enduement has utterly vanished. And even in the first ages, and at Corinth, it is urged that no such “present energy of the Spirit” is recognised as a guiding principle; that it rather appears that ministers came to the assemblies already in possession of what they should say (1 Cor. xiv. 26), and that the “commandments of the Lord” relate, not to the duty of free exercise of the gifts, but to the restrictions enjoined by the Apostle upon such exercise.

It is clearly unreasonable to deny the weight of these objections; yet, however unreasonable, it was what the Brethren were bound to do, unless they were willing to relinquish their all-excluding claims, and take their place in the crowd of the religiones licitce of Christendom. As this was the last thing in the world to which they could have brought themselves, they were compelled to insist that everything was plain and easy, and that “disobedience” was the only explanation of a refusal to follow their example. And further, in order to cast a rope, in default of a bridge, over the gulf that separated them from the primitive and supernaturally gifted churches, they adopted a vague theory of a Spirit-given ministry, and insisted still on their Christian brethren in every place following suit.

Their claim to be exclusively the recipients of the promised blessing of Matthew xviii. 20 will now be readily understood. No people could be said to meet in Christ’s Name who set Christ’s law aside in His own Church. It never seems to have occurred to them that to confine the Scripture in question to meetings of an ecclesiastical character is a very bold exegetical expedient. They sought, indeed, to help out their interpretation by a quite unwarrantable change in the translation of the words εις το ονομα, which they rendered “unto my name,” and took to import a gathering to Christ’s Name as to a rallying point. Correspondingly, as we have seen, they held that all other Christians gathered to a denominational designation as a rallying point. It was a fine instance of the sovereign efficacy of words.

The extent to which the Brethren carried the principle of liberty of ministry was rather arbitrarily fixed. Most of them (the very few exceptions were strictly confined to the Open Brethren) set apart the entire morning meeting every Sunday for the Lord’s Supper. On this occasion absolute liberty was considered essential; though a person who took unsuitable part might possibly incur subsequent rebuke, and might even, if he persisted in ministering, be told that his “ministry was not acceptable to the brethren”.

As it might be supposed that Scripture is almost ostentatiously silent as to the conduct (from the point of view of ministry) of a communion service, the intensity of the Brethren’s convictions on this subject may well excite surprise. They reached their conclusion in this way. The Lord’s Supper is the witness and bond of Church union, and is thus in a peculiar sense a “Church occasion”. Correspondingly, the Church is the peculiar sphere of the Holy Spirit’s action in ministry. Hence the obligation of associating liberty of ministry with the breaking of bread.

Whether this argumentation be cogent or not, it is plain that it abandons the ground of direct Scriptural evidence for that of comparatively remote inference. But the Brethren knew no misgiving. To refuse their inferences was as bad as to refuse their texts, and equally incurred the penalty of being unchurched.

In some places a special meeting for open ministry was held during the week. Social teas were commonly followed by an open meeting. Bank holidays were often the occasion of open meetings in the morning. Strangest of all, marriages and funerals were conducted on this principle, sometimes with painful results.

But the Brethren held themselves at liberty to arrange for evangelistic meetings of the ordinary form, Bible readings from the pulpit (which they commonly called lectures), and prayer meetings in which, though there was no president, it was understood that the exercises were ordinarily limited to prayers and hymns. The puzzle is to know how liberty of ministry can be so solemnly binding on some occasions, and not at all on others. The ordinary answer is that it is binding on occasions of a “church” character. The application of this principle is easy. When open ministry is desired, it is understood that the Brethren assemble in an ecclesiastical capacity; when it is not desired, the contrary hypothesis is at hand.

Captain Hall had a strong sense that the much-vaunted theory had come short in practice, and required revision. “In almost every case,” he says, “where the Holy Spirit does not act, the flesh does for form’s sake, and as long as two or three or more persons take a part, instead of one, the principle, as it is called, is not invaded, and all are satisfied, whether the thing done or said be good or bad.” In his judgment, the Spirit might be “grieved by carnal liberties … instead of being, as in other places, quenched by carnal restraints”. Up to this point then, as between his own community and the other denominations, he seems to suspend judgment; but when he passes to the question of Church government, he assigns a distinct advantage to the older methods. He told the Brethren very plainly that they had arbitrarily chosen certain primitive forms and neglected others; and that they had, moreover, chosen those primitive forms that more than any others depended for their efficacy on primitive enduements. Many another since Captain Hall has stumbled at the same stumbling-block; and no wonder, for the Brethren, who consider it treason to refuse to copy the Corinthian exercise of gifts, utterly refuse to follow the primitive system of government by recognised elders.

They believed that it was the rule in primitive times for a local church to be governed by a plurality of elders. They believed also that the qualifications for the eldership were exhaustively defined in the Pastoral Epistles; and their writings on this subject, as on most others, display a good deal of exegetical shrewdness. Nevertheless they held that it would be presumption in this case to attempt to resuscitate primitive forms, although in the case of the open meeting it would be rebellion to neglect them.

To do the Brethren justice, they have not been insensible to the need for explanation. They have accordingly taught that all elders were appointed by apostles or apostolic delegates; that apart from such direct or indirect apostolic intervention there could be no valid appointment to the office of government; that there are doubtless still men that possess the requisite qualifications, in which case they will be Divinely guided to exercise a pastoral oversight; but that such men cannot properly receive formal recognition.

With every desire to enter sympathetically into the point of view of the Brethren, it can scarcely be denied that in this respect they are hopelessly inconsistent. If it be presumption to recognise elders without apostolic ratification (direct or indirect), why should it not be presumption to hold an open meeting without miraculous gifts? Indeed it would seem to most people that miraculous gifts have a much closer connexion with liberty of ministry than apostolic ratification with the office of the eldership. Apostolic discernment would not seem to have been at any time essential to the appointment of officers, Timothy and Titus being referred, not to an inner illumination supplied to them for the purpose, but to the plain fact of the possession by the candidate of the requisite qualifications. The Brethren seem never to have suspected that the words they slipped so lightly into their formula—“or apostolic delegates”—might well be regarded as fatal to their whole contention. Yet it is extraordinary that the Brethren, whose views are so high and peculiar with regard to the Holy Spirit’s present energy within the special sphere of the Church, should think that the Church lacks the means of distinguishing men accredited of God as elders or pastors; or that, distinguishing them, the Church is incompetent to give them such recognition as would ensure to them authority over all loyal members.^[6]

I say nothing with regard to a point on which the Brethren might have been expected to lay a certain stress—the uncertainty, that is, as to the extent to which any one form of government obtained in the primitive churches. I have abstained, partly because the Brethren did not really rest their case on that consideration; and partly because they could not have done so without shattering the foundations of their system, since it is quite as impossible to prove the universality of open ministry as the universality of government by a board of presbyters. It is indeed a fundamental vice of Brethrenism, for which the habits of its day afford a certain excuse, that its divines never made any serious attempt to discriminate between the transitory and the permanent in the primitive institutions of the Church. The tacit assumption was that everything was permanent.

To what is this rather arbitrary rejection of recognised government to be attributed? Probably to a prejudice engendered in Darby and his lieutenants by their hatred of what they called “religious radicalism”.^[7] Authority cannot, they held, come up from below; that is to say, the people who are to be governed cannot confer authority to govern. But neither has any authorising committee, episcopal or otherwise, any credentials. It remained, as it seemed to them, to have no recognised authority at all. But in truth neither Darby nor his leading associates would have consented to any formal recognition, even though it were entirely severed from so much as the semblance of ordination. Their jus divinum would have at least retreated into the background, since undoubtedly the ordinary congregationalist principle practically tends, be the theory what it may, to democratic authority. Now the leaders of Darbyism were High Churchmen to the core, and the last thing they would have tolerated would have been even a thin end of the wedge of democracy. They ceaselessly insisted that they had more in common with the Church of England than with Dissent; and odd, perhaps perverse, as this sentiment has appeared to most people who have heard of it, there is a sense in which it was true. Cruel circumstances involved them in the loose aggregate of Dissenters, but their abhorrence of Nonconformist radicalism, whether in Church or State, was perfect. They are thus to be ranked as fervent supporters of the High Church conception as opposed to the democratic; and in the great conflict of the two standpoints of which anti-Latin Christianity has for three centuries been the field they fall into line with some very odd associates.

In its entirety this account applies only to Exclusivism. The Open Brethren, in this respect as in some others, resort to a kind of compromise between Darbyism and “Dissent”. Many of them believe strongly in having certain brothers recognised as “taking oversight”; but so far as I can learn, these “overseers” are practically self-appointed, and it would be hard to define their authority. The movement in this direction, however, is interesting as a tacit confession that the earlier principle has been anything but satisfactory in its practical operation.

That the plea that only apostolic authority could validate an appointment to office was really an after-thought, whereby the leaders of the movement justified a course to which their strongest instincts impelled them, may be assumed without misgiving. For, if we turn to the prerogatives they claimed for the Church, as “represented” by themselves, we shall find no similar timidity restraining their pretensions. To the “two or three gathered in Christ’s Name,” as we have already seen, the disciplinary authority of the primitive Church is committed, and the passage that closes with the promise of Christ’s presence they regarded as their great charter. No chill doubt seems ever to have struck to their hearts upon the recollection that we have no instance in Scripture of ecclesiastical excommunication without apostolic ratification.

But the Darbyites have always wielded the weapon of excommunication with all the assumption of the Church of Rome itself, and within their little sphere, marvellous as the statement may seem, they have inspired hardly less terror. A young man, just “received into fellowship,” once observed to me that if he were ever “put out” he would never lift up his head again. He to be sure was none of the wisest, but his remark reflected the almost universal spirit, and the veterans felt the terror even more than the recruits. Some of their strongest men, possessing the added strength of the profound conviction that they were threatened for righteousness’ sake only, shuddered and recoiled before the prospect of excommunication. It was in part a vague spiritual dread that oppressed them. They attached an awful authority to the act of “the assembly”. Not that they formally and explicitly claimed infallibility for it; but there was a constant tendency towards the sentiment, if not the tenet, of an infallible “assembly”—or at the least of an assembly whose decisions, so far as “government upon earth” was concerned, were ratified in heaven, and whose ban therefore, even if possibly mistaken, was for the time being sustained by Divine authority. Otherwise, the spectacle would never have been witnessed of good men dreading the discipline of an “assembly” that they knew beyond a doubt to be scandalously in the wrong. Amongst Open Brethren there is probably very little of such a feeling. Darbyism, profoundly wise in its generation, knew the value of mysterious and awful claims.

The force of this spiritual terrorism was felt by people who might well seem to have been fortified against it by every kind of prophylactic,—by high intelligence, great force of character, liberal culture, and not least by eminent social advantages, with all their power to exempt from servile terrors.

But only when the kind of tribunal that wielded this power is considered does the dramatic character of the situation fully disclose itself. It might be a very small and unlettered company, composed of individuals little fitted to inspire awe by any personal qualifications. Such a company could pronounce against a man who might have made his mark on the great world without, a sentence of excommunication that would blast his reputation where alone he had troubled to possess one, deprive him of almost all his friends, and well-nigh make (to outward seeming) an end of his usefulness; and that would create, at least during the anticipation, a vague spiritual dread, worst of all perhaps while it lasted. Even so, the Church of Rome invested the most ignorant of her priesthood with a spiritual power before which the most potent elements of secular strength stood cowed.

I am aware that many will think this picture greatly overdrawn. They will naturally assume that so eminent a man could not fail to make his ascendency felt over an obscure and uncultivated congregation. But however far this were the case, it would invalidate nothing that I have said. The centralisation of Exclusivism has to be reckoned with. Darby’s influence, for example, would have sufficed in the long run to secure the expulsion of any teacher, no matter how honoured a name he bore or how strongly he were entrenched in the love and esteem of the church in which he laboured. And the authority of the “assembly” was the instrument of this astounding despotism. Nor could any man, having once assimilated the genuine principles of Darbyism, despise the unrighteous decree of which he was the victim, except by as real a triumph of the freeborn spirit of Christianity over the servile terrors of superstition as the dying nun of Port Royal achieved when, being refused the last rites of the Church by the malice of the triumphant Jesuits, she exclaimed in the words of St. Augustine, “Crede et manducasti”.^[8]

The “assembly” in which these awful powers are vested is very simple in its constitution. The Brethren have of course always been thorough believers in the practicability of a “pure communion,”—that is to say, of a Church embracing all converted people, and to all intents and purposes containing none besides. If they speak of a Christian, they understand a person that can make a profession that is satisfactory to them of having been converted to God. Now it is the view of the Brethren generally, (though doubtless not universally), that is the right and duty of every Christian to associate himself with them. But according to the theory of Darbyism all Christians, whether they respond to this duty or not, are already, by the very fact of their being Christians, in fellowship with the Brethren. Were it otherwise, they say, the Brethren would themselves be only a sect. Though Christians may not prize or even know their privileges, yet every acknowledged Christian has the same right to sit at the Table of the Lord as the most venerable Plymouth Brother. The leaders insisted strenuously that there could be no membership with “Brethren” other than membership in the Church of God. The Brethren could grant no additional title.

It is true that a candidate for fellowship among the Brethren was regularly visited by two or three brothers deputed for the task. But when the theory of Darbyism was strictly adhered to (which by no means always happened), this formality would be restricted to two cases: (1) the case of a person contemplating a public Christian profession for the first time; (2) the case of a person accredited indeed as a Christian amongst Evangelical people, but who had no local “brethren” among his acquaintances to introduce him to the meeting in that character. Suppose on the other hand that some “brother” introduced a visitor (if for the sake of clearness I may thus condescend to vulgar phraseology) as being notoriously an accredited Christian, though quite unassociated with Brethren, such a person being then and there admitted to communion could not possibly receive, or require, any subsequent recognition.^[9]

A hypothetical case will perhaps help to set this very- important matter in a clear light. Suppose the members of a meeting of Brethren are discussing some delicate case of discipline. A local Methodist whom they have always considered a true Christian walks in. According to the theory of Darbyism such a man has as good a right to sit down and take his place in judging of the question as any Plymouth Brother of thirty years’ standing. Whether he has as good a right to take a leading part in the discussion depends on his personal qualifications. If he had spoken deprecatingly, saying for example, “I am only here as a fellow-Christian, not as a Brother,” the greatest man among the Brethren, if he knew his text, would have replied, “We are all here as fellow-Christians, and as nothing besides; we have no title that you have not”.

But these principles, however essential if the Brethren were not to “fall back into mere denominationalism,” were difficult to practise, and apparently not easy even to grasp. Certainly the rank and file were constantly turning back into Egypt, and put their leaders to no small trouble to inculcate these impracticable sublimities. On the surface the practice of the Brethren would have impressed the onlooker as very similar on the whole to the prescriptive usage of the free churches, conformity to which they so nervously dreaded. Still, their theory introduced some uncertainty and irregularity into their principles of membership.

The theory of course excluded “special membership,” the original bugbear of the Brethren. A visitor from New Zealand, if a communicant, had exactly the same right as a resident to attend and to address a meeting convened to regulate the ventilation, or to decide on the purchase of a new stock of hymn-books. When more serious matters were under discussion the inconvenience of this practice was liable to be keenly felt, and a local membership was perforce practically recognised. Persons who were not “Brethren,” and even in some cases visitors who were, had to be by hook or by crook excluded, if not from debates, at least from voting. Not that a vote was ever formally taken; but practically, of course, voting neither was, nor could be, avoided.

I believe that the Open Brethren pay little or no regard to this theory; but this only renders their claim to be neither sect nor denomination the less plausible. The Exclusives were the more consistent. Had they formed a voluntary association they would have been at liberty, they maintained, to make their own laws and choose their own members; but they had nothing to do with forming anything—their one duty was to own and “express” what God had formed. Therefore they could not acknowledge any man as a member of the Church of God by admitting him to the Lord’s Table, and then proceed to say to him, “We have now some family matters to discuss, and must ask you to retire”. A circle within the circle of the communicants was out of the question, as answering to no thought in the Divine mind. To this theory the great leaders clung, even when the force of circumstances seemed to have made every effort to realise it the merest pedantry; but its importance has never been grasped, except by the leading minds. In addition to all that might very reasonably be urged against it by practical men, it has laboured under the more fatal drawback of a certain speculative sublimity that estranges ordinary minds. So effectually have these disadvantages operated that that principle, which may fairly be called the most fundamental that the Brethren professed, is now but little known among themselves, and seldom so much as guessed at by even well-informed outsiders.

Some two years after the appearance of Hall’s pamphlet, the most earnest and unwavering opponent of the principles that Darby’s influence had imposed upon the Brethren passed to his rest. Anthony Norris Groves died in the house of his brother-in-law, George Müller, on the 20th of May, 1853, in his fifty-ninth year. His mission work in India had exposed him to peculiar trials. For some years he was misled by the idea of a self-supporting industrial mission. This proved a failure, and brought him into long-continued depression of spirits, in which he found characteristic consolation in the reflexion that “to feel ourselves the Lord’s free-born children in the way of holiness, is a most privileged place, amidst all the bondage of earth’s cares”.^[10] It is worth while to record this sentiment. The peculiar genius of Christianity has not often received more striking expression.

Afterwards he wisely devoted himself exclusively to the ministry. The time of the great disruption found him on a visit to England, and he took, as we have seen, a prominent place in the guidance of the later policy of Bethesda. He had written in India, in 1847, his views on some of the peculiar features of Darbyism, in the following terms:—

“If the question were put to me … do you consider the Spirit unequal to the task of keeping order in the way we desire to follow? my reply is simply this, shew me that the Lord has promised His Spirit to this end, and I at once admit its obligation in the face of all practical and experienced difficulties: but if I see pastorship, eldership, and ministry recognised as a settled fixed service in the church to this end, I cannot reject God’s evidently ordained plan, and set up one of my own, because I think it more spiritual. “D—^[11] seems [? feels] justified in rejecting all such helps as the way of obtaining proper subordination in the assembly of God’s saints, by saying the ‘Church is in ruins’; this is his theory; but neither in the word, nor in my own experience or judgment, do I realise that this state of the Church, even though it existed to the full extent he declares, was to be met by the overthrow of God’s order, and the substitution of one so exceedingly spiritual, (if I may so use the term,) as it seemed not good to the Holy Spirit to institute, when all things were comparatively in order.”

Throughout his protracted and painful illness, his frame of mind was singularly peaceful and triumphant. Subjected as he had been to a most unworthy persecution, his friends might well be pardoned if they attached to the fact even more than its real importance. We accept it now as a truism that the life is much more than the death; but in Groves’ case the death was of one piece with the life. “I could not cut off one of Christ’s” were amongst the last words that he spoke.

In the early sixties a long series of disciplinary proceedings, undertaken by the London Central Meeting, afforded ample illustration of the principles that have been explained in this chapter.

This Central Meeting was the great instrument of Darby’s despotism. He found Scriptural authority for it in the fact that the New Testament, though it speaks of the churches of a province, invariably speaks of the church of a town, though it may be presumed that in the case of large towns the church must have been constituted by several local congregations. Now, though Darby was never tired of preaching that the Church was in ruins, and that God would not sanction any effort to restore its primitive administration, he none the less proceeded boldly to deduce that no local “gathering” in London could take any ecclesiastical steps without the concurrence of all the rest. In pursuance of this theory a room was hired in Central London for Saturday evening conferences, at which were settled all the ecclesiastical acts of London meetings for the next day—such as the reception of candidates, or sentences of excommunication against evil livers and people who communicated with Open Brethren.

At a later period, delegates attended from all the local centres, but it would seem that at first (and the germ of the institution may be traced to a period anterior to the disruption) it had a less representative character. A paper was sent out to all the metropolitan meetings, embodying the decrees of this central authority. The number of meetings in London, and perhaps the mere metropolitan prestige of the city, made these decrees supreme in England, and consequently in the whole world of Brethrenism. How tremendous an instrument of ecclesiastical tyranny such an institution could be was not fully proved until the convulsions that issued in the dissolution of Darbyism in 1881; but even twenty years earlier things were bad enough.

It is hard to speak with any respect of Darby’s action in attempting to base the claims of the Central Meeting on Scriptural precedent. His argument literally furnished not even the barest presumption that such a link, connecting the various assemblies within one municipality, had any place among primitive institutions. And even were it otherwise, there is no sufficient analogy between a city of the Roman world and a modern English town to enable us to argue from the one to the other. Darby must have known perfectly that the city of old was a totally different kind of social and civic unit from the modern township. It would be distinctly more reasonable to infer from his texts the principle of national churches.^[12]

The Brethren, however, followed up the idea with a characteristic absence of misgiving. In 1860 the Priory meeting, Islington, (a centre of paramount importance, because Darby worshipped there whenever he was in town), excommunicated Alexander Stewart, a former minister of a Presbyterian Church, and a man of considerable pulpit gifts. The ostensible ground of the excommunication was that Stewart had “grievously violated the Lord’s presence at His table, and the consciences of the saints by forcing his ministry,” and had further “declared he had nothing to confess”.

The action of the Priory would necessarily be communicated to the rest of London through the Central (or London Bridge) meeting. But some of the London “gatherings” were not enamoured of the Central Meeting. Bad blood had been created by an unfortunate occurrence at one of its sessions. To keep the proceedings private, the doors had been guarded and locked; and a brother who endeavoured to obtain entrance was violently assaulted. No redress could be obtained, the assault being, according to one authority, “justified on the ground of the secret character of the meeting”.

This disaffection may account for the fact that the Walworth Brethren asked of the Priory, “What sin or sins, according to Scripture, of an excommunicable character” Mr. Stewart had committed. The answer was, that they were “of a character not needing to be determined by Scripture”. A request for an investigation by a general meeting met with no better success, and a strained condition of things ensued for several months. The London Bridge Conference eventually found occasion against the disaffected meeting, for the Walworth Brethren actually removed their meeting-place to Peckham without permission. A notice from London Bridge then went the round of London, stating that the Walworth-Peckham meeting had acted “in self-will”. “Subsequently, an individual from the disaffected meeting, presenting himself for fellowship elsewhere, was ‘challenged’ as ‘not in communion’. This led to an official notification from the Presbytery [i.e., the Central Meeting], that the disaffected gathering, and its sympathisers, could not ‘be accredited at the Lord’s table,’ till they were “humbled for their course’.”

The matter did not end here. A member of the Peckham meeting, Goodall by name, applied for communion at the Exclusive meeting in Sheffield. The Sheffield Brethren, with full knowledge of the circumstances, received him. Well knowing the seriousness of the step, they wrote to the neighbouring meeting of Rotherham, offering to give an explanation of their reasons. The reply from Rotherham, dated November 29, 1863, is another landmark in the history of Brethrenism. It is also interesting as bearing a signature made familiar by the “C. S. tracts” to a wider circle than the Brethren. The initials denote Charles Stanley, the evangelist.

“I am requested to say, that inasmuch as you have now placed yourselves in the same position as Mr. G., viz.:—outside the communion of the saints gathered together in the name of Christ in London, the gathering in Rotherham being in fellowship with those in London, cannot possibly receive any statement of the particulars of the matter, either written or by word of mouth. To do so they feel would be to ignore the discipline of the assembly in London, and practically to set aside discipline everywhere; as it virtually denies the unity of the body, and reduces every assembly to an independent congregation.”

The following extract is taken from a letter that Darby wrote from the South of France, under date February 19, 1864, to Mr. Spurr, a member of the excommunicated Sheffield meeting. It shows that the penalties of excommunication were no shadowy ones. Darby would not so much as eat with a man who remained contumacious in the presence of the flat of his Central Committee.

“I understood the breach arose between you and Rotherham [i.e., between the Exclusive meetings at Sheffield and Rotherham] by reason of your reception of Goodall. With the main facts of his case I am acquainted, for I took part in what passed, and now allow me to put the case as it stands as to him. I put it merely as a principle. He (or any one else) is rejected in London. The assembly in London have weighed, and I with them, the case, and counted him as either excommunicated or in schism. I put the two cases, for I only speak of the principle. I take part in this act, and hold him to be outside the Church of God on earth, being outside (in either case) what represents it in London; I am bound by Scripture to count them [sic] so. I come to Sheffield; there he breaks bread, and is—in what? Not in the Church of God on earth, for he is out of it in London, and there are not two churches on earth, cannot be, so as to be in one and out of another. How can I refuse to eat with him in London and [yet] break bread with him in Sheffield? have one conscience for London, and another conscience for Sheffield? It is confusion and disorder. I do not apprehend I am mistaken in saying you received Goodall without having the reasons or motives of the Priory or other brethren in London. If you have had their reasons, the case is only the stronger, because you have deliberately condemned the gathering in London and rejected its communion; for he who is outside in London is inside with you.”

It is stated by several contemporary critics of this Exclusive discipline that its London perpetrators repeatedly style their little fraternity “the one assembly of God in London”. If so, they attempted a usurpation from which, even by the very terms of the above letter, Darby aimed at recalling them. In his view, that which “represents” the Church wields the Church’s disciplinary authority, though it is not the Church. It is, however, doubtful if there is much value in the distinction after all.

1. I infer that Hall had not yet cast in his lot with Darby’s party, but his complaints apply to both sections of the Brethren.
2. I would not wantonly use a harsh expression; but can anything milder be said of a statement that Baptists, for example, assemble for worship in the name of Baptism, or perhaps of Baptistism? The Wesleyans are naturally a more favoured example in the polemics of Brethrenism, and it is assumed as a truism that they assemble in the name of Wesley; but can the Brethren imagine that if they asked any Wesleyan assembly in what name it had assembled, there could be any but one spontaneous, consentient reply, “In the name of Jesus Christ”?
3. Chap, v., p. 91.
4. Eccl., vol. ii., p. 210.
5. Coll. Writ., Doctrinal, vol. i., p. 519. The comment of the late R. Govett is just. “So then, if a brother rightly gives out a hymn, it is a manifestation of the Spirit. It is God’s manifested acting.” Quoted by Rees, Four Letters, p. 13.
6. One of the most curious arguments on the subject I ever heard was that St. Paul, in the Second Epistle to Timothy, contemplating the perilous state of the Church’s declension, made no reference to the safeguard of a recognised presbytery, but committed everything to individual fidelity. This was rather a reckless cutting of the ground from under one’s own feet, since it is equally clear that he made no reference to the safeguard of spiritual gifts exercised “in the present energy of the Holy Spirit,” but rather to the teaching of faithful men, duly instructed beforehand. (2 Tim. ii. 2.)
7. Newton used the reproachful term “radicalism” in an almost opposite sense. To him it stood for the policy that withdrew the administration from the hands of “leading brethren,” to vest it in the assembled church.
8. “Believe, and thou hast eaten.”
9. “When a person breaks bread, they [sic] are in the only fellowship I know—owned members of the body of Christ. The moment you make another full fellowship, you make people members of your assembly, and the whole principle of meeting is falsified. The assembly has to be satisfied as to the persons, but … is supposed to be satisfied on the testimony of the person introducing them, who is responsible to the assembly in this respect. This, or two or three visiting, is to me the question of adequate testimony to the conscience of the assembly.
   “At the beginning [of Brethrenism] it was not so, i.e., there was no such examination. Now I believe it a duty according to 2 Timothy ii.” Darby, Letter dated San Francisco, August 1875.
10. Italics my own.
11. Groves doubtless wrote “Darby”. I have to follow the Memoir.
12. Mr. Thos. B. Miller, writing many years later, put the “practical difficulty” connected with “the unity of London” very effectively. “The practical difficulty of determining ‘What is London?’ brought the question prominently before us a few years ago. One who took great pains to ascertain the boundaries of London, according to ‘the powers that be,’ told me, incidentally, as one result of his enquiries, ‘Woolwich is London, but Plumstead is not’. Assuming this to be correct, it clearly illustrates the principle maintained, viz.:—That there is a divine unity existing between Woolwich, as part of London in the south, and, say Haverstock Hill in the north, which does not, and cannot, exist between two gatherings so closely associated as Woolwich and Plumstead, because one is within, and the other without, the boundary line of London.”