J.N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism 9780190932367, 9780190932343

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J. N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism

J. N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism C R AW F O R D G R I B B E N

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2024 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–​0–​19–​093234–​3 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190932343.001.0001 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

The human intellect will break itself to pieces against the glory of the divine revelation.1 —​J. N. Darby For the Reformers I bless God unfeignedly, but they are in no way a rule of faith for me: “To the law and the testimony.” I must have the word of God.2 —​J. N. Darby I believe the word of God, the teaching of the Holy Ghost in the divine word, and not the Evangelicals.3 —​J. N. Darby All Bible quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, trans. J. N. Darby (London: Morrish, 1890).

Contents Preface 

ix

Introduction 

1

1. Soteriology 

34

2. Ecclesiology 

56

3. Pneumatology 

88

4. Eschatology 

113

Conclusion 

138

Notes  Bibliography  Index 

155 211 233

Preface “Theology and theologians are worth nothing at all,” John Nelson Darby declared in 1844.1 Attempting to arrange his points in order, he confessed that he found it “painful . . . to be so didactic and methodical on a subject so precious and so full of strength and joy.”2 This admission might offer a rather unpromising introduction to a book about the formation of his ideas, which were turned, after his death, into the theological system that became known as “dispensational premillennialism.”3 Yet, whatever Darby’s hesitation about systematizing his reading of Scripture, his importance in the history of Christian theology is now widely recognized. In fact, in the pantheon of Protestant theologians, Donald Akenson has recently suggested, Darby’s influence might be surpassed only by that of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley.4 Darby neither expected nor would have rejoiced in this status. While being certain that he would be “kept in the truth for the end,” he refused to present himself as an “infallible authority; it is just the opposite; I am subject to the truth.”5 But, as the movement that he led grew in size and significance, Darby’s followers increasingly aligned “the truth” with his teaching. He became for many of his readers the leading theorist of “the recovery,” the most faithful exponent of “the original Christian witness,” and of the retrieval and reconstruction of apostolic teaching that became known as “the present testimony.”6 Within sections of his community, the so-​called Plymouth Brethren, Darby came to be invested with singular importance, even with something approaching the “infallible authority” that he had denied. By the end of the nineteenth century, many of those who adopted his ideas had come to elevate his status above that of any other figure in the history of the church. William Kelly, who edited his Collected Writings, was explicit: Darby was the most important Bible expositor since the age of the apostles.7 Nevertheless, Darby’s published work, like that of other brethren, never amounted to a fully organized theological system. His hesitation about that kind of project reflected the modesty of his approach and his concern about reducing Scripture to an intellectual scheme. Yet, from the 1820s until the end of the nineteenth century, Darby and other brethren modified

x Preface a generic evangelical Calvinism in a sequence of exegetical and theological interventions. Darby was an “unrelenting Calvinist,” George Marsden has claimed, whose “interpretation of the Bible and of history rested firmly on the massive pillar of divine sovereignty, placing as little value as possible on human ability.”8 This aspect of brethren thinking was especially obvious in the period of the movement’s formation. As a young man, John Gifford Bellett was “decidedly Calvinistic,” and the “friends with whom he associated in Dublin were all . . . without exception, of this school.”9 George Vicesimus Wigram, who became Darby’s close friend and factotum, was forbidden ordination in the Church of England because of his “extreme Calvinism.”10 Those who joined the brethren movement were schooled in the principles of the Reformed faith. The experience of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles might not have been typical, but it was indicative of this wider culture: upon his evangelical conversion and his introduction to the brethren, he was presented by his cousin, Benjamin Wills Newton, with copies of Calvin’s Institutes (1559–​ 1560), John Pearson’s exposition of the Apostles’ Creed (1659), and Walter Marshall’s The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification (1692).11 Tregelles was expected to ground himself in this tradition and then to modify its claims by drawing upon work by his new mentors. But brethren continued to value the Genevan Reformation. Later in the century, Philip and Emily Gosse were still “extreme Calvinists,” their son remembered, who met on “terms of what may almost be called negation—​with no priest, no ritual, no festivals, no ornament of any kind, nothing but the Lord’s Supper and the exposition of Holy Scripture drawing these austere spirits into any sort of cohesion.”12 This understated theological mood came to characterize the movement. All this makes it hard to take at face value Kelly’s denial that Darby was “at all really” a Calvinist.13 Kelly’s comment might better reflect his own intention to control and even to modify his mentor’s legacy. Drawing on the achievements of Christian history, the goal of these brethren was not to set up a new theological system, but to establish a faith that would be more responsive to the text of Scripture: what they really intended was to give a “great simplicity to our Christianity.”14 Of course, Darby’s interventions were not always innovations: as some of his critics noticed, many of the ideas to which he gave voice had been proposed among the “hotter sort” of Protestants in the mid-​seventeenth century. But if the substance of his ideas was not especially distinctive, his combination of ideas was often unique. Responding to the revival of high Calvinism and anti-​Erastianism in Oxford, and to the crisis of confidence among the Anglo-​Irish elite as it faced up to the repeal of the

Preface  xi Test Acts (1828), Catholic emancipation (1829), the Reform Act (1832), and the reorganization of the Church of Ireland (1833), brethren proposed an approach to Scripture that, almost exactly one century later and in an entirely different social and political context, became known as “dispensational premillennialism.” In reconstructing his thinking, this book shows that Darby was not the father of dispensationalism, as a venerable historiography has claimed.15 He might at best be dispensationalism’s grandfather, the most important stimulus, if not the actual architect, of ideas that were repackaged, as Donald Akenson and Daniel G. Hummel have argued, to provide a compelling narrative for the movement of conservative Protestants that became known as “fundamentalism.”16 From that center, as these and other colleagues have shown, Darby’s ideas have influenced a broad population of born-​again protestants. Two hundred years after Darby began to articulate “the present testimony,” and one hundred years after dispensational premillennialism began to be widely disseminated, his teaching exercises extraordinary influence upon the end-​times thinking of more than half-​a-​billion evangelicals. Despite its importance, Darby’s work has largely been neglected by scholars outside the brethren movement. Too often, his achievements have been read through the lens of his most approximating followers. This is why conservative evangelicals who value Darby’s eschatology almost entirely ignore its broader theological contexts and their consequences, while his Reformed critics continue to write him off as sectarian. Part of the difficulty may be that Darby’s critics and admirers have noticed his repudiation of theological tradition and have taken it at face value. As a consequence, his novelty is assumed, very much on his own terms, and is consequently celebrated or critiqued. But, as this book argues, Darby did not work sui generis. He should be understood as emerging out of the Reformed tradition and as moderating its claims, rearranging ideas from earlier phases of primitivist protest to develop something that was widely regarded as new—​and which, thirty years after his death, took on a life of its own under the descriptor of “dispensationalism.” This book has been many years in the making. Having grown up in a family that has been associated with the brethren for over a century, I was aware of Darby’s importance long before William Reid set the challenge for this project. I was checking the proofs for John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (2016) when I stumbled across Reid’s argument, in his account of The Literature and Mission of the So-​Called Plymouth Brethren (1875), that

xii Preface Darby “bids fair to become as voluminous an author as John Owen of Puritan celebrity. . . . Like Owen, you will find him involved, discursive, and rather hard to read; in Mr D.’s case with far more reason, as he is incomparably more profound, as well as more learned.”17 Alerted by this unexpected comparison, I began to notice how often brethren writers used Owen as a key point of reference. In the mid-​1850s, in a long and bitter controversy about the sufferings of Christ, Darby became involved in a debate about the proper interpretation of Owen’s commentary on Hebrews.18 The Record, one of England’s leading evangelical magazines, contrasted Darby’s teaching on justification with that of Owen in 1862.19 William Lincoln concluded his account of the ruin of the church in The Javelin of Phineas (1863) with a long quotation of Owen’s comments on ecclesiology.20 In 1868, William Kelly cited the “excellent and learned” Owen, whose “orthodoxy and . . . piety are unimpeachable,” to support brethren arguments that Christians should not recite the Lord’s Prayer in public worship.21 And Bellett, one of the foremost brethren devotional writers, structured his arguments in Son of God (1869) around lengthy—​and unattributed—​paraphrases of Owen’s Christological writing.22 As I reflected on the significance of these citations, I came to wonder whether these nods to England’s most important high Calvinist might reveal something of the mentalité of the early brethren—​and of their principal theorist. I began to investigate how Darby’s revision of Reformed tradition shaped a theological system that is often understood as its antithesis. As the project continued, I tested this hypothesis in close readings of Darby’s writing. To facilitate this work, I chose not to use the most recent editions of his Bible translation and Collected Writings, Synopsis of the Books of the Bible and the three-​volume edition of his Letters, but to refer instead to their nineteenth-​century equivalents, along with the recently published editions of his correspondence in French and of his correspondence with Wigram, which I have compared with manuscripts held in the Christian Brethren Archive, John Rylands University Library, Manchester, to ascertain the character of the redacted material.23 Darby’s publications represent a challenge to book historians, as Akenson has noted, and I have chosen as much as possible to side-​step this debate by focusing on Darby’s thought in the period after Kelly began to publish his Collected Writings, in 1866, and as Darby’s thought circulated most widely in that edition.24 The Collected Writings was issued in fascicles, which were collected by Kelly into thirty-​ two volumes, to which, shortly after Darby’s death, were added an additional two volumes of mostly undated miscellaneous works, compiled by

Preface  xiii an unknown editorial hand. In the mid-​twentieth century, one community of Darby’s theological descendants redacted, repaginated, and republished the Collected Writings: the edition republished by Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot updated Victorian spellings, removed the appellation of “saint” from the names of the apostles, and made other textual emendations, the full extent of which I have not been able to discover.25 But Kelly’s edition cannot be read uncritically, either. For his version of the Collected Writings is neither complete nor conclusive. It does not contain all of Darby’s writings, and the texts that are included do not always appear in their initial or final form. On several occasions, as we will see, Kelly revised material from earlier parts of Darby’s career in order to have it align with his more mature convictions. At the same time, Darby revised material that the Collected Writings had already published. The first three-​volume edition of Darby’s letters was significantly redacted.26 Darby’s English Bible has suffered a similar fate. The very full notes and text-​critical apparatus that were included in the editions of 1872, 1884, and 1890 were replaced in the reset edition that appeared in 1939. The edition that was published in 1961 contained notes from Darby’s French and German translations, with additional material included from the Collected Writings. The “Darby Bible” that circulates today is much more user-​friendly than these earlier formats, but it is not in every respect a precise reflection of the edition that Darby prepared. As Akenson has noted, we badly need a critical edition of Darby’s works.27 We also need to incorporate more women’s voices into nineteenth-​century brethren history. Writing this project, I have become acutely conscious of how few voices of women appear in brethren publications from this period and, indeed, in the history of dispensationalism in general.28 The dominance of male voices in this book is regrettable, but it reflects the character of the literary culture that is being described. Many friends and colleagues have supported the writing of this work. In the late 1990s, I began to think critically about the history of dispensationalism while studying with David McKay at the Reformed Theological College, Belfast. I began to read for this project while working at the University of Manchester, where I enjoyed conversations on brethren history with Philip Alexander and Theo Balderstone and benefitted from easy access to the Christian Brethren Archive (2004–​2007). I began more formally to prepare for the project while employed in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin (2007–​2012). The School hosted several “Darby day” conferences and, with the Panacea Trust, funded the scanning of Darby’s four-​volume interleaved Greek New Testament (CBA/​JND/​3/​2, 3, 4, 5), images of which

xiv Preface have been made available on the website of the Christian Brethren Archive, John Rylands University Library, Manchester. Within the Trinity community, I am especially grateful to Ian Campbell Ross and Mark Sweetnam for many discussions on these themes—​and for Mark’s co-​authoring with me an article on Darby in the Journal of Evangelical Theological Society (not least because he did most of the writing). Continuing this project after moving to Queen’s University Belfast (2013), I benefitted from the advice of Ian Campbell, Peter Gray, Andrew Holmes, David Livingstone, and Ciarán McCabe; members of the Religious Studies Seminar, especially Stephen P. Kelly; and James Fazio, whose doctoral work on Darby’s ecclesiology will shift the parameters of his early biographical interpretation. Mícheál Ó Mainnín shared advice on Darby’s use of Irish, and Ian Purdy, the university’s director of information services, provided access to his electronic edition of Darby’s work. Along the way, I have enjoyed many illuminating conversations about Darby with Stephen Rees and Martin Grubb. Outside these communities, this project could not have advanced without the support of colleagues and friends in the Brethren Archivists and Historians Network; the Christian Brethren Archive, especially its archivists, David Brady, Graeme Johnston, Jessica Smith, Lianne Smith, and Jane Speller and my colleagues on the Christian Brethren Archive Advisory Group, including Neil Summerton and John Hodgson; the department of Early Printed Books at Trinity College Dublin; the librarians of the Royal Irish Academy and the National Library of Ireland; the librarians of the Gamble Library, Union Theological College, Belfast, especially Margaret Olivier; colleagues at the Edwin Cross archive, Chapter Two Books, London, especially Priscille Brachotte; Robin P. Roddie, archivist of the Methodist Historical Society of Ireland; and colleagues in the McClay Library, Queen’s University Belfast, especially Thomas Carmichael, Kath Stevenson, and Deirdre Wildy. Very special thanks are due to Donald Akenson, Tim Cooper, Neil Dickson, Simon Gathercole, Timothy Grass, D. G. Hart, Ariel Hessayon, Les Hodgett, Roger Holden, Thomas Ice, Graham Johnston, Dirk Jongkind, Steve Knowles, Peter Lineham, Carlisle McAuley, Samuel J. McBride, Mark Peever, Andrew Poots, the late Daniel Roberts, Salvador Ryan, Michael Schneider, David Shedden, Timothy Stunt, Mike Tardive, Joe Webster, Max Weremchuk, Paul Wilkinson, all those involved in the production of the Brethren Historical Review, and other brethren who, on condition of anonymity, provided substantial assistance relating to the dating of Darby’s publications. I am grateful to William Hathorn, trustee of the Bible and Gospel Trust, Chessington, for permission

Preface  xv to quote from the Trust’s editions of Darby’s French correspondence and his correspondence with Wigram. Doug Engle shared his scans of manuscript material held at Emmaus College, Dubuque, Iowa, and Russell Newton pointed me toward relevant material held at New College, Edinburgh. Tom Chantry has collected and generously shares one of the world’s most important archives of brethren material at brethrenarchive.org. Geordan Hammond and his colleagues awarded me a Manchester Wesley Research Centre Visiting Fellowship, which enabled work in the Nazarene Theological College, Manchester, and in the Christian Brethren Archive. Ruth Hobbins, of the Teesside Archives, kindly provided access to the set of Darby’s Collected Writings that Kelly presented to the people of Middlesbrough, just as it was going into storage. Adrian Rubie very generously presented me with a set of Darby’s Collected Writings that has an important provenance among exclusive brethren hymnwriters. The trustees of the Stone Publications Trust provided copies of some of Darby’s harder-​to-​find publications, often with fascinating annotations by earlier readers. And Malcolm Horlock kindly presented me with a set of the works of Newton and Tregelles. For permission to reproduce images, I am grateful to John Hodgson at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester. These images are reproduced under a Creative Commons license and are copyright of the University of Manchester. I am grateful to many colleagues for opportunities to present parts of this work in classrooms, seminars, conferences, and other public fora. Franziska Metzger invited me to talk about Darby at a conference on apocalyptic thought at Fribourg and Lucerne (2015), papers from which appeared in Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions and Kulturgeschichte (2016); Melvyn Bragg provided an opportunity to discuss Darby and his significance on BBC Radio 4’s “In Our Time” (2019); Simone Maghenzani invited me to talk about our shared interest in Darby at the Cambridge History of Christianity seminar (2022); Kevin O’Sullivan gathered an energetic audience for my talk about Darby at the history seminar at NUI Galway (2022); and Todd Rester invited me to work through the arguments of this book in what must have been Westminster Theological Seminary’s first ever semester-​length course on Darby and the roots of dispensationalism (2022). I owe an enormous debt to Cynthia Read, my editor at Oxford University Press, who commissioned this project, waited patiently for its appearance, and retired just as the end became nigh. I am especially grateful to Theo Calderara and Brent Matheny for pushing the project toward publication. Max Weremchuk, Andrew Poots,

xvi Preface and Mark Sweetnam commented upon and even read part or whole of the manuscript—​“of whom the world was not worthy.” Finally, my love and thanks to my mum and dad, and to Pauline and our children. I have written this book for Daniel, Honor, Finn, and Samuel, as they grow up in a family that traces its connection with brethren through five generations. I wonder whether they will compare their childhood to that of Edmund Gosse, who was encouraged by his father to make apocalyptic denunciations that would resonate only with scholars of the seventeenth century or “stout Protestants . . . from County Antrim.”29 Let the reader understand. —​Crawford Gribben Tulaigh na Mullán

Introduction A great warfare as to what is the truth has begun . . . what is Christianity? What is divine righteousness? What is the desert of sin?1

John Nelson Darby (1800–​1882) was embarrassed. Late in 1866, while preaching in New York, he received a copy of the first volume of his Works.2 He understood that the times were propitious for this kind of project. For several decades, publishers had been selling new editions of the works of English Puritans such as John Owen (1826, 1850–​1855), John Bunyan (1860), Thomas Goodwin (1861–​1866), Thomas Brooks (1861–​1867), and Richard Sibbes (1862–​1864), some of which he would collect for his own library.3 In that context, he feared that The works of John Nelson Darby sounded rather pretentious—​as if his writing could be compared to that of the worthies of dissent. Some of his early readers shared his concern. One of their number wrote to his publisher, complaining that The works of John Nelson Darby sounded rather “too assuming.”4 Never shy of working to control his image, Darby admitted that the “title troubled me as soon as I saw it,” and suggested to his publisher, George Morrish, who had been working on the project with his editor, William Kelly, and his landlord and factotum, George Vicesimus Wigram, that something along the lines of “collected papers and tracts” might provide a more modest alternative.5 Darby and Wigram were old friends: Wigram might have been one of the few capable of joking with Darby by misspelling his name in Greek.6 But Darby’s concerns were not unfounded. After all, he was only sixty-​six when the Collected writings began to appear, and the project that Wigram believed would amount to fifteen volumes grew to more than thirty-​four—​without ever being complete.7 The project to gather Darby’s writing recognized his status in the religious worlds of the later nineteenth century. Whether he liked it or not, by the mid-​1860s, as he was making his first journeys across the Atlantic, Darby was being recognized as the “Goliath of Dissent,” and in particular J. N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism. Crawford Gribben, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190932343.003.0001

2  J. N. Darby as the most important leader among the new religious movement known as the “Plymouth Brethren.”8 He was a prolific and often polemical author. After twenty years of pamphleteering, he took a leading role in the bitterly fought division of the brethren into “open” and “exclusive” networks, respectively those brethren who favored local autonomy and those who favored some form of connected decision-​making and ecclesiastical discipline (1845–​1848). The division provided his work with new energy, and, while he never abandoned the occasional writing for which he had become well-​ known, he moved increasingly toward more substantial and programmatic projects. His achievements were extraordinary. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 850 separately published items, from ephemeral pamphlets to weighty tomes, with subjects ranging from biblical exposition, theology, and devotional poetry to Greek grammar, political commentary, and reflections on the work of J. S. Mill.9 His first major publication was the Synopsis of the books of the Bible, which was published in French as a book (1854) while also appearing in English as a series of articles in The Present Testimony (from 1849) and then in a set of five volumes (1857–​1867).10 During the same period, he led projects to translate the New Testament into German (1855), French (1859), and English (1867) and continued to work on successive editions of these translations, with their Old Testament counterparts, until his death.11 He developed an interest in apologetics and wrote to confute the claims of his old friend, Francis Newman, in The irrationalism of infidelity (1853) while replying to the philosopher’s brother, the celebrated John Henry Newman, in Analysis of Dr. Newman’s apologia pro vita sua (1866).12 He was the author of articles and reviews for which brethren periodicals and others outside the movement made competing bids. Many of these articles were turned into separately published texts. His notebooks—​some of the contents of which were published after his death—​contained work on an even wider range of subjects, including reviews of current scientific publications and scholarship on the history of Indo-​ European language, Hinduism, the 13 Book of Enoch, and Kant. From as early as 1827, he took notes in his four-​ volume interleaved Greek New Testament, a bespoke text that has never been systematically described.14 From as early as the mid-​1840s, he made comments in his “Blank-​paged Bible,” a commercially available edition that printed the Authorized Version text on left-​hand and lined pages on right-​ hand pages, only parts of which annotations have ever appeared in print.15 He also annotated his Hebrew Bible, which has subsequently disappeared.16 None of Darby’s exegetical notebooks appears to have survived—​and, if the

Introduction  3 reference in his “Blank-​paged Bible” to “notebook R” is any clue, this collection of manuscripts might have been substantial (Figure I.1).17 Despite these losses, his published and extant manuscript writing might amount to more than 19 million words.18 For all that Darby should be recognized as one of the nineteenth century’s most prolific and varied religious writers, he did not delight in his literary work. He feared that writing was a distraction from his evangelistic and pastoral labors: “I am not ambitious as an author,” he explained to a close friend.19 “I sometimes fear getting too much even on Scripture instead of working for souls,” he added on another occasion.20 But Darby knew that his writing mattered—​initially, to set out the claims of a small group of individuals and, latterly, to connect brethren across enormous distances. From the 1830s, his writing linked brethren in Britain and Ireland with others whom he had encountered through his missionary work in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland.21 These networks expanded throughout the empire and into North America. By the late 1860s, they extended from Ontario to California, Texas, and the Caribbean and as far east as India.22 By the mid-​1870s, they stretched into the antipodes.23 By the time of his death, in 1882, Darby’s writing had turned a coterie into a network and a network into a global community.24 Darby recognized the danger of depending on the printed word. With other of the movement’s “thought leaders,” he worried that brethren were producing too much writing and too many periodicals, some of which too obviously reflected narrowly commercial interests. In private, he was candid. “I rather fear brethren overwriting themselves,” he explained to Wigram, for “very few minds modulate and coordinate truth, and it is apt thereby to lose its energy.”25 Quoting the Roman lyric poet Horace to the effect that “all of us, learned and unlearned, alike take to writing,” he admitted that he was “growingly dissatisfied with our tracts,” in which ideas were too often “taken by themselves and pushed to an extreme.”26 What he described as “brethren truth” was being “mutilated to please the public, or exaggerated so as to be false.”27 “I dread publicity save what God publishes in His own way,” he confessed.28 Late in life he explained this fear: “I went about for years with P[ercy] H[all], and he printed handbills, but I never did. I would rather have five people in earnest than five hundred gathered out of curiosity.”29 Yet, whatever Darby’s hesitations about publicity, the influence of his ideas continued to spread. By the mid-​1870s, eleven brethren journals had been established, some with a circulation of more than forty thousand readers.30

4  J. N. Darby

Figure I.1  Illustration from Darby’s “Blank-​paged Bible,” from CBA JND/​3/​1.

Introduction  5 If Darby’s work was influential, it was not especially balanced. He, too, struggled to “modulate and coordinate truth.”31 In his exegetical interventions, he recognized that he was not doing the work of a dogmatic theologian. Of course, he argued, truth could be systematically presented. He explained this point in a gloss on the “outline of sound words” mentioned in 2 Timothy 1:13, which proposed a “systematic exposé, in outline,” of apostolic teaching.32 Nevertheless, Darby feared attempts at systematization and worried especially about the possibility of “systematized error,” as he put it in his translation of Ephesians 4:14. Any effort to construct a theological system would reflect the noetic effects of the fall: “a human attempt at precision sometimes leads us astray,” he noted in 1866.33 He feared the effects of speculative theology and, in particular, worried about Christological investigations: “it is as if one dissected the body of his friend, instead of nourishing himself with his affections and character.”34 Consequently, he did not work in a structured way through each theological locus.35 His writing was more often occasional than programmatic. He preferred exegesis to theological argument. In addition, he wrote in changing contexts, so that the consistency of his thinking was not always evident: he might argue that trains should not run on Sundays, for example, while insisting that public parks should remain open for the good of the poor.36 But, whatever his limitations, Darby’s letters, Bible translations, Synopsis, and other writing served a very important purpose. They offered a sustained and often complex exposition of Scripture and an extensive (and extending) set of theological interventions. They warranted his being invested with an almost prophetic authority: as one of his most erudite disciples noted at the end of the 1870s, “there is always a man of God for the day, who is used by God to bring out his present mind.”37 By the time of his death, in 1882, Darby’s writings had become canonical among “Plymouth Brethren” and regarded as exemplary by the growing number of preachers and theologians from mainstream denominations who, in the early twentieth century, turned his insights into the theological system that became known as “dispensationalism.”38 Darby’s most extensive legacy would be found outside the brethren movement, in the North American evangelical cultures of which he was so critical and within which his ideas were cherry-​picked for purposes of which he could never have approved.39 This book traces this appropriation,

6  J. N. Darby reconstructing one part of the intellectual history of nineteenth-​century evangelicalism, showing how religious influence could be created not through ecclesiastical office or institutions but by means of uncoordinated entrepreneurial activity, largely in print. For, toward the end of Darby’s life, leaders from several denominations, appalled by the cultural turn that followed upon the American Civil War, adopted and adapted several of his key ideas.40 In the 1910s, the end-​times narrative they fashioned shaped in powerful ways the revolutionary conservatism that rocked American Protestant churches. While dispensational ideas were not central to the essays that were published as The fundamentals (1910–​1915), a redacted version of Darby’s ideas was disseminated in the Scofield reference Bible (1909), which circulated in the tens of millions to define the movement of “fundamentalism.”41 As Darby’s arguments were abbreviated and dispersed more widely than ever before, they were largely forgotten in Britain and Ireland but came to shape American born-​again religion and the global community of 600 million evangelicals that it has influenced—​so that Darby might now be recognized as the fourth most important theologian in Protestant history.42 This claim about Darby’s status is a retrospective evaluation. In the nineteenth century, Darby would not have presented his teaching as any kind of “ism,” as if it constituted a perspective that could be balanced off against another. But religious nature abhors a descriptive vacuum, and, as his work was redacted and commodified, it was given a distinctive appellation. By 1913, the term “dispensationalism” had emerged as a disparaging descriptor in prophetic debates among fundamentalists.43 The first usage recorded by the Oxford English dictionary appeared in 1928, in a hit-​piece that distinguished the “dispensationalism” of the Scofield Bible from the more biblical theology of the brethren.44 But the term was increasingly used to refer to Darby’s work, too. This decision to name Darby’s contribution radically reshaped its significance. Darby, and the brethren who followed him, had attempted a holistic reading of Scripture, modifying the accepted conclusions of the Reformed faith in discussions of soteriology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, and eschatology to produce a theology that was, broadly speaking, Calvinist, catholic, charismatic, and catastrophic. But among the denominational leaders who received it, this teaching was simplified and thematically contracted. The rise of “dispensationalism” provides key evidence for the transformation of American Christianity—​and describes the reduction, rather than the exposition, of Darby’s ideas.

Introduction  7

I Darby reconstructed his early life with reluctance—​and some freedom.45 Autobiography was “unpleasant and unsatisfactory, a dangerous thing,” he observed, as he set about creating a sometimes chronologically uncertain version of his early life.46 Yet the elements of his biography are clear. He was born in London, on 18 November 1800, just six weeks before the acts of union created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and merged two established churches to form the United Church of England and Ireland.47 Darby’s family had important connections in England, Ireland, the United States, and the Caribbean, by means of which his father and uncles had become extremely wealthy. His father, who had made a fortune in trade, had links to the Royal Navy, which warranted his youngest son being given “Nelson” as a middle name.48 This reference to the famous admiral spoke to the kinds of relationships that Darby could take for granted. Throughout his life, his network of family members, friends, and acquaintances included members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords.49 (As one critic would rather archly note, in an allusion to James 2:5, “it cannot be said that God has chosen the poor of this world to commence that spreading movement which originated at Plymouth.”50) As the youngest son of this prosperous family, Darby was provided with an excellent education, at Westminster School and Trinity College Dublin (1815–​1819), from which he graduated with a gold medal in classics.51 Following the path of two elder brothers, who had become barristers, Darby prepared for a career in law.52 He registered at Lincoln’s Inn, London (1819) and was admitted as a barrister to the King’s Inns, Dublin, when he signed the oath of allegiance to George IV (1822).53 Darby was preparing for a respectable career in the declining years of the Anglo-​Irish ascendency. But this was a searching time for the introspective lawyer. Darby was increasingly interested in religion.54 In 1819, he appears to have been reading the divinity of the non-​jurors, those Anglicans who had abandoned the established church in the aftermath of the so-​called Glorious Revolution (1688–​1690), when James II was deposed from the throne in favor of his daughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange; non-​jurors preserved their Jacobite sympathies, and their assertion of the independence of church and state, until the end of the eighteenth century.55 This devout reading appears to have made an impact. Darby dated the beginnings of his spiritual

8  J. N. Darby

Figure I.2  Darby’s description of his evangelical conversion, from CBA JND/​3/​ 5, just after p. 412.

life to sometime in 1820 or 1821 (Figure I.2).56 He was not the first among his siblings to take religion seriously. His brother Christopher was already en route to become one of Ireland’s leading high churchmen.57 In the later 1820s, another brother, William, engaged in warm correspondence with the reformist Vicar General of the diocese of Constance and may briefly have converted to Roman Catholicism.58 Darby himself might have felt

Introduction  9 the appeal of Catholic religion during this period.59 Significantly, perhaps, both brothers inscribed their names into a copy of Universum sacrosanctum concilium tridentinum (1564), an account of the deliberations of the Council of Trent.60 But Darby might also have concealed from others his interest in serious religion. “I know it by experience,” he later remembered, “that an open bold confession of being Christ’s is more than half the struggle over.”61 Whatever his hesitations and whatever the appeal of other communions, however, Darby’s new religious sensibility would be definitively shaped by high church cultures in the Church of Ireland.62 As his religious interests developed, Darby decided to become a clergyman. While we do not know how he prepared for this calling, we do know that he purchased a clerical gown in December 1824; that he was ordained as deacon by William Bissett, the bishop of Raphoe, in St Eunan’s Cathedral in August 1825; and that he was ordained as priest by Archbishop Magee in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, in February 1826.63 As a young clergyman, Darby seems to have benefited from the support of influential figures. With the support of Magee, who pulled strings to make it happen, he was appointed to Calary, County Wicklow, at the heart of the church’s evangelical network, where the so-​called Second Reformation, a determined effort to promote evangelical conversions among Irish Catholics, was proceeding apace.64 There he worked for around two years and three months.65 He took his pastoral responsibilities extremely seriously. His service among the rural poor earned him a reputation for saintliness.66 And he may have been an effective clergyman, for there is evidence that some Catholics within his parish did conform to the Church of Ireland during this period.67 But Darby was not yet an evangelical. He was still an “exact churchman,” with views of the sacraments, ecclesiastical history, and church-​state relations that paralleled the attitudes of the more famous movement of Anglican reform that would come together in Oxford.68 For all his ecclesiological certainties, he was becoming very uneasy. This was, he later remembered, an anxious time, as he labored for Christ while being “awfully afraid” for the prospects of his own salvation.69 He came to understand the emptiness of his efforts at self-​righteousness before he fully understood his own position as a sinner.70 For all that he was involved in meetings of the Bible Society and appears to have played a role in the conversion of Joseph Charles Philpot, the future Strict Baptist and high Calvinist leader, Darby was still committed to high church theology, not least in his view of the efficacy of baptism.71 It was at the end of this period that he experienced the “deliverance”

10  J. N. Darby that brought him to a more obviously evangelical faith. In autumn 1827, he suffered a riding accident and left Calary in order to recuperate in his sister’s homes in Delgany and Dublin.72 During those months of recovery, he developed readings of Scripture that would determine the shape of his future life, encouraging him to establish the theological binaries upon which his thinking would be based—​distinctions between Israel and the church, the church and the world, law and grace, this age and the age to come.73 It was the beginning of an intellectual revolution. His movement away from “exact churchmanship” can be traced in his writings of the later 1820s.74 If we can date Darby’s evangelical conversion, we cannot be sure when he left the Church of Ireland. It is not clear, as he later claimed, that he seceded in 1827.75 It might have taken him several years to finalize his break with the establishment—​or even to realize that a formal withdrawal was something he might need to consider. Several times in his early writing he wondered what to do. At times he appeared to write in search of answers, as much as to provide them. In one of his early publications, he anticipated the objections of those who “will say, if you see these things, what are you doing yourself?” His response was ambivalent: he could only “sorrow and mourn” over his “strange and infinite shortcomings” and “earnestly seek for direction.”76 This hesitation reflected his instinctive conservatism. But his writing also reflected his growing certainties. For several years, he seems to have combined his ministry in the established church with an effort to develop something else: later brethren remembered him as a “clergyman” who would climb “out of his pulpit” to walk “down the street in his black gown” to join non-​denominational celebrations of communion.77 Darby was remembered preaching in the open air, with a colleague “reading . . . the Prayer Book afterwards.” For brethren only slowly developed their most distinctive positions. If they were resurrecting ancient truth, Kelly continued, “grave clothes still hung about [those] that came out of the grave of ecclesiastical defection.”78 Darby’s new churchmanship was certainly anti-​formal. In the late 1820s, he became more involved in the “drawing-​room meetings” that attracted believers from across denominations for conversational Bible study and prayer.79 For several years, Dublin evangelicals had been gathering for fellowship, both in the office of the Bible Society and in private homes.80 These meetings had been led by individuals such as Edward Cronin, William Stokes, and, during his visits to the city, Anthony Norris Groves.81 In early 1828, he had made sufficient recovery from his riding accident to take part in

Introduction  11 fellowship meetings in the home of Francis Synge Hutchinson, in Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin.82 These meetings made an impression on his unsettled mind. He continued to think about Calary’s rural poor and during his convalescence wrote addresses to these “Roman Catholic brethren,” urging them to become “Protestant.”83 But, despite receiving, in 1829, a commendatory note from his parishioners, he does not appear to have returned to his County Wicklow charge.84 His interest in evangelizing Irish Catholics was growing more expansive. By February 1829, he was preaching in County Clare, in conjunction with the Church of Ireland’s home mission. These efforts resulted in conversions, including that of an individual in Carhue, who was the “first person to whom I made myself understood in Irish.”85 But these were challenging times. It was during this period that the secretive and politically radical agrarian movement known as “Captain Rock” warned him against “seducing the people . . . by your Bible business” and advised him to leave the district.86 As Darby continued his evangelistic work in the west of Ireland, his friends were thinking about the nature of the church.87 The Dublin drawing-​room meetings were becoming both more public and much less formal. From November 1829 until May 1830, Hutchinson welcomed Christian friends into his Fitzwilliam Square home—​where, in a striking break with evangelical thinking about the privileges of the clergy, they shared in the Lord’s Supper.88 By May 1830, these brethren had begun to meet in a rented room in Aungier Street, where Christians from lower social ranks were welcomed into the fellowship. Lady Powerscourt, who began to host prophecy conferences at her County Wicklow estate in 1831, joined this rather unassuming congregation in 1832.89 Darby seems to have identified with the congregation around the same period, describing, in a letter of May 1832, its “unity and sweetness of spirit.”90 This affiliation with a congregation that broke bread without clerical oversight might represent his giant leap out of the established church. If so, his secession could be dated with relative precision: in January 1832, Darby had been surprised when Wigram and other brethren in Plymouth invited him to “break bread” in the absence of clerical oversight; three or four months later, in a rented room in Dublin, he might have been doing so with much less reluctance.91 Darby’s involvement in these early meetings of brethren represented one of several “partings of the ways” with the established church.92 In 1833, he was submitting correspondence on biblical criticism to The Investigator, a theological journal edited by a Church of England clergyman.93 By 1834, Bellett

12  J. N. Darby believed that Darby was “all but detached” from the claims of the United Church of England and Ireland.94 Certainly he was no longer conducting worship according to the Book of Common Prayer. On several occasions in the mid-​and late 1830s, when he was traveling, he had to respond to critics by referring to a “borrowed liturgy.”95 By the mid-​1830s, he had begun to formulate some of his key ideas. Working mainly in the west of Ireland and the southwest of England and meeting fellow-​travelers at theological conferences, such as those convened on the Powerscourt estate, County Wicklow, he began to advance new views on the church and end times.96 His thinking about these subjects developed simultaneously, so that his ecclesiology and eschatology became mutually supporting. By 1833, he had developed the idea of a “rapture,” in which true believers would be removed from Earth as part of their experience of Christ’s second coming and, by 1834, had concluded that the “notion of a clergyman,” which arrogated to select individuals the rights that belonged to all the people of God, was this dispensation’s sin against the Holy Spirit.97 But it took time for some of his admirers to recognize the significance of his break with the established church. In 1838, for example, one enthusiast for his preaching published transcriptions that were attributed to the “Reverend” J. N. Darby.98 In the 1830s, Darby was not developing his ideas in a vacuum. As he was coming to the forefront of what became the brethren movement, his reading of Scripture and his understanding of contemporary cultural, political, and ecclesiastical contexts developed in conversation with fellow-​travelers in Dublin and Wicklow, in Ireland, and in Oxford and Plymouth, in England.99 Historians may have missed the significance of these conversations by reading the sometimes redacted version of his texts that appeared in the Collected writings apart from the discursive contexts in which they first appeared. But for all that Darby debated with and likely learned from his colleagues, he was recognized as first among equals: the earliest issues of The Christian Witness, the brethren journal that was edited by Henry Borlase (d. 1835) and James Lampden Harris in the Plymouth assembly (1834–​1841), presented the work of each of its authors anonymously—​with the exception of work by “J. N. D.”100 It is not clear how, by 1834, Darby had gained this status, except through the force of personality that was recognized by brethren as evidence of his distinctive spiritual gift. His status was also recognized elsewhere. In 1836, a Baptist missionary in Limerick complained that several of his congregations had gone over to the “Darbyites.”101 In the same year, Joseph D’Arcy Sirr, an Anglican minister in County Galway, referred to

Introduction  13 “Darbyites” as one of the challenges facing the established church.102 Josiah Conder, an English Independent, referred to “Darbyites” in 1838.103 Among Roman Catholics, Daniel O’Connell made fun of “Darbyites” in 1839 (albeit in the same year that some of his co-​religionists referred to the Mayo landowner Sir Richard O’Donnel as the “Darbyite pope”).104 Darby’s pop-​cultural apotheosis might have been complete when he inspired the description of a character in William Carleton’s novel, Valentine M’Clutchy, the Irish agent (1845).105 Inside and outside the brethren, Darby was becoming well known. Darby’s personal circumstances were changing, too. In 1834, his father’s death had provided him with an annual income of between £300 and £400, which was more or less the “median net income of a Church of Ireland rector.”106 The income might have allowed him more freedom in movement and in forming associations, although he also encouraged the practice of “living by faith.”107 But we are left with only glimpses of his life in this period. In March 1835, he was in Dublin, visiting a young relative, being “engaged from morning till night preaching, expounding, visiting, &c.,” including at weekly meetings for Bible study that were being convened by the “pale, elegant, dignified and retiring” Lady Powerscourt.108 By then, the Dublin and Plymouth meetings were being imitated elsewhere. In October 1835, he wrote from Cork to advise his brother Horatio that “many” at Birr, in King’s County, and Castle Willington, in County Tipperary, had “decided of our way of thinking about things,” and that in the latter location up to two hundred people were attending “our” meetings.109 On both sides of the Irish Sea, and even into the continent, brethren gatherings were growing in number and size.110 And Darby was offering them pastoral care, creating a community of brethren, more or less in his own image. After the death of Lady Powerscourt, in 1836, he began to travel in French-​speaking Europe, where his followers quickly became known as “Darbystes” (a name now also given to the popular beer that, it is claimed, was enjoyed by brethren in Belgium).111 In Geneva, he reported to a friend, he spent the “happiest moments of my life.”112 And he certainly made an impact. In 1842, sixty members of one of the larger dissenting congregations withdrew under Darby’s influence.113 By 1844, a critical correspondent reported, “Darbyism” had “infected” the majority of the dissenting congregations.114 Darby’s ideas spread to “almost every dissenting church in the country,” so that “multitudes belonging to the National Church . . . enrolled themselves among his disciples.”115 Swiss dissedents who were troubled by his doctrines were supported by Scottish Congregationalists, while Swiss Baptists more actively competed with

14  J. N. Darby “Darbyism.”116 The controversies were the context for the publication of an early critical assessment of brethren teaching, which was clearly associated with Darby: Les frères de Plymouth et John Darby, leur doctrine et leur histoire, en particulier dans le Canton de Vaud (1845), by Johann Jacob Herzog, a professor of historical theology at Lausanne.117 By the mid-​1840s, “Darbyism” was a force to be reckoned with—​in Britain, Ireland, and on the continent. Reflecting back on this period, Darby remembered how quickly his thinking came together: “what was obscure for us one year, became an axiom the following year.”118 His status as a leader among brethren was assured as he grew in confidence about his new teaching. And that is how the trouble began. By the mid-​1840s, tensions within the movement were focused on the Plymouth assembly. In 1845, Darby returned from several years of missionary work in Switzerland and France to discover how far the assembly had moved from its original principles of gathering—​ and from the Christology of the ecumenical creeds.119 In his absence, a party in the assembly had developed criticisms of his theology and leadership style, while Benjamin Wills Newton, a younger man who had come to dominate the assembly, was promoting teaching on the humanity of Christ that was widely regarded as heterodox.120 But Newton was supported by the majority of the Plymouth Brethren. In the winter of 1845, Darby withdrew from the assembly, established a new fellowship in the town, and called upon brethren elsewhere to choose between the meetings.121 During the “wretched paper war” that ensued, he became a figurehead for those who championed better coordination and tighter discipline among assemblies.122 But his own decision was clear: the assembly that had given the movement its name became the first to be excluded from his fellowship. And so, in 1848 and 1849, brethren divided between those in favor of “open” fellowship, who argued that congregations should be autonomous, and “exclusives,” whose vision of connected congregations allowed for the more effective implementation of ecclesiastical discipline. Darby became one of the key leaders of the network of “exclusives.” As brethren divided, he retained the loyalty of the majority of those in England but lost much of his influence in Scotland.123 For some exclusives, like William Henry Dorman, a convert from the Congregational ministry, he was a hero, “the man who went, single-​handed, to oppose the error in its stronghold in Plymouth.”124 Yet, as the new network coalesced, even Dorman could not submit to his mentor’s increasing authority and to the theological innovations it introduced. Together with Percy Francis Hall—​who had been Darby’s publicity-​hungry

Introduction  15 and Prayer Book-​reading preaching partner—​Dorman campaigned against efforts to centralize decision-​making within the exclusive network. For controversy continued. In the late 1850s, exclusive brethren were rocked by Darby’s argument that Christ had experienced a “third class” of sufferings, which did not contribute to the atonement that he provided for his people’s sins. Some of Darby’s friends, and some of his long-​standing critics, believed (inaccurately) that he had adopted the position for which Newton had been condemned. This controversy could have been catastrophic for the maintenance of community discipline. But Dorman refused to form a party and discussed the matter only with Darby and a small group of friends—​at least until 1866, when Darby sent him a “curt note” and declined any further correspondence on the matter. Dorman responded by publishing his side of the correspondence, emphasizing that his friend’s authority among exclusive brethren was now uncontested.125 Darby, he lamented, was “readily, and . . . remorselessly . . . prepared to throw off men, no matter how long or how close their association may have been with him, if they once dare to judge or to question the truth of what he has written.”126 For Dorman, the division represented the development of dangerously effective structures of command and control. He worried that centralizing tendencies among exclusive brethren would be reinforced by the “disciples of Mr D. who are diligently training themselves to fill his place when he is gone.”127 Far from causing embarrassment, however, Darby’s elevation was providing exclusive brethren with their theology, identity, and name. This personalizing of leadership could not prevent the network from tearing itself apart through the application of principles that were as unbiblical as they were unworkable. That at least was the view of open brethren in Sheffield, who took the opportunity of the Dorman–​Hall controversy to denounce exclusive principles along with the influence of their principal theorist: “Your practice of excommunicating Assemblies of Saints began with Bethesda,” the assembly in Plymouth, they continued. “When is it to end? You were led to it not by any Scripture direction or example, but by a circular signed by J. N. D.”128 These polemics were ineffective: Darby remained popular within his own network, and his influence continued to expand elsewhere. He was respected as a scholar. His Synopsis was lauded in the Princeton Review.129 Reverend James Brookes, the Presbyterian minister who may have hosted Darby in his St. Louis pulpit, quoted from Darby’s translation in published work.130 But Darby was also respected by those whose work he censured. For example, he criticized the work of David Brown, professor

16  J. N. Darby of theology in the Free Church of Scotland, and described his denomination as an “infidel body.”131 But Brown appreciated Darby’s work and courted his good opinion: at some point in the late 1870s, he attended Darby’s preaching and thanked him for his Bible translations, which he owned in several languages.132 Nevertheless, as Dorman had anticipated, Darby’s network expanded as younger men organized his ideas and disseminated the results to new audiences. A large number of individuals distributed Darby’s teaching in tracts. By the early 1860s, these were being printed by the million, with one man in England sharing 50,000 of these leaflets in a single week.133 Addressing middle-​brow readers, Charles Henry Mackintosh summarized Darby’s teaching in popular-​level expositions of the Pentateuch for which he did not claim copyright—​and which were, as a consequence, widely distributed by the rapidly diversifying evangelical publishing industry in North America.134 Kelly was a much more credible scholar whose journals published demanding exegesis and theological critique.135 His commentaries provided Darby’s ideas with secure exegetical foundations—​to the extent that William Sanday and Arthur Headlam, in the commentary on Romans that appeared in that flagship of late Victorian biblical scholarship, the T&T Clark International Critical Commentary series (1895), described his exposition of the book as one of the most significant modern contributions.136 But, as their influence expanded, brethren continued to divide. After falling out with the Newton party and the open brethren in 1848, and the more independent spirits among exclusives in 1866, Darby worked hard to connect groups of brethren, making six trips to North America from the mid-​1860s and traveling as far as Australia and New Zealand (where, at the age of seventy-​five, he may have learned and preached in Maori).137 But exclusives remained divided over baptism. In January 1871, for example, an inquirer in Ballymena, County Antrim, who had missed meeting Darby when he passed through the town in the previous autumn, addressed him with a question about the propriety of the baptism of infants, for “brethren in this neighborhood holding with you on other matters are divided on this one point.”138 As it continued, the letter became much less deferential: “Should you find convenience to send one a reply, I earnestly request that you will shew me what Scriptural authority any believer has for administering a Christian ordinance—​or any religious ordinance—​to an unbeliever.”139 But the most serious division among exclusive brethren was not caused by baptism. In 1879, Darby became embroiled in a dispute with Kelly and other

Introduction  17 prominent leaders about the boundaries of fellowship and the processes by which those boundaries should be maintained. In 1880, exclusives split three ways, between the smaller “new lump” of disciplinary ultras, the much less rigorous Kelly faction, and the majority who followed Darby’s via media. The community’s commitment to unity in ecclesiastical decision-​making was providing a very unstable foundation.140 Critics observed in the division the apotheosis of Darbyite discipline: by 1880, he had “rejected almost all the original founders: Groves, Congleton, Cronin, Newton, Hall; only Bellett and Wigram died still in communion with him.”141 But Darby had largely withdrawn from wider brethren culture. “I do not write in any magazine now,” he explained in February 1881: “I am not at all happy about the brothers’ book-​ selling concerns; the spirit of the world has got thoroughly hold of it.”142 Several months later, he grieved about the “complete demoralisation” of the movement.143 Even those who had separated from ecclesiastical corruption were being affected by the “ruin of the church.” Darby’s will bore witness to these changing circumstances. He made his testament on 2 March 1881, offering very generous legacies for women in whose homes he had been made welcome, and he made three additional codicils over the following year, ensuring that his lamp, dressing gown, and watch all found worthy recipients.144 When he died, on 29 April 1882, as one of the period’s most published and mostly widely traveled men, his movement was weakening—​as his ideas were about to be globalized.

II Whatever else he might have been, Darby was a scholar. His learning was not always obvious to those who met him or to those who had the patience to engage with his work. He was not pretentious: “though I read and study, it would be wrong in me to pretend to be learned.”145 Yet he became a very impressive collector of books.146 When his closest friend asked whether he might like a Ximenes Complutensian Polyglot, for example, Darby had to explain that he already owned it.147 Remarkably, if his posthumous auction catalogue for his library of three thousand volumes is any guide, he owned virtually nothing by other brethren.148 As he put it, tongue in cheek, to a younger admirer: “I read nothing but bad books and the Bible.”149 And he certainly collected plenty of the latter—​in such disciplines as history, travel, linguistics, and science, as well as biblical studies. “My books are quite alarming,” he admitted to a close

18  J. N. Darby friend, “as if I was regularly settled in the world.”150 But his reading was generally critical. “I use [my books] diligently now,” he acknowledged in 1851, “but I am astonished at all the ignorance there is in learning.”151 Sometimes, when he was traveling, he regretted his distance from this library: “to verify several points I ought to have recourse to my books; had I been in England perhaps I should have done so.”152 Sometimes his books traveled with him. Back in London, he pursued linguistic work at home and less technical reading on the bus.153 Darby may have been an enthusiastic reader, but his writing left a lot to be desired. At times, as on the lined paper in his “Blank-​paged Bible,” his writing could be quite legible.154 Elsewhere, it could be much more challenging.155 His orthography caused problems for printers, which led to serious errors entering into his texts. In 1839, he joked that his exposition of Revelation was ready for publication, “if the printer could print from my writing.”156 Wigram replied by noting that what Darby really needed was a “good decypherer” [sic].157 But the graphological problem continued. In 1849, Darby recognized that “faults” in his “phrases and sense” were still causing problems for the printer.158 Wigram made light-​hearted complaints about his friend’s handwriting into the 1860s: “Your paper on the rule of life is to hand: a very hard paper to divide aright into sentences & put verbs to.”159 Several weeks into this editing project, he admitted that “the MS is very difficult—​&, in one or two places, not yet deciphered.”160 Sometimes Wigram had to abandon his efforts at decryption. He spent over thirty hours trying to get one essay “ready for the printer,” but gave up and suggested to Darby that someone else should take it on instead.161 Other of Darby’s editors agreed. Kelly regarded Darby’s writing as being “far from legible.”162 Percy Adolphus Humphery annotated his notes for clarity when he turned “Blank-​paged Bible” comments into articles in Notes and comments.163 John Alfred Trench’s edition of Darby’s letters seems to have mistaken a reference to Cicero’s De officciis for his reading of “the office.”164 Henry Anthony Hammond, editor of Darby’s posthumous Spiritual songs (1905), observed that the “original manuscripts have only slight indications of punctuation.”165 Even Darby suffered the effects of his orthographical problem: “I am a bad hand at judging of my own writings in MS.”166 Problems of handwriting aside, Darby’s work was grammatically and conceptually dense. His prose presented the process, rather than the conclusion, of his thinking. “I find the pen often a great aid to the head,” he noted in later life.167 For, as he put it in a letter, “my writings are my course of arrival at

Introduction  19 truth, not my exposition of it when attained.”168 “You write to be read and understood,” he explained to Kelly, while “I only think on paper.”169 And Darby did much of this thinking-​on-​paper without revision. Kelly remembered his friend as being deliberate and prayerful in weighing a scripture; but he wrote rapidly, as thoughts arose in his spirit, and often with scarcely a word changed. He delighted in a concatenated sentence, sometimes with parenthesis, to express the truth fully, and with guards against misconception . . . this made his writings, to the uninitiated, anything but pleasant reading, and to a hasty glance almost unintelligible; so that many, even among highly educated believers, turned away, because of their inability to penetrate sentences too involved.170

Darby’s prose was notoriously hard to read, and it is difficult to understand how his influence over the brethren could have been achieved by literary effort alone—​as in many parts of the world it must have been. Throughout his life, he depended upon others to edit and punctuate his texts as well as to restate and clarify his claims. This was not always an easy task. His writing could be grammatically tangled and his meaning sometimes obscure. Critics used his obscurity as a metaphor for the quality of his thought. His writing could appear “diffuse and incoherent” and even, to some readers, “uninteresting.” “It is vain to expect from you anything like an orderly and intelligible vindication of your views,” one critic complained; “you seem to write as you speak,” in a manner both “unchristian and slovenly.”171 Another commentator found his writing “hard, dry, and heavy. . . . We do not profess to understand it . . . it leaves the reader nearly where it found him, only very weary, fagged, and much mystified.”172 Still another reviewer “conscientiously waded through the whole sixty close pages of letterpress,” but was “unable to meet anything like true argument.”173 One early historian of the brethren described Darby’s writing as “half ludicrous, half disgusting.”174 Kelly objected to this estimation. The writer might as well say this of Thucydides, Tacitus, or what is nearer still, of the Apostle Paul’s style: all of whom despised the nicely regular way of commonplace writers, the apostle adding parenthesis within parenthesis, long & involved sentences, which shock and disgust those who make Macauley their ideal.175

20  J. N. Darby Kelly believed that Darby’s language was “most precise, though his style was extremely involved.” It was only “difficult to the dull & unspiritual.”176 Whatever its difficulty, Darby’s most important writing appeared after the emergence of the “exclusive” network in the late 1840s. He began writing his synopsis of the Bible in spring 1847. In June, he informed Wigram that he had completed a commentary in French on Genesis, Exodus, and the first part of Leviticus.177 The project reflected both the international reach of the brethren movement and its developing periodical culture. The articles were translated into English, with some changes, including much more extensive discussion of Leviticus and Revelation, and were published in The Present Testimony between 1849 and 1855. Darby worried about the project’s circulation. Wigram’s journal was too expensive at six shillings per volume, he feared, which made his teaching inaccessible to the poor whose spiritual needs and financial limits were often on his mind.178 Darby’s decision to reprint the articles allowed him to revise and expand his work in five volumes, which were published from 1857, albeit at seven shillings and sixpence per volume. But sales were slow, and, in August 1859, his publisher, the brethren printer George Morrish, was soliciting a subvention to underwrite the publication of the second volume.179 Wigram (who had already published the material in The Present Testimony) advanced £100 to cover the printer’s costs.180 As discussions continued, Darby himself took on the cost of production, realizing that the earlier appearance of the articles in Wigram’s journal had impacted sales.181 Two years later, as the third volume of the Synopsis was being prepared for publication, Wigram and Darby discussed the possibility of moving the project to another publisher who might be better placed to sell the work.182 But the issue was not resolved. In 1868, Darby was still complaining that Morrish was taking too long to publish new volumes of the Synopsis: “He has had iii this long while. I am at work on iv. He takes things easy at his convenience.”183 But the cost of production was a major issue. In the later 1860s, Morrish was selling five-​volume sets of the Synopsis for twenty shillings, individual volumes of the Collected writings for six shillings, and copies of Darby’s translation of the New Testament for four shillings.184 In March 1870, Wigram was still explaining to Darby why the project had become so complex. Darby had chosen the library form for the Synopsis, Wigram remembered, which was why it was so expensive to produce. The cheaper format would have allowed a “poor man” to purchase volumes at two shillings and sixpence—​ one-​third of the cost.185 Wigram teased his friend that he was circulating

Introduction  21 only “upper class thoughts.”186 This was not entirely fair: a list from the later 1860s that shows volumes of the Synopsis selling at seven shillings and sixpence also shows some of the most important of Darby’s writings, including his pamphlet on the righteousness of God, selling for as little as a penny.187 Yet these works were not always easy to find: even as “tract depots” were established to disseminate brethren teaching, inquirers were asking Darby where his works could be found.188 Some readers bound his pamphlets into volumes, a practice that spoke to the high value that was being placed on very cheap print. His writing might also have been consumed devotionally. Even William Kelly’s wife, Emily, copied into a notebook Darby’s letters relating to the sufferings of Christ when these were widely available in print.189 Researching this project, I have consulted volumes of tracts that were cheaply bound before the Collected writings began to be published and others that were bound in quarter leather even in the 1870s.190 This habit of collecting and preserving Darby’s tracts while an authoritative edition of his work was circulating shows that even his short expositions were not being regarded as ephemera. There was obviously a market for what he wrote. The Collected writings project was designed to address this demand. When Kelly began this labor of love in the mid-​1860s, Wigram allowed him to reprint everything that Darby had published in The Present Testimony, with the exception of the material that had already appeared in the Synopsis.191 Kelly tracked down rare copies of anonymous works, including what might have been the only surviving copy of A letter on a serious question connected with the Irish education measures of 1832, which he found in the library of Trinity College Dublin.192 But the Collected writings edition was oddly incomplete. Kelly did not even include all of the items by Darby that he had published in The Bible Treasury. Missing items included a pamphlet, The presence of the Holy Ghost, etc. (1878), which Kelly published in five parts in The Bible Treasury (1883) under the title, “Christ’s Work, the Spirit’s Power; and the Lord’s Coming.”193 Other items seem to have entirely escaped Kelly’s notice. Darby wrote a text on “Atonement,” which appeared anonymously in Morrish’s A new and concise Bible dictionary (1897) before reappearing with attribution in Helps for the poor of the flock (1901), as well as in the form of a Morrish tract.194 In 1898, a correspondent provided Kelly with an anonymous tract on “Newman Street teachers.” Concluding that it had been written by Darby, Kelly tidied up the text and published it in The Bible Treasury under his old friend’s name.195

22  J. N. Darby Working with his tangled grammar, and sometimes from messy manuscripts, Darby’s editors took liberties with his work. Kelly’s edition of the Collected writings is obviously flawed. Even Darby and his closest associates were concerned about Kelly’s editorial interventions. Wigram worried that Kelly was retitling and revising Darby’s works without the author’s approval.196 But neither Darby nor Wigram seemed to recognize the scale of Kelly’s editorial interference. For Kelly was a very inconsistent editor. Sometimes he edited a text to reflect changing orthodoxies without drawing attention to his doing so; at other times he left the text as it stood and added a clarifying comment; and sometimes, in the same text, he did both. For example, when Kelly reprinted Darby’s two addresses to his “Roman Catholic brethren,” he quietly removed a critical autobiographical reference that dated the work to the winter of 1827 while adding a footnote to explain that Darby no longer believed that water baptism brought individuals into union with Christ.197 However, if Kelly’s edition of the Collected writings is flawed, Humphery’s edition of the Notes and comments is a disaster. Humphery took extraordinary liberties with Darby’s notebooks and created compilations of material from widely diverse sources that he presented as original articles. His article on “Genesis,” for example, drew upon some but not all of Darby’s annotations on Genesis in his “Blank-​paged Bible,” together with material from other sources that I have not been able to trace.198 After the Synopsis and the Collected writings, Darby was best-​known for his Bible translations. Throughout his ministry, he was fascinated by questions of language and translation. While working within the Church of Ireland, he had preached in Irish, perhaps with the help of the Irish-​language dictionary that was included in his library catalogue.199 Darby’s grasp of this language may have been idiosyncratic: his argument that the relationship between God and believers should not be described as fochair a céile, an expression that the editor of his Letters glossed as “companionship on equal terms,” might have been theologically precise, but it offered an idiomatic construction that is not recorded in standard reference works.200 In addition, Darby preached and wrote fluently in French and acquired enough German, Dutch, and Italian to be able to preach in those languages, too.201 We have already noted his preaching in Maori. Fluency in speech was not sufficient to undertake the work of literary translation, and this aspect of Darby’s ministry took longer to develop. In autumn 1845, he wrote to Wigram about some early experiments in translation.202 From the 1850s, as the geographical scope of his ministry expanded, he recognized the need to provide brethren with more accurate

Introduction  23 editions of the Bible. His university studies in classics had prepared him for work with the Greek New Testament, although he was always modest about his achievements. “Without pretending to be very learned, I know Greek, and I have studied the Greek Testament,” he explained, while reminding his readers that “the Spirit of God will guide more surely a plain man, if he be humble, in fundamental truths, than a little Greek will those who trust in it.”203 Darby was weaker in Hebrew and used all the helps that he could find, including advice from his friends, while noting unusual constructions in his “Blank-​paged Bible” and, presumably, recording his workings in his now-​ missing Hebrew Bible.204 For Darby did not often work as an isolated translator. His work in this respect began formally when he was drawn into the preparation of a French translation—​the so-​called Lausanne edition—​in 1845–​1846.205 These efforts were followed by a more unconventional effort to translate the New Testament into German. Darby had begun work on this project by September 1854, without very much in the way of advance planning, including efforts to learn the language.206 In the early phase of the project, Darby did not have sufficient German to engage in technical correspondence so that his collaborator, Julius Anton Eugen von Poseck, was compelled to write to him in French.207 Darby’s translating team adopted a very simple method to compensate for his limited grasp of the vernacular. This was to have Darby dictate a rough translation of the Greek to von Poseck, Carl Brockhaus, and Herman Cornelius Voorhoeve, who turned this crib into idiomatic German.208 Using this method, the translators completed the project within a few months. And the results were extremely successful. By October 1857, the German New Testament had sold 2,500 copies, five hundred of which had been taken by Baptists.209 The Bible Society would go on to sell “tens of thousands” copies more.210 In spring 1855, with the German translation under his belt, Darby began to translate the New Testament into French.211 Darby followed a similar method to that used in preparing the German New Testament. Working closely with a team of translators that included Herman Cornelius Voorhoeve, Nicolaas Anthony Johannes Voorhoeve, Edward Lawrence Bevir, Charles-​François Recordon, Pierre Schlumberger-​ Berthoud, and William Joseph Lowe, he prepared a text that was copied for the press by the former secretary of the archbishop of Turin, who had experienced an evangelical conversion and had thrown in his lot with the brethren.212 This was a more considered project. Still, Darby and his team completed their work within two years.213

24  J. N. Darby Significantly, he prepared an introduction to this translation that set out the principal themes in his reading of Scripture, which was perhaps his first attempt to provide a theological synopsis. This introduction focused on the work of the two Adams, God’s government as illustrated in the law and promises, and God’s grace.214 Darby continued to work on revisions of this work so that a new edition appeared in 1864.215 But discussions of the text continued. An edition of the New Testament with full critical apparatus appeared in 1872.216 This apparatus was much simplified in the edition of the Bible that appeared in 1885.217 In June 1874, one member of the translation team, Lowe, wrote to Darby worrying about inconsistencies in the French translation of ἑαυτῶν and ἴδιος, which appear to have been ironed out in the later edition.218 Like the German text, Darby’s translation was successful, even in the English-​speaking world: editions of La Sainte Bible, qui comprend l’Ancien et le Nouveau Testament traduits sur les textes originaux par J. N. Darby were published in 1916 and 1940 by Oxford University Press. After completing his German and French translations, Darby turned his attention to preparing a New Testament in English. This may have been the most ambitious of his translation projects, but it might also have made the least impact on the wider evangelical world. While in the other translation projects he worked as part of a team, his work on the English New Testament was largely independent.219 Darby was clear that his “new translation” was not a revision of the Authorized Version. He appreciated the “value and beauty” of the traditional text and had “lived upon it, though of course studying the Greek myself.”220 Nevertheless, he feared that the translators had made a “very great and serious mistake” in translating the same Greek term into a variety of English equivalents—​although this would also be his approach, not least with reference to οἰκονομία, the word that he only sometimes turned into “dispensation.”221 In addition, he thought the translators of the Authorized Version had allowed their work to be colored by theological bias: in a number of key passages, he worried, the “English translation has lost the force of the phrase through habits of doctrine.”222 He also set out to render the tenses of verbs as exactly as possible. The results were not always pleasing to the ear, especially in narrative passages: “And when they draw near to Jerusalem . . . he sends two of his disciples, and says to them, Go into the village. . . . And they departed, and found a colt bound to the door without at the crossway, and they loose him” (Mark 11:1–​5). By spring 1855, Darby had completed an English translation of the New Testament, apart from the gospels.223 This first edition appeared in parts,

Introduction  25 with “each of the several books . . . published by itself (or two epistles together if there were two to the same assembly).”224 As the work continued, others wanted to get involved. Not all of these interventions were helpful. In the late 1860s, Kelly hinted that the first edition had contained inaccuracies and offered to proofread the printer’s sheets for the revised text.225 Kelly’s involvement complicated the relationships among Darby, Wigram, and Morrish and pushed the translator into including a more comprehensive critical apparatus than he might otherwise have thought necessary.226 “I dread encouraging the spirit of criticism, and persons capable of criticism were not my object,” Darby explained. His more educated readers could pursue text critical matters “for themselves, and they should take a Greek not an English testament. . . . I am even afraid in this second edition of too many notes when I have doubted of readings.”227 But, not for the last time, Kelly had his way. The second edition appeared in 1871, with a copious scholarly apparatus (Figure I.3). This second edition was the first publication of Darby’s English New Testament in a single volume. In the preface, Darby explained how much he had enjoyed this work: “in the translation I could feel delight—​it gave me the word and mind of God more accurately.” Nevertheless, he continued, “in the critical details there is much labour and little food.”228 For Darby appeared embarrassed by the result. His annotations did not often offer any theological or exegetical commentary, tending instead to focus on questions of text criticism, style, and translation. They were extremely demanding. “It has been in no way my object to produce a learned work,” he explained, even as he provided his readers with the most detailed, technically advanced and self-​aware translation of Scripture into English.229 Darby expected his English New Testament to be thoroughly and systematically digested. It was not designed for occasional reference. Darby designed his annotations to be read consecutively, chapter by chapter, from Matthew to Revelation.230 These notes engaged with a wide range of scholarly sources, from church fathers to the most up-​to-​date text-​critical discoveries. He made a wide range of literary references, including to Euripides, Aristophanes, and Isocrates.231 He expected his reader to understand the significance of the “earliest Homeric use of αἰών.”232 His reader was expected to read French and German while making sense of un-​transliterated Hebrew and Greek and to understand why “ἀπό has the sense of the German vor.”233 Discussing 1 Corinthians 8:1, Darby suggested that “the German seems . . . to answer more fully to the Greek,” while noting that Matthew 14:2 “has a certain reflexive

26  J. N. Darby

Figure I.3  The Holy Bible, translated by J. N. Darby (London: Morrish, 1890).

Introduction  27 force as in French’s s’opèrent par lui. But this can hardly be given in English.”234 He expected his readers to understand references to “homœoteleuton,” a term that he glossed only on the second usage, and “paronomasia,” a term that he did not gloss at all.235 He assumed that his readers would have access to a good theological library, referring them to a “long but not very deep or acute article by A. Buttman . . . in Stud. u. Krit., 1860.”236 Elsewhere, he pointed his reader to “Klotz’s Devarius i. under πρός, or Steph. Thes. under κεῖμαι.”237 Darby made casual references to Wetstein and Bengel and noted in passing the “habitual use of the article which embarrassed Middleton”—​even as his less-​educated readers might have been embarrassed not to understand this reference to the linguistic scholarship of the first bishop of Calcutta.238 Darby’s annotations identified his ideal reader as someone of considerable education. In fact, with a fluency in modern European languages, facility in classical studies, and access to an impressive collection of theological resources, Darby was annotating his New Testament for someone very much like himself. For Darby’s text critical comments were forthright. While other brethren and former brethren, most famously Tregelles, were pursuing extensive and influential studies in text criticism, Darby admitted no ambition “to make a text of my own.”239 Unlike the fundamentalists who would follow in his wake, he was happy to live with textual uncertainty. Comparing manuscript traditions, he recognized instances in which readings were “not quite certain,” “perplexed,” or even “doubtful.”240 In such situations, he recognized the benefit of adopting the “more difficult reading.”241 He was skeptical of some textual offers. The reference to “garments” in Matthew 23:6, he thought, was “probably inserted to complete the sense when what τὰ κράσπεδα was, became no longer well known.”242 His notes compared editions of Liddell and Scott, noting that their lexicon only began to distinguish συμφύω and συμφυεύω in its seventh edition.243 Darby kept up to date with scholarship on the New Testament text. He had worked in his first edition from the editions of Griesbach, Lachmann, Scholz, and Tischendorf. Subsequently, he followed their changing views and recognized that the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and other manuscripts called for “further labour.”244 But his efforts to keep up to date with text critical scholarship did not require his translation to be seriously revised. “A few passages made clearer; small inaccuracies corrected, which had crept in by human infirmity; occasional uniformity in words and phrases produced where Greek was just the same,” he noted in the preface to his second edition (1871).245 Darby

28  J. N. Darby believed that some of the most difficult text critical problems were found in 1 Timothy 3:16 (was it Jesus Christ or “God” who had been “manifested in the flesh”?) and in the beginning of John 8 (was the “woman taken in adultery” pericope canonical?).246 He paid special attention to the long ending of Mark 16, which, without ignoring its difficulties, he defended as being authentic. He read these additional pericopæ “as scripture,” he explained, while noting the limitations of those who shared this opinion: “Burgon has pretty well demolished the authorities against” the long ending of Mark, “but he has not accounted for their peculiar character.”247 And Darby was happy to leave some things as mysteries. In fact, he concluded, “it does not seem to me that any critics have really accounted for the phenomena of MSS . . . I avow my arriving at no conclusion . . . the phenomena is [sic] unsolved.”248 Darby was also interested in language. Throughout his career, he wrote extensively on matters of Greek grammar. In fact, at the height of the open–​ exclusive division, one of the items published in the first issue of The Present Testimony (December 1848) was a long dissertation on the Greek article. Darby was perennially—​and, given the state of his English, ironically—​ interested in Greek grammatical exactitude: “I cannot say that I have always succeeded in rightly distinguishing the cases: there are cases as to which I have myself doubted.”249 His comments on his efforts in translating were candid. While believing that English was the “richest and most flexible of languages,” he recognized that Greek could offer a “shade of meaning which one cannot express in English.”250 At times he attempted to find in English the “same ambiguity as in Greek.”251 He recognized that the results of his translation work could be difficult to read. He admitted that his rendering of a key verse in Romans 3 was “hardly English.”252 He understood the difficulty of translating hapax legomena.253 And he confessed that his translation decisions were sometimes unexpected: in one passage, he recognized, “I know of no one who agrees with this but the unpleasant associate Socinus.”254 He was only too aware of his own limitations: “I find no better way of translating, though I am not satisfied.”255 While entirely a biblicist, Darby was prepared to live with uncertainty and ambiguity. He would have made a poor fundamentalist. Facing up to these difficulties, Darby continued working on his English New Testament and prepared for a third edition in the years before his death (1882). This was circulated both as a New Testament (1884) and as part of the “New translation” of the Bible that was also published under his name (1890).256 Darby used the new preface to address objections to his earlier work. He directly addressed criticisms that he refused to use “worship” in

Introduction  29 relation to Christ—​a decision for which the Baptist leader C. H. Spurgeon among others had attacked him.257 Darby defended his choice: “If the reader is curious, he may look at Wetstein, Matthew ii. 2; Minucius Felix, end of chapter ii.; and compare Job xxxi. 27; and Herodotus 1. 134 for the customs of Persia. It would not have been worth mentioning but for simple souls.”258 Of course, in order to understand Darby’s defense, these “simple souls” would have needed access to a considerable body of learning. Despite all this literary work, as David Bebbington has recognized, Darby and other brethren writers never “set out their beliefs in structured form.”259 That might have been an impossible task. Throughout his life, Darby valued the ecumenical creeds and spoke most warmly of the Athanasian.260 He appreciated the English confessional tradition, too, and on several occasions referred to the Thirty-​Nine Articles as providing the best concise definition of God’s election of sinners to salvation, for example.261 But he never produced a confession of faith for the brethren. In some ways, he was not temperamentally suited for that kind of work. As William Blair Neatby suggested, in the movement’s first major history, while Darby had “undoubted power, it was rather as the mystic than as the systematic theologian,” for, while Puritan theologians were “anxious to explain, Darby only cared to feel.”262 These comments are dismissive of the huge amount of exegetical and theological reflection that Darby prepared—​but they do reveal the difference between the rather affective tone of his work and the comparably dry observations of Kelly and some other of his disciples. Darby always preferred exegesis to logic and devotion to debate. He made the point repeatedly. In 1835, he admitted that exposition was “a more satisfactory method than framing any system which the study of Scripture makes me feel I possess.”263 After all, while creeds and confessions had their place, they had not prevented the development of serious error. Darby worried that the “Thirty-​nine Articles and the Westminster Confession . . . may be signed and appealed to” by those who hold “all manner of intolerable doctrines.” The confessions of the English and Scottish established churches were “elastic enough to admit many novel doctrines and all manner of evil ones.”264 A bare statement of truth was never going to be enough—​especially for those who had “no limit to our creed, but the whole wisdom of the Bible.”265 Nevertheless, if Darby was wary of summarizing his ideas, he was certainly capable of doing so. His two-​thousand-​word statement, “What do I learn from Scripture?” (1871), offered a summation of the ideas that resonated through his mature work, almost entirely in biblical language, without

30  J. N. Darby referring to any of the ecclesiological or eschatological ideas that made the brethren distinct—​and without even referring to “dispensations.”266 Darby’s decision to confess his faith in biblical language was deliberate. Of course, he recognized, it was “not good to jeopardize substantial truths by making war on words which express them.” “I do not seek to unsettle any simple soul by captious difficulties about words, or by resistance to expressions formed in the schools.” But, he worried, “unscriptural expressions are the fruit of, and lead to, unscriptural habits of mind.”267 He insisted that “we are only sure of the truth when we retain the very language of God which contains it.”268 On that basis, he continued to use terms such as “Trinity” despite their not being found in Scripture. After all, he might have realized, he would need that kind of terminological freedom if he were to develop a new theological system—​ “dispensational truth (as it is called).”269

III For all that it became increasingly distinctive, Darby’s theology remained “thoroughly Protestant, dissenting and sectarian,” while being “puritanical and Calvinistic in orientation.”270 While Darby rejected the “Calvinist” label—​as he did every other non-​biblical descriptor, including “evangelical”—​he did locate brethren within the broader Reformed tradition, the social and cultural impact of which he appreciated and critiqued. As a very small movement, on both sides of the Atlantic, brethren did not pose a numerical challenge to any of the Reformed denominations.271 Instead, they represented a much more existential threat—​the repristinating of an impulse that had wreaked havoc in earlier centuries, the impulse toward further reformation that had driven Puritans, nonconformists, pietists, and other religious radicals toward the ecclesiastical primitivism that undermined national churches and created the religious marketplace in which the only appeal to authority was an appeal to the biblical text. Critics of the brethren recognized that their claims were being made in ideal cultural circumstances. The brethren appeal to Scripture combined the rationalism of Enlightenment with the primitivist instincts of Romanticism and a Gothic appeal to the sublime, combining the legacies of these cultural movements in such a way as to call into question the institutional and confessional structures of nineteenth-​century Christianity.272 Darby developed his appeal to Scripture as he developed a distinctive hermeneutic. While he could refer,

Introduction  31 almost naively, to the “plain and imperative sense” of individual passages, he approached Scripture with a good sense of its historicity and therefore with a clear understanding that his interpretation of any given passage had to consider its generic and canonical context.273 As we will see in Chapter 4, Darby was content with grammatical-​historical interpretation for historical narratives and for those prophetic passages that he believed referred to Jews, even if he adopted other ways of interpreting passages that he believed referred to the future of the church. Some scholars have described Darby’s hermeneutic as underrealized; others have rejected it as simply “haphazard.”274 Nevertheless, on both sides of the Atlantic, denominational leaders realized that this rigorous Biblicism presented a serious challenge to conclusions they had reached not through proof-​texting, but by pursuing the “good and necessary consequence” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1:6) of their study of text and tradition. This challenge was compounded when this Romantic rationalism was ignited by the religious revivals that swept across the northeastern United States in 1857 and across Ireland and Scotland in 1859, with often catastrophic effects upon traditional patterns of churchmanship and piety, while offering extraordinary benefits to anti-​formal groups—​like the brethren—​that could harness the revival’s power.275 And so, in the name of order and tradition, denominational leaders had to contest every claim that pitted Scripture against confession, for Darby and the brethren who shared his commitment to “the recovery” were construing Scripture and confession as opposites, appealing against the entire history of the church. But brethren offered a critique of the Reformation that did not propose an alternative creedal form. To join the brethren was to share a print culture rather than a confession of faith, to abandon the churches of the Reformation and enter the world of the Acts of the Apostles, and to work through the implications of the church’s ruin, under the leadership of the most important Christian leader since the days of the apostles. Examining that print culture, this book traces the development over time of four principal themes in Darby’s writing.276 To that end, it adopts a broadly chronological approach to the formation of his most important ideas. Its focus on his later writing is deliberate. Scholarly writing on Darby has tended to pay most attention to the early development of his thinking and to adopt a social rather than a theological approach to historical analysis. This tendency tends to overlook the importance of his settled convictions, articulated most clearly in the period after the 1840s, when his position as the leader of the exclusive brethren was more or less uncontested. In that body of

32  J. N. Darby writing, four principal themes stand out. These themes are those that Darby, his followers, and his critics came to understand as the movement’s most significant contributions. It took time for these themes to emerge. Until the 1840s, Darby reckoned that the “two great topics to which testimony among us has been specially directed” were the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the end times. To “urge” understanding of these themes, he added, “meetings have been held both yearly and wherever God has opened a door.”277 By the 1850s, after the revival of church discipline during the division between open and exclusive brethren, Darby was confident that soteriology might also be added to this list of distinctives: “assurance of salvation [and] the Lord’s coming, is gone far wider than the brethren through whom it is spread.”278 Darby made several references to these four principal themes in “our Lord’s present ministry to His saints.”279 In 1875, he argued for each of these themes, in turn: “These are the great truths which constitute the present character and specific future of the Christian and Christianity, and which God is now bringing out to awaken the saints of God to their true calling and character.”280 By the middle of his life, therefore, Darby was clear that the testimony of brethren was focused on the four themes around which this book is structured. Others within the movement agreed. Andrew Miller, writing his fifty-​year retrospective of The Brethren (1878), suggested that teaching on the gospel as well as the “grand doctrines of the church, the operations of the Holy Spirit, [and] the blessed hope of the Lord’s speedy return” had been the principal themes in the movement’s preaching.281 Edward Dennett’s exposition of Recovered truths (1880) likewise focused on the doctrines of salvation, the work of the Spirit in the church, and the Lord’s coming.282 Looking back on his old friend’s ministry, Kelly recognized that Darby had been used by God to “revive, from the Scriptures, the mystery of Christ and the Church, the true character of our hope in the Lord’s coming, the personal presence and operations of the Holy Ghost in the Church and the Christian, with a vast body of corollaries dependent on those grand truths, which re-​acted on the gospel itself and set the salvation of God in a far clearer light.”283 Darby and other brethren developed these themes as they moved ever further away from the convictions and cultures of the denominational churches. Reconstructing Darby’s teaching on soteriology (the doctrine of salvation), ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church), pneumatology (the doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit), and eschatology (the doctrine of the last things), this book will describe his work as being Calvinist, catholic,

Introduction  33 charismatic, and catastrophic. These descriptions are not often used of the modern theological system which he is often said to have founded. In making that observation, this book sets out to challenge assumptions that have become commonplace among historians and theologians and to suggest a new relationship between Darby and the birth of “dispensationalism.”

1 Soteriology “Grace from the beginning was, through the introduction of sin, the only means of remedy, and shall be to the end.”1

For all that his name is associated with innovations in eschatology, Darby believed that his most important work addressed the doctrine of salvation.2 As we have already noticed, his earliest theological commitments were to the Irish tradition of “exact churchmanship,” which combined a Protestant view of justification with very high views of the sacraments.3 Exploring the claims of the Roman Catholic Church, Darby could not be sure whether Luther and Calvin were saved.4 But his views on soteriology developed. After his evangelical conversion in the late 1820s, he came to appreciate the “Calvinism” that in name he disdained—​and was prepared to critique—​but from the guiding principles of which he never substantially departed. For Darby’s evangelical conversion occurred in a Calvinist milieu. Late in life, he referred to the doctrine of unconditional election to explain why he had been saved while others had not: “When I was converted, the quarrel about Calvinism was pretty strong, but I said to myself, ‘How came I to be brought out, and all my companions left where they were?’ ”5 Darby was a Calvinist because the Genevan doctrine of salvation made sense of his own experience. In the late 1820s, Darby’s evangelical conversion was followed by his entry into Calvinist subcultures in Dublin and Oxford. In the Irish capital, he came to associate with a group of young men from quite varied religious backgrounds. Like most of these brethren, John Gifford Bellett had grown up in the Church of Ireland.6 Edward Cronin had been born a Roman Catholic but spent time among Dublin Congregationalists.7 Sir Edward Denny had been converted when a Roman Catholic friend explained the idea of substitutionary atonement while reading a passage in Dante.8 As these earnest believers coalesced, they took on an identity as “brethren,” sharing “decidedly Calvinistic” views.9 Their network extended into Oxford, in the early 1830s, J. N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism. Crawford Gribben, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190932343.003.0002

Soteriology  35 where Darby was identified with the efflorescence of high Calvinism that flourished, however briefly, under the ministry of the controversial Church of England minister Henry Bulteel.10 Darby supported other high Calvinists within the university community.11 This network also extended into the southwest of England, where George Müller was among its best-​known leaders: brought up as a Prussian Lutheran and studying at Halle, Müller had been converted in 1825 and worked as a language tutor for the future Princeton Seminary professor Charles Hodge, before becoming a Calvinist and minister in a Particular Baptist chapel in Devon.12 The movement grew rapidly in Plymouth after the death of Robert Hawker (1827), when adherents of the leading high Calvinist in the Church of England walked the short distance from Charles Church to Raleigh Street and transferred their loyalties to the brethren.13 For there was an affinity between the Anglican high Calvinists and the emerging brethren movement—​especially in the southwest of England.14 In fact, Hawker was sometimes thought to have been the founder of the Plymouth brethren.15 This was a reasonable assumption: as another early commentator noticed, “Darbyites” were the “legitimate offspring of Church Calvinism.”16 In their earliest publications, Darby and his fellow travelers endorsed themes that were typical of the high Calvinist tradition: an emphasis on definitive rather than progressive sanctification, a denial that believers were under the moral law as a rule of life, and the expectation that Christ’s return would precede the millennium.17 Darby retained these emphases in his teaching even as he became increasingly concerned about the impact of other aspects of high Calvinist thought, which he discovered in sometimes surprising locations: in the 1850s, he found Baptists in Germany to be “awfully legal” and in the “[J. C.] Philpot style,” while in the following decade, he worried about the influence of Strict and Particular Baptist leaders John Warburton and William Gadsby among believers in Jamaica.18 Darby became very critical of high Calvinist views of eternal justification.19 But his affection for Plymouth’s most famous high Calvinist was enduring: even in 1862, Darby retained his regard for “dear old Dr Hawker.”20 As his thinking developed, Darby’s Calvinism became increasingly idiosyncratic. His letters and publications emphasized standard loci in Reformed divinity, such as total depravity (although he preferred the term “ruin”), unconditional election, particular redemption, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints.21 At various points in his life, he complained about a “fresh breaking out of the doctrine of free-​will” and wrote carefully

36  J. N. Darby about volition and compulsion.22 His soteriology was strongly interventionist: God, “working by His Spirit . . . produces activity in those even who may not know why.”23 But Darby innovated within this broadly Reformed scheme. He rejected the covenantal structures of the Reformed confessions, for example denying the existence of a covenant of works and suggesting that Adam became head of the human race only after his fall.24 He used unconventional arguments to support his life-​long commitment to the baptism of the children of believers (a position that, after the division of 1848, distinguished many of the exclusive from most open brethren).25 Like other high Calvinists, he rejected the confessional view that believers were under the moral law as a rule of life in their sanctification. But he went beyond this high Calvinist consensus to argue that the law had nothing to do with justification either: believers were not justified on the basis of their own fulfilling of the law, of course, but neither were they justified on the basis of Christ’s fulfilling that law on their behalf. Christ had not lived under a covenant of works, he argued, and while he had kept the law perfectly, he had not done so in order to accrue a quantity of righteousness that would be imputed to his people. This denial that believers were justified through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness cut across common evangelical assumptions. In the later 1850s, Darby began to work through these claims in an organized way, restructuring Calvinist soteriology around the distinction between law and grace that had become central to dispensational thinking. His proposal pushed him to find a new meaning for the sinless life of Christ—​one that would provoke a most serious crisis among exclusive brethren and have Darby consider whether he had a future with the movement.26 Darby’s arguments fell like a bombshell among his critics and friends. His soteriological claims were—​and continue to be—​misunderstood. Despite the claims of many antagonists, he did not claim that Old Testament believers were saved by law while New Testament believers were saved by grace.27 His soteriological scheme made much less dramatic claims, representing a variant, rather than an alternative, account of the Calvinist doctrine of salvation. For Darby’s proposals represented nuanced intervention in Reformed divinity. Always a careful student of historical theology, he found precedents for his views more often than his followers or critics were willing to acknowledge. He accepted that the vast majority of contemporary evangelicals believed that sinners were justified on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Christ. But (rightly or wrongly) he could not find that doctrine in Luther, the Augsburg confession, the Formula of Concord, Calvin’s Institutes, the

Soteriology  37 English homilies, the Thirty-​Nine Articles, or the Westminster Confession—​ not that he would have regarded any of these texts as being authoritative.28 His intention was not to repristinate older claims, pitting Calvin against his Victorian successors and lending the Genevan reformer some latter-​day support. Instead, Darby was offering a new rationale for the Reformation claim that justification depended on a sinner’s being pardoned in view of the atoning death of Christ—​not through the imputation of his righteousness accrued through his perfect obedience to the law in a covenant of works. For, more important than the evidence of Protestant tradition, was the evidence of Scripture. Observing that New Testament writers never referred to the “righteousness of Christ,” Darby argued that believers were justified by the “righteousness of God.” This did not mean that a divine attribute had been imputed to believers, he repeatedly explained. It did mean that believers were justified as a consequence of God’s righteous action in the saving death of Christ: God was righteousness in providing the salvation that was made possible by the death of Christ. Brethren were enthusiastic participants in the nineteenth-​century recovery of Calvinist thought.29 Despite the controversy that it provoked, Darby believed that this revision of Calvinist soteriology was his foremost theological contribution. It was certainly the case that critics addressed his doctrine of salvation far more often than they worried about his construction of the end times. While he is now best remembered for his interventions in eschatology, in his own judgment, Darby’s chef d’ouvre was his work on justification and the righteousness of God.30 Darby’s dispensational system was rooted in his revision of a Calvinist doctrine of salvation.

I For all that he was taught by evangelical tutors, Darby did not graduate from Trinity as a convinced evangelical or even as a persuaded Protestant. In his youth, he remembered, he had a “horror of Protestantism.” He found Protestant religion unsatisfactory, for aesthetic as well as for theological reasons, and he “earnestly . . . disowned” it. “Not having peace in my soul, nor knowing yet where peace is” and “governed by a morbid imagination,” he “thought much of Rome, and its professed sanctity, and catholicity, and antiquity . . . Protestantism met none of these feelings.”31 He adopted rigorous ascetic practices and “fasted in Lent so as to be weak in body at the end of

38  J. N. Darby it; ate no meat on weekdays—​nothing till evening on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, then a little bread or nothing; observed strictly the weekly fasts, too.”32 He thought carefully about the implications of the disruption of the European church: he “held apostolic succession fully, and the channels of grace to be there only.”33 This had obvious implications for his understanding of the Reformation: he left “Luther and Calvin and their followers . . . to the uncovenanted mercies of God.”34 His attitude to the established church was similarly ambiguous. I searched with earnest diligence into the evidences of apostolic succession in England, and just saved their validity for myself and my conscience. The union of church and state I held to be Babylonish, that the church ought to govern itself, and that she was in bondage but was the church.35

It may have been around this time that Darby read into the non-​juring controversy, inscribing his name and the year 1819 in a copy of The character of a primitive bishop, in a letter to a non-​juror (1709).36 His commitment to apostolic succession and his opposition to Erastianism would certainly have paralleled the convictions of those Anglican clergy and laity who abandoned the establishment at the Glorious Revolution to preserve their commitment to the Stuart dynasty. Like the non-​jurors, Darby “looked out for something more like reverend antiquity.”37 This might also have been the period in which he began to explore the claims of Roman Catholicism. He might have been aware, in the early and mid-​1820s, that his brother William was corresponding with the Vicar General of the diocese of Constance and may briefly have converted to Roman Catholicism.38 But Darby resisted Rome’s allure: what prevented his crossing the Tiber, he later remembered, was his reading of Hebrews 9 and 10.39 For, even as he passed “under the cloud of the popish system,” he noted in his Greek New Testament, he “used to hold up Christ to my brother as availing against the claim of men.”40 It was, perhaps, in this attitude of mind that Darby was ordained as deacon (1825) and priest (1826) in the Church of Ireland. At the time, a party within the church was pushing back against evangelical Biblicism, arguing that the “body that professes to be guided solely by the written word, is certain to be wrong in principle, and defective in practice.”41 As an ordinand, shaped by these Catholic ideals and driven by a scrupulous conscience, Darby would have taken his creedal obligations extremely seriously. So, as part of his ordination, he would have accepted statements that—​as he later

Soteriology  39 understood—​taught baptismal regeneration.42 It was a claim that many of his clerical colleagues supported—​and that others did not. Later in life, he understood this Protestant pragmatism: “many excellent men have accepted the saying that a child was regenerate by the Holy Ghost when they did not believe it, being decidedly opposed to baptismal regeneration.”43 But it is difficult to identify that kind of double-​think in Darby’s scrupulous conscience. Darby’s writing in this period provided a window into his soul. He seems to have composed his first and second address to his “Roman Catholic brethren” at the end of this period of exact churchmanship.44 The introduction to the first of these addresses (?1827) explained that he had been working among Catholics until the “hand of God” had removed him from that labor through his suffering an accident.45 Addressing his parishioners, Darby did not want to confront the differences that kept the confessions apart: “Brethren, my heart’s desire would be to preach the gospel simply to you, and not touch—​why should I desire it?—​upon those things in which you are kept in error.”46 Therefore, he did not attempt to persuade his pious readers to believe the gospel in order to be justified but instead announced that their justification had already occurred.47 This effort at rapprochement may explain why, as Francis Newman noted, Darby was venerated by Calary’s Catholic rural poor.48 The second address (?1828), in which Darby argued against the papacy from the claims of the ecumenical creeds, was much more emphatic in its call for adherence to the established church.49 Yet, even as his Protestant convictions became more strident, he was still committed to high church principles, arguing that believers are “incorporated into His mystical body by faith and baptism.”50 Darby’s views changed after his evangelical conversion (1827–​1828). After recovering from his riding accident, he does not seem to have returned to Calary, as we have noted, but engaged elsewhere in evangelistic work among the rural poor, including in County Clare, where he preached in Irish and won converts.51 Darby was also preaching among English-​speaking Protestants and showing the strength of his newly Calvinist convictions. These efforts became noteworthy during his first trip to Oxford, in the winter of 1830–​1831, as one of the city’s most popular preachers moved in an increasingly high Calvinist direction. Henry Bulteel, who was curate-​in-​charge of St. Ebbe’s, had stoked controversy among Oxford evangelicals with fiery denunciations of the corruptions of the Anglican establishment and a robust defense of the soteriology that he had learned from Hawker. Far from recoiling in horror from Bulteel’s ultra theology, Darby preached in his parish church, attended

40  J. N. Darby the controversial sermon, and defended it from critics.52 Some of these critics were significant enough. The university’s recently appointed regius professor of divinity, Edward Burton, published a strongly worded condemnation of Bulteel’s sermon, arguing that the Reformation in England and the Anglican formularies owed more to the Lutheran than Reformed traditions, and claiming, as Darby put it, that Calvinism was a “contagion,” a foreign body in the English church. Darby attacked this rewriting of the English Reformation in one of his most “Protestant” publications, The doctrine of the Church of England at the time of the reformation, of the reformation itself, of Scripture, and of the Church of Rome, briefly compared with the remarks of the Regius Professor of Divinity (1831), which he published under the pseudonym Oυδεις (“no-​one”). His subject, as this title suggests, was history. He remembered that Lutheran cities had rejected the English Protestants who fled from Queen Mary. This was “evidence,” he suggested, that “so far from the contagion being merely brought back, they were in the full Calvinistic disease before they left England.” Far from being Lutheran, the Thirty-​Nine Articles’s statement on predestination was the “wisest and best condensed human statement of the views it contains that I am acquainted with. I am fully content to take it in its literal and grammatical sense.” He understood the statement as rejecting both the “Arminian (so called, but properly Pelagian) notion of [election based on] prospective works, or the (new and if you please Melancthonian) notion of church election, as contrasted with individual.”53 His historical and exegetical arguments offered a robust defense of Bulteel and his high Calvinist theology—​as well as a significant riposte to the claims of the regius professor.54 Darby’s commitment to Calvinist soteriology continued as his coterie of friends and fellow travelers expanded to become a small movement. In 1835, he was teaching the covenant of redemption, arguing that the “giving of the Church to Christ before the worlds,” in a “covenant” was “most clearly declared in scripture.”55 This view may have been shared by his brother Horatio who, in February 1835, was described by another family member as a “particularly dedicated Calvinist.”56 From 1837, Darby worked among evangelical dissidents along the shores of Lake Geneva, where his ecclesiology and eschatology—​but not his soteriology—​were the targets of Calvinist ire.57 For his critics could hardly complain about his doctrine of salvation. Specimens of Darby’s preaching that survive from this period suggest that his evangelistic preaching was entirely in line with the expectations of the Reformed. This was evident in 1838, when an anonymous auditor published notes of

Soteriology  41 some of Darby’s sermons. The soteriology of these discourses was consistent with that of the Calvinist Reformation. Christ was “gathering out of the world His own, picking them out from among the nations,” until the “last saint has been brought into the church.”58 To this articulation of the doctrine of irresistible grace Darby added an account of the doctrine of particular redemption, noting that the “resurrection life that is in Christ is imparted to all for whom He died.”59 In the same year, a critical observer described brethren as “what would usually be termed Calvinists, some of them rather high, but all exercising forbearance with regard to the various modifications, if not to the system itself.”60 High Calvinists were glad that brethren shared these views. In 1842, J. C. Philpot published a warm if also cautious appreciation of the “Plymouth Brethren” in The Gospel Standard, a journal that circulated widely among Strict and Particular Baptists. Perhaps recalling his experiences in Delgany, where he had tutored Darby’s nieces, and Oxford, where he and Darby mixed in high Calvinist circles, Philpot described his old friend as “pallid in countenance, emaciated in figure, careless even to shabbiness in dress, disregardful of the common conveniences of life” while possessing “martyr courage, liberal, even to the utter wasting of all his property, to the poor, and full of kindness and benevolence” and a “mind deeply reflective, a memory remarkably conversant with scripture, a life spotless, an energy unwearied, a devotedness to one object rarely equalled, and a power to influence inferior minds not often found.”61 Philpot’s views on Darby’s theology were more critical. Among other concerns, he feared that brethren tolerated several positions on the extent of the atonement: “Mr Wigram holds it to be particular, Mr Newton that it is universal, and Mr Darby is, or rather was, undecided which it was.” But in most respects Philpot found the theology of the brethren to be admirable. Brethren “universally” held to election to salvation and defended the “difference of the Mosaic and Christian dispensations,” including the “abrogation of the law as a covenant and as a rule of life” while promoting “deadness to the world, and an utter indifference to all its maxims, comforts, and honours.”62 In other words, Philpot suggested, brethren were the kind of people to whom an unwary high Calvinist might easily be attracted. Philpot had serious reservations about Darby’s movement, but he recognized its similarity to his own denomination. Listening to brethren preaching, he feared, a Gospel Standard Strict and Particular Baptist might feel very much at home.63 He was right—​the Particular Baptist congregation in which R. C. Chapman was minister had gradually moved to identify with the new movement.64

42  J. N. Darby Brethren found it harder to get this kind of good press after the mid-​1840s, when their simmering tensions about leadership and theology broke out into open controversy and as rival “open” and “exclusive” networks began to form. Brethren do not seem to have worried unduly about how best to articulate the doctrine of justification in the years before the movement’s most serious crisis.65 But the dynamics of division pushed the emerging parties to work through their theological arguments and to consider how those arguments impacted upon their understanding of salvation. Newton’s followers among the open brethren continued to defend the evangelical consensus, insisting that believers were justified through the imputed righteousness of Christ.66 But, as exclusive brethren developed a distinctive theology, they came to deny this widely shared opinion that Christ’s life, as well as his death, contributed to the work of justification.67 Darby and those who followed him made these changes without substantial reference to Reformed confessions of faith. Brethren understood their anti-​creedal instincts in positive ways. Throughout his ministry, Darby often referred to the claims of the Thirty-​Nine Articles: he pointed his readers to the eleventh article, on justification, and to the seventeenth article, on election to salvation, for statements of his own convictions.68 Writing as the exclusive community was coming together and while using a pseudonym, James Lampden Harris acknowledged that “it is of great advantage to have a solid substratum of Christian doctrine, such as we frequently find in the Protestant confessions of faith.” As a clergyman of the Church of England, he had, after all, subscribed to the Thirty-​Nine Articles. But, he added, doctrinal statements had their limitations. While they might help to “detect error and . . . prevent headiness and high-​mindedness,” they could not “meet the need of the soul. The soul is not satisfied with an accurate theory; it needs the truth to be applied in its wondrous variety.”69 In this context, so strongly anti-​ institutional, theological symbols had much reduced value. The emergence of the network of exclusives, with their indifference to historical judgments, allowed Darby to develop a new reading of justification that was contoured by dispensational themes. For, in soteriology, as in so many other theological loci, Darby’s thinking shifted in the aftermath of the movement’s division. After 1848, exclusive brethren developed a new print culture with considerable intellectual energy. Wigram put his wealth and publishing expertise at their service. One of his earliest projects was to establish a new journal, The Present Testimony.70 In 1849, the second issue contained a long exposition of Psalm 32 that referred

Soteriology  43 to righteousness being “imputed without works,” but, perhaps because its author had yet to consider the issue, did not explain what the expression meant.71 In this overwhelmingly supportive context, Darby’s thinking continued to develop—​and to the horror of many of his friends. It was during this controversy among brethren that his arguments about soteriology came to the attention of the Reformed world. In the debates that followed, Darby argued that his views were closer to those of the reformers than were those of his critics. Working through the inconsistencies that Philpot had noticed, he curated positions that would be adopted more or less universally among those who looked to his guidance. He maintained the key insights of the Genevan Reformation, insisting, for example, that Romans 9 taught individual rather than national election in a sub-​lapsarian scheme: in other words, God decreed to create humanity and to permit its fall into sin to provide a scheme of salvation that would be sufficient for the salvation of all humanity and then to choose to save individuals.72 But his arguments about justification, propitiation, and substitution were entirely out of step with the consensus of his evangelical contemporaries. If his earlier work had not foregrounded these doctrines, his later work certainly did.

II Darby began to articulate his most significant challenge to contemporary Calvinist soteriology in the late 1850s. The debate was, in part, a dispute over the teaching of such seventeenth-​century theologians as John Owen and Herman Witsius, but it also echoed the controversies of the late 1840s, when Newton made arguments that Darby and his supporters had roundly condemned. The debate attracted a great deal of attention, both inside and outside the movement.73 Darby found the controversy all-​consuming, but he stuck by his theological guns. What was at stake was not the extent of the atonement. On that point, as on so many others, Darby’s position was idiosyncratic. He was beginning to distinguish propitiation and substitution, arguing, on the basis of 1 John 2:2, that the former was made on behalf of the world while insisting that Christ only died for the sins of the elect.74 If this position did not quite qualify as “limited atonement,” as Philpot recognized, it could certainly be described as a species of particular redemption.75 Instead, what was at stake in Darby’s discussion of the atonement was the possibility that Christ had endured a “third class” of sufferings—​that in addition to his

44  J. N. Darby enduring the wrath of God as the substitute for sinners and enduring the hostility of sinners against himself, Christ suffered as he grieved for the sorrows faced by fallen people in a fallen world and as he mourned for the judgments that would come upon his chosen people.76 The controversy began when Darby set out his arguments in two brethren journals, the Girdle of Truth (1858) and The Bible Treasury (1859). These arguments were very critically received, not least within the exclusive network. The issues in which these articles were presented went quickly out of print, and, in the “great flare” of controversy, Darby published a lightly revised version of these articles in booklet form as The sufferings of Christ (1862).77 Meanwhile, Darby interrupted his series on Christ’s sufferings to introduce a related subject. A new series of articles denied that Christ’s life of perfect obedience made any contribution to the justification of sinners and argued instead that sinners were justified by the righteousness of God.78 These arguments were perhaps even more controversial than were the views on the atonement by which they had been prompted. Hostile observers described Darby’s denial of the common theory of imputation as “bald and bare Socinianism,” a claim that called forth extensive replies by his small army of defenders. As the debate continued, the issues at stake were not always clearly expressed, with only some of the participants using the standard theological categories of Christ’s “active” and “passive” obedience to parse their claims.79 The articles generated extensive correspondence, generating more heat than light, with The Bible Treasury publishing notes both of approval and critique.80 Darby had repeatedly to restate his case: “the righteousness of God . . . is not your being righteous towards God, but God’s righteous towards you who believe, because He has found in Jesus all that satisfies His heart and His holiness.”81 Kelly chipped in, too, assuring another reader that “the question is not imputed righteousness, which is fully admitted, but its meaning and character. Does that righteousness mean in Scripture the law vicariously accomplished for us by Christ, or God’s justifying us (i.e., accounting us righteous) by faith, in virtue of the work of Christ[?]‌”82 These discussions turned out to be extremely controversial among the exclusive brethren—​and beyond. The most serious crisis in the twenty-​year history of the exclusive community raised questions about the extent to which soteriology could be modified to confirm a broader set of dispensational presuppositions. It is not clear exactly when Darby’s views on justification had begun to change. While his earlier preaching had not focused on this theme, his continued reflection led him to “break with, and . . . denounce, a certain school

Soteriology  45 of doctrine.”83 His thinking on the subject may have been stimulated by the preaching of an Anglican minister during an evangelistic campaign in the Exeter Hall, London. In July 1858, Reverend Capel Molyneux, minister of the Lock Chapel, delivered a celebrated discourse on the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15).84 Molyneux was no stranger to brethren polemic. In the previous year, his prophecy publications had attracted critical comment in The Bible Treasury, which described his conclusions as being full of “strange absurdity” and as “not to be trusted.”85 Darby began to make similar claims of his grasp of the gospel. Molyneux’s sermon had defended the necessity of the active and passive obedience of Christ—​that is, the necessity for the justification of a sinner of Christ’s life of obedience as well as his atoning death.86 Molyneux made his point forcefully: “Do you know that if a man is cleansed from his sin in the blood of Christ, and sanctified by the Spirit of God he cannot then go to heaven? He wants something more still; he must have a perfect obedience.”87 Darby responded to Molyneux’s claims in his article on “The righteousness of God” (1859). His developed his earlier argument that Christians had nothing to do with the law. In making this argument, he was pushing beyond similar claims made by high Calvinists. The law was not only irrelevant to questions of Christian living, as Philpot and others had claimed—​it played no part in the accomplishment of salvation either. Believing that the foundations of Christianity were at stake, Darby’s criticism of the Exeter Hall sermon was unsparing. He insisted that “do this and live” was not “written on the gates of heaven,” as Molyneux had contended. Instead, he suggested, “it was written on Sinai, which is not the gate of heaven. It is the gate of death and condemnation.”88 He advanced his arguments theologically: If sin has been atoned for, why does the broken law need to be fulfilled? If the law has been fulfilled, why does its being broken necessitate Christ’s death?89 What, anyway, is constituted by the law-​keeping of Christ? It could not be a “substantive righteousness, apart from the person, and afterwards reckoned to him, but the condition of the person in God’s sight. God views him as righteous, though he be not such as would entitle him to it by reason of anything inherent.”90 And he advanced his arguments exegetically. The argument of Romans is “laid in the death, not in the life, of Christ on earth.”91 Working from this base, he drew on Galatians to argue that justification does “not proceed on this principle” of the law, “whoever may meet it.”92 He argued that theologians should pay closer attention to the precise language of the text: referring to Romans 4:6, he noted that “it is not said, God’s

46  J. N. Darby righteousness is imputed to us. Nor is Christ’s righteousness a scriptural expression.”93 Instead, Christians are redeemed by Christ suffering the curse of the law, not by his fulfilling its obligations. This was not a minor mistake, he concluded: the “whole system on which I am not commenting, and which places man on the ground of legal obedience, flows from not apprehending the truth of being in Christ.”94 Believers benefit from Christ not by the imputation of his merits, Darby suggested, but by their being united to him and their participation in all that he is. Darby illustrated this argument by showing that Christians were justified on exactly the same basis as had been the Old Testament saints: salvation came not “because of any works that deserved it, but of grace to him who works not . . . here [in Psalm 32] the force of the argument is destroyed if it be works which do merit it in another.”95 “God is righteous in remitting the sins of Old Testament believers, as to which He who foreknew all had exercised forbearance, because of the blood of Jesus,” he explained. “He had forborne and forgiven, and how was this righteous? It was now proved and made manifest by the blood of Christ.”96 Yet, he added, the experience of being united to Christ was possible only after the cross: “there was no connection of sinners with Christ under the law. A corn of wheat, except it fall into the ground and die, abides alone.”97 Believers came to benefit from the work of the cross only after the crucifixion and were united to Christ only after his ascension: “We are united to Christ in His new position, where he is the righteous man at the right hand of God.”98 The results of salvation were astonishing, Darby believed: “I am, as even Luther expresses it, Christ before God.”99 Darby’s interpretation provoked his critics in the evangelical world.100 The Record, the ultra-​Protestant “journal of the Evangelical party in the Establishment,” took a close interest in his views and published a highly critical review.101 Its interest in Darby had likely been piqued by his comments on Molyneux’s sermon. Its response was stringent: the suggestion that sinners were justified on any other basis than that of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ was “another gospel.”102 This was strong language, but Darby was encouraged. He felt that the controversy showed that the “Brethren” must be making progress, and their doctrines too. At any rate, there is a recrudescence of agitation and uneasiness. Both the Establishment and Dissent are in movement. I suppose they feel that the ground totters a little under them; and so it does. I say this with no spirit

Soteriology  47 of triumph or satisfaction. It is one of the signs of the last days. No one can shut his eyes to the fact that nothing conventional holds its ground.103

While he believed that the debate was serious, he did not want to return insult for insult: “I have known many beloved saints holding these views, but I think they are very obscure in their gospel. . . . We may discuss peacefully what is an important doctrine, without denouncing one who is not clear.”104 Nevertheless, his response to The Record included some of his most trenchant polemic, in which he debated his antagonists on their own ground. The Record might claim to represent Church of England Calvinists, but, he continued, both Calvin and the English homilies “carefully contradict” the distinction it had made “between the forgiveness of sins and imputation of righteousness.”105 Warming to this theme, he contrasted the claims of his critics with statements from Luther, Calvin, the formularies of the Church of England, and the confession and catechisms of the Westminster Assembly, which, he believed, supported his own position better than that of his antagonists. (He might have made a clearer appeal to the work of Johannes Piscator, which was included in his library catalogue.106) In other words, Darby believed that his account of justification was closer to that of Luther, Calvin, and the creedal statements of the English, Irish, and Scottish established churches than were the arguments of his opponents that justification was effected by the imputation of the righteousness that Christ accrued through his perfect obedience to the law. In fact, he triumphed, the “doctrine of the ‘Record’ is contrary to . . . the whole doctrine of the Reformation.”107 And, “the truth is, the Reformers were charged, as Paul was, and as the Brethren are, with setting aside the law.”108 It was the brethren, not Church of England Calvinists, who were the true heirs of the Reformation. Darby’s arguments about justification and the righteousness of God prompted another round of debate with those with whom he had broken communion in the late 1840s. In May 1862, Darby learned that a friend of Newton had published a tract that criticized his doctrine by lifting “large extracts” from the seventeenth-​century high Calvinists Tobias Crisp, John Owen, and Thomas Goodwin.109 John Cox, a Congregational minister in Ipswich, had in fact cited a much larger range of sources in support of justification through imputation of the active obedience of Christ, including Luther, the Church of England’s homily concerning the salvation of mankind, the Westminster Confession, Owen, Goodwin, Bunyan, George Whitefield, Isaac Watts, Philip Dodderidge, John Newton, and Robert

48  J. N. Darby Haldane’s commentary on Romans in defense of the claim that believers are justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ.110 In this theological proxy war, Darby also had his defenders. In the same month, Alfred Bell signed off on his reply, Cease ye from man: A letter addressed to the Rev. John Cox, Ipswich, in reply to his tract entitled “Test before ye trust” (1862), responding to these claims, each in turn, and adding for good measure some additional references to Herman Witsius to condemn the “false, unscriptural idea of justification through a legal righteousness.”111 But these historical references were getting a bit exhausting. In May 1682, Darby admitted to Wigram that he had not read Cox’s pamphlet, “as it was only quotations from men” and noted that Bell had already replied.112 He reiterated his surprise by the controversy: “I did not know the evil of modern theology as this question has brought it out.”113 But, after some reflection, he determined to respond. Darby’s intervention appeared in The Bible Treasury (May–​June 1862).114 He understood what was at stake: “It has been the fancy latterly to designate the ‘Brethren’ Socinians, as the early Christians were called atheists.”115 His critics had “sought to put down what I believe to be the truth by quoting Reformers and Puritan divines. It does not affect my mind in the smallest degree. If they are not in unison with Scripture, I reject them at once. . . . They may have been instruments, and blessed ones—​they were, in their day; but they are not authority.”116 Again he appealed to the Greek text: “every one knows—​at any rate, every one can know, and if he knows Greek can easily ascertain—​that accounted for righteousness, or imputed for righteousness, is one and the same. . . . Imputed righteousness is a person being accounted righteous, and nothing else.”117 There was no need to solve the “legal fiction” that the theory of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness was intended to address. In other words, Darby was happy to accept that a sinner would be considered righteous by God simply because Christ’s death was the basis of forgiveness. By the early 1860s, a great deal was at stake. In 1859, religious revival had swept across northeast Ireland and southwest Scotland. Exclusive brethren were supporters of the revival and were among its beneficiaries. Mainstream denominations were threatened by the rise of popular Protestantism, by the elevation of Biblicism above confessionalism, and by the sudden “democratization of Christianity” that it seemed to represent. In County Londonderry, Ireland, a doctor who belonged to a Baptist church was among the most vociferous—​and most dangerous—​critics of the brethren movement.118 After publishing a series of articles in a local newspaper, Dr. James C. L. Carson

Soteriology  49 began to circulate The heresies of the Plymouth Brethren (1862), distributing 10,000 copies within six months.119 It is fair to say that Carson was not especially interested in theological debate: “Some of the Plymouthists have wasted their time in writing to me,” he ungraciously explained; “for their satisfaction, I may state that I threw their letters in the grate.” Unchecked by such stubborn things as facts, his work was full of bad faith arguments, claiming that “the Darbyites have managed to cloak their opinions by using language in a Jesuitical sense . . . wily and slippery customers.”120 Again, Carson seized upon Mackintosh’s Christological ambiguities, which had appeared, to Darby’s embarrassment, in the first edition of his commentary on Genesis and provided his language with the worst possible construction: “I am convinced, when [Mackintosh] penned these words, he understood them in the very same sense as I understand them.”121 And he came to serious conclusions: Mackintosh’s work represented “rank Socinianism.”122 Despite his denunciatory tone, Carson’s attacks were enormously successful. By 1870, 13,000 copies of his work were in circulation.123 In fact, his attacks on the brethren traveled faster than they could and circulated on both sides of the Atlantic. Carson’s readers in Canada, for example, were informed that the brethren preachers whom they had yet to encounter were “monstrous, silly, trashy, and commonplace . . . ignorant and illiterate . . . puffed up with pride and self-​conceit,” yet “go the whole length of claiming inspiration for all that is said at the meetings.” And Carson’s attacks were personal. He described Mackintosh as “cowardly” and Darby as being as “stupid as a block.” In fact, he concluded, “on Mr Darby’s principles no man could be saved.”124 The brethren were a “most tyrannical and Jesuitical sect” and were hiding a “chamber of horrors.”125 The irony was that his father, Alexander Carson, had led the congregation at Tobermore, County Londonderry, that was thought to be a precursor of the new movement, and that his niece, Margaret, was a friend of Mackintosh and author of a popular brethren hymn.126 Darby’s response to Carson was measured—​in public, at least. He realized that Carson’s book “is on the tables of evangelicals on every side.”127 Its popularity meant that condemnations of the Brethren—​however ill-​informed—​ were very much in “fashion.”128 And so, in Brethren and their reviewers (1862) and other ripostes, he responded to Carson with careful theological arguments. No person with Christian feeling will expect that I should bandy abuse with Dr Carson: it is not my intention. Nor do I complain of any attacks upon

50  J. N. Darby me. . . . That is not my object here. I seek only to take up every argument by which the main point of the present controversy may be assailed; namely, Did Christ keep the law substitutionally for us, so that we have righteousness thereby (that is, Are we justified by the deeds of the law fulfilled by Christ)?129

His answer, simply, was “no.” He denied that a covenant of works had been given to Adam in Eden.130 Therefore, he continued, “we are not justified by works of law, by whomsoever done, but entirely in another way. It was never God’s intention to bring in righteousness by law. ‘If righteousness come by law, Christ is dead in vain,’ ” he quoted from Galatians 2:21.131 Christians have been rescued from the law: “Christ took its curse so as to maintain all its authority in the highest way, but not to put Jews back, and Gentiles for the first time under it; but, having risen after having died as bearing the curse, to introduce both into a wholly new place founded on the power of divine life in resurrection.”132 This is what Darby meant in his claim that sinners were justified by the righteousness of God. No attribute of God is imputed; but a man who is a sinner is accounted righteous according to that attribute . . . because of Christ and his work. . . . Imputed righteousness has all its value and meaning in this: that a man who cannot pretend to be righteous in himself is so accounted for another’s sake.133

After all, he concluded, “Scripture never speaks of imputed righteousness as of a sum of righteousness first existing in itself and then imputed. The truth is, it never speaks of imputed righteousness at all, but of imputing righteousness; and the difference is very great indeed.”134 Furthermore, he added in a separately published notice, “imputed righteousness . . . does not mean a quantum of formal righteousness outside us, imputed to us, but our being accounted righteous.”135 At least, Darby argued, that was how it was represented in the Thirty-​Nine Articles.136 Then Darby went on the attack. He pointed to Carson’s mangling of brethren theology—​but also to his ignorance of such basic theological categories as communicable and incommunicable divine attributes (that is, the attributes of God that can and cannot be partially shared with human beings). Darby scored his most telling point, however, when he pointed out that an expression that Carson believed to be heretical was actually to be

Soteriology  51 found in the Apostles’ Creed.137 Therefore, he concluded, “I would recommend those who have Dr. C.’s attacks on the ‘Brethren’ upon their table . . . to read the Apostles’ Creed and Acts ii., and if they wish to be thought to know something about Christianity, to put [Carson’s] pamphlet on the bookshelf.”138 In private, however, Darby’s criticism of Carson was more candid. The Coleraine doctor was a “spiteful self sufficient vapourer.”139 His tract “denies the first elements of Christianity,” and his admirers “cannot even find it out.”140 Carson’s readers “feed” on “ordure.”141 As criticism intensified, Darby refused to back down. In Dublin, a churchman named Henry Thomas Dix published Darbyism: Its fruit and doctrines, being a review of a tract entitled ‘The Brethren and their reviewers (1863) to refute Darby’s idea of justification: Dix argued that the Thirty-​Nine Articles implied a doctrine of imputed righteousness.142 Darby continued to defend his position on justification. In 1865, he submitted two articles to Wigram for inclusion in The Present Testimony.143 He was clear that his doctrine of justification “raises I judge a question with the whole evangelical world. If I have Paul’s teaching and the divine teaching, they have not.”144 In spring 1866, just as the Collected writings had begun to appear, the controversy was renewed and risked the unity of the exclusive network. Dorman and Hall kept up an unsparing attack on Darby’s ideas in privately circulated publications. As discussion continued, William Kelly’s wife, Emily, kept up to date with recent interventions by copying out letters by hand.145 For all that the doctrine was becoming a dividing line, however, it did not seem to mark out the boundaries of exclusive brethren fellowship. Some Darbyites thought that it should. In 1873, Kelly stated that “none of the ‘Brethren’ accept the notion of inherent or infused righteousness as our justification before God . . . we do not therefore embrace the hypothesis that imputation means Christ’s obedience of the law imputed to us. Scripture grounds it on Christ’s obedience up to death—​the death of the cross whereon sin was judged, and God glorified about it; so that it is God’s righteousness to set Christ in heaven and accept us in Him.”146 Others felt differently. When Edward Dennett left the Baptist ministry to join the brethren, sometimes in the mid-​1870s, he held tenaciously to the doctrine of justification through the imputed righteousness of Christ. He “was immediately told that a difference on such a point was no barrier to fellowship at the Lord’s table. But soon after, on carefully reading the epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians, I was startled at the discovery that my views on this subject had been grounded upon human teachings, and not upon the Scriptures.”147 Dennett’s argument

52  J. N. Darby was fundamentally Biblicist: “I was struck by the fact, that the term, the righteousness of Christ, was never used in connection with the doctrine of justification; indeed the term is not found in the New Testament.”148 If Darby was right, the evangelicals did not, after all, share the teaching of Paul.

III Darby believed that his work on the doctrine of the salvation was his most important contribution to the “great recovery.”149 His followers agreed. “Since the days of the Puritans,” declared Andrew Miller, in his rather celebratory fifty-​year retrospective of the movement’s history, the imputation of the righteousness of Christ had been “generally received as sound doctrine until called in question by the Brethren.”150 Darby understood the significance of this innovation, but his mood was much less positive. He admitted to a friend that he had not anticipated the “tumult” that would follow upon the publication of his pamphlet on the righteousness of God for he had not understood the “low state in which the evangelical body, as such, stood.”151 From the 1850s until the end of his life, his views on the doctrine of salvation were subject to relentless—​and often inaccurate—​attack. Darby must have found this difficult. He sought the good opinion of his Calvinist contemporaries at the same time that he challenged some of their claims. In particular, he appears to have courted the approval of key leaders within the Free Church of Scotland. Three years after its publication, Wigram sent a copy of Darby’s Irrationalism of infidelity (1853) to George Smeaton, professor of theology at the Free Church College in Aberdeen, and received a letter of thanks.152 Smeaton would have appreciated Darby’s apologetic and his intention to defend traditional pieties in the face of enlightened criticism of the faith.153 But he came to see Darby as a threat to those pieties. In 1868, Smeaton published the first of two monographs on the doctrine of the atonement, in which he found in Darby’s work the perfect foil against which to contrast his own defense of Reformed orthodoxy. In the first of these volumes, The doctrine of the atonement, as taught by Christ himself (1868), Smeaton complained about “Darbyite dogma” and criticized in particular its assertion that “on the cross sin attached to the life of Christ. What would become of substitution or imputation if sin, IN ANY SENSE, attached to his life?”154 Again without supplying evidence in citations, he denounced among several “crude Darbyite doctrines” the claim that “there was no blood in the

Soteriology  53 Lord’s resurrection-​body.”155 He linked these innovations in Christology to problems in soteriology: the “Darbyite doctrine” is that “our justification is not the result of the work which Christ finished on the cross, but is accomplished by union with Him in his resurrection, is a piece of ignorance arising from a mistake of the import of δια with the accusative (Rom iv. 25).”156 Smeaton continued the attack in his next book, The doctrine of the atonement, as taught by the apostles (1870). He condemned a “certain class of crude divines, who know neither what they say nor whereof they affirm, have of late been asserting a modification of Irvingism, to the effect that sin belongs, so to speak, to that in which Christ knew no sin, and that He has ‘done with sin in having done with the life to which sin belonged.’ ”157 To support this claim, Smeaton cited Darby’s article in the Girdle of Truth, alongside Mackintosh’s commentaries. Brethren, he believed, did not understand that “if Christ was personally in Adam’s covenant, He could not have been a Mediator for others; for He would not have been without personal guilt and corruption.”158 Smeaton was issuing these condemnations as a doughty defender of the Westminster Confession. But he was also developing theological innovations of his own, versions of which brethren would denounce. He argued, for example, that Christ entered heaven on two occasions: “first at . . . death,” as a disembodied spirit effecting atonement, and “second when He entered with His risen body as the Melchizedek priest,” to begin his work of intercession.159 Smeaton’s arguments anticipated those of C. E. Stuart, a leader among exclusives whose defense of this argument at the end of the nineteenth century led to his expulsion from the network.160 But Smeaton’s misunderstanding of brethren teaching continued into the 1880s, when, after ignoring several decades of Darby’s clarifications, his misrepresentations continued: brethren, he asserted, believed that justification was achieved on the basis of the imputation of “God’s essential righteousness.”161 Darby was challenging some well-​established claims. But he found it easier to revise the doctrine of justification than to ensure that his most intelligent critics understood what he proposed. Darby was surprised to discover how widely and how tenaciously the views that he challenged were held—​even among brethren. He was happy to know that their doctrine of salvation distinguished brethren from their evangelical peers: “I feel the seriousness of the crisis or position in which the testimony of the saints of God is placed by the controversy which is going on. It has in a certain sense come on me by surprise.”162 But he never retracted his arguments. In 1867, he published a second edition of The sufferings of

54  J. N. Darby Christ, with a more substantial introduction. Kelly printed the text of this second edition in volume seven of the Collected writings (1869). Darby made another revision of the text, which was published in The Bible Witness and Review (1879), in which form it appeared in pamphlet form as a third edition of The sufferings of Christ (1891). And this work circulated more widely than many of his readers have realized. One of his articles on the atonement was turned into a dictionary entry in Morrish’s A new and concise Bible dictionary (1897).163 In line with brethren modesty, Darby was not named as the author of this entry, although it appeared from the same publisher as a separately printed tract bearing his initials, and it is impossible to know how many other entries he contributed to this work.164 The controversy highlighted the extent to which nineteenth-​ century evangelicals had moved away from the theological formulæ of the Reformation to embrace the covenantal and contractual theories that had been promoted by English Puritans and their theological descendants. As several contemporary critics noted, Darby and those within his circle of fellowship seemed to prefer the adjudications of sixteenth-​century Calvinists to those of their seventeenth-​century successors—​as if they were anticipating later debates about “Calvin versus the Calvinists.” For in very few respects can Darby’s doctrine of salvation be said to stray from one of Calvinism’s defining statements of faith. The delegates who met at the Synod of Dort (1618–​1619) had insisted that the doctrine of the Reformed churches should be established “not out of calumnies raked up here and there . . . nor out of the private tenets of some . . . but out of the published Confessions of the Churches themselves,” including “this Declaration of orthodox doctrine.”165 And Darby measured up well against their conclusions. In terms of predestination, he objected to the doctrine of reprobation, but the Synod used that term only in the sense of preterition—​God’s passing by those whom he had not elected to salvation—​which view Darby shared.166 In terms of the salvation of children, Darby was prepared to go further than Dort, arguing not just that the believers could have hopes for the salvation of deceased children, but that, as he noted in his “Blank-​paged Bible,” “\all/​infants are saved through Christ” (the “all” being a later insertion into this statement).167 He might also have preferred to describe Adam as being “innocent” rather than “holy” before the fall.168 The only structural difference between Darby’s theology and that of the Synod of Dort was in his understanding of the atonement. While Dort distinguished the limited efficiency from the universal sufficiency of Christ’s death, quoting 1 John 2:2, Darby distinguished between universal

Soteriology  55 propitiation and limited substitution.169 This was a movement away from Dort’s structures, but it was maintained within the Reformed tradition. The English Baptist Andrew Fuller and the American Presbyterian theologian W. G. T. Shedd made a similar distinction between particular redemption and universal propitiation, for example.170 It is peculiar to note, therefore, that throughout much of his life, Darby’s critics were more concerned about his doctrine of salvation than his understanding of the end times. For, measured against that the Canons of Synod of Dort, Darby was an idiosyncratic but orthodox Calvinist. The sharp division between law and grace that underlay his doctrine of justification was worked out in the other theological loci in dispensational terms. The reason why this argument sounds peculiar is that Darby’s soteriological legacy was quickly eroded—​even among brethren. Morrish continued to publish material that reiterated Darby’s high Calvinist view of the freedom of the will.171 But others of his claims were quietly unpicked by those who made themselves responsible to preserve them. Some of these revisions were made very quietly—​but with enormous structural significance. One of the most significant of these revisions was made almost invisibly. This is particularly apparent with respect to the relationship between new birth and conversion. Throughout his life, Darby assumed the standard Calvinist view that new birth preceded faith and repentance.172 In his later years, some exclusives began to back away from these claims. Kelly denied that the new birth preceded saving faith in the first chapter of his Lectures on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (1868) and, rather oddly, wrote privately to deny that Darby had ever held this view.173 But Darby’s view remained current among Darbyite exclusives and was perpetuated by F. E. Raven, C. A. Coates, and, into the next generation, by M. W. Biggs.174 Among open brethren, however, Darby’s Calvinism was tempered, in some contexts entirely overturned, and occasionally denounced as antithetical to the gospel.175 At the end of the nineteenth century, those evangelicals who adopted aspects of Darby’s theology also quietly abandoned his Calvinist views. But these were the perspectives within which Darby had developed his understanding of Scripture. For the gospel, he believed, revealed both the “radical state of men” and the “generosity of grace” that salvation required.176 His efforts to revise the doctrine of salvation attempted to distinguish grace and law. In other words, it was Darby’s defense of high Calvinism that sustained his dispensational teaching.

2 Ecclesiology In the last days the test of true love is the maintenance of the truth.1

Despite their high Calvinist connections, the brethren in Plymouth were first officially identified as “Catholics.” At the end of the 1830s, Reverend James Bennett was updating his History of the dissenters and struggling to know what to do with this new religious movement. In southwest England, the community had become known as “Hallites,” after the name of their most effective local preacher.2 But, Bennett explained, those who enjoyed listening to the exhortations of Captain Percy F. Hall were “unwilling to take any distinctive appellation” for themselves. “They are as much anomalous as they are anonymous; for . . . professing to be contented with the generic term Christians, or disciples of Christ, they have an equal aversion to creeds, contending that they are inefficient to secure either orthodoxy or uniformity of faith.” The confessional hesitations of James Lampden Harris, which we noticed in the previous chapter, were typical of the community as a whole. Its reluctance either to denominate or supply inquirers with a formal confessional standard presented a serious challenge to demographers. Bennett worried that this strategy could backfire on these unusual believers. For, during the last census, “when the officer was making up, at Plymouth, the returns ordered by Parliament, being told he might call them what he pleased, he chose to denominate them ‘Catholics, not Roman.’ ”3 Bennett’s comment highlighted key themes in brethren culture. This community of disappointed high churchmen and frustrated dissenters distanced themselves from the Reformation and rejected the “democratisation of Christianity” that was represented by the growth of nonconformity. Instead, they recognized their boundaries as those of the body of Christ. Their earliest descriptor was telling: brethren had a better case than many to be recognized as Plymouth’s most authentic Catholics.4

J. N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism. Crawford Gribben, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190932343.003.0003

Ecclesiology  57 Brethren eluded denominational categories by refusing to take sides in long-​standing Protestant debates. For all that their leaders shared a common doctrine of salvation, early brethren claimed to gather on the basis of shared spiritual life, rather than on the basis of extensive theological agreement. This ecumenism was certainly controversial. One of their earliest Anglican critics complained that brethren treated “only one or two articles of faith as essential.”5 That was almost an exaggeration: early brethren required of prospective adherents only a confession of faith in the Trinity.6 They shared a common critique of the existing denominations—​and not always much else. Darby wanted to “shrink from controversy.”7 In 1842, for example, he acknowledged to an Anglican detractor that the movement sustained surprising theological breadth, including among its adherents “Baptists, Pedobaptists, Arminians, and Calvinists, Millennarians, Anti-​Millennarians, and even Quakers,” although he was careful to note that individuals in the latter category who sought fellowship among brethren had subsequently been baptized. Because these individuals were “real Christians,” he argued, “we should undoubtedly feel it wrong to shut them out, and rejoice we can walk together in love.”8 What drew individuals into the movement was not confessional agreement, but an awareness that the established and dissenting churches no longer bore witness to the unity of the body of Christ and that what brethren called the “original Christian witness” had to find an alternative expression. “The great affair for brethren is to be content to be nothing but a Christian,” Darby insisted, and catholicity should mark the boundaries of their fellowship.9 In the 1840s, as their unity fragmented, brethren were unable to sustain these idealistic hopes or to hold together in what one critic described as their “slough of love.”10 Evangelicals across Britain and Ireland were pushing together and pulling apart, being subject to the centrifugal and centripetal forces that enabled the “disruption” of the Church of Scotland in 1843 and, three years later, pressed for the formation of the Evangelical Alliance in England.11 The same forces of combination and division were at work among brethren. The contest of ideas that developed in the Plymouth assembly revealed that the early growth of the movement had been made possible by an agenda that was ambiguous, pragmatic, and ultimately unsustainable. Brethren had become a mixed multitude. While the earliest brethren had experienced “much real spiritual power and blessing,” claimed one anonymous contributor to The Present Testimony, others had been attracted to the assemblies “out of a real desire to partake of the blessing which they saw [who] had not faith to tread the same path of devotedness and self-​denial through

58  J. N. Darby which the others had been led into it.” The inclusion of less committed believers caused a “serious hinderance to the blessing; it was a deadening weight, . . . [a]‌depressing power.”12 In the Plymouth congregation, it was this mixed multitude that tolerated Newton’s unorthodox Christology. As we have already noticed, by the mid-​1840s, Newton had come to dominate the largest assembly of brethren, where his arguments that Christ had fully entered into his people’s experience of sin while remaining personally impeccable, found a ready reception. For Darby, this spiritual malaise called for radical intervention. And when it came, it hurt. “We may have felt the manner of excision of evil to be rough and severe,” another contributor noted, “but what of that, if we have been saved by it and our common blessing recovered? . . . If the usage has been rough in putting away evil, we may attribute much of that to ourselves, and humble ourselves in that we allowed it to go on so long unchecked.”13 This delay in imposing discipline was explained by the deference shown to the Plymouth assembly’s leaders. This deference, critics worried, represented an unbiblical elevation of individuals: “Whenever the ministry is used to procure a measure of influence for the man, God must come in in judgement, and lay the vessel aside . . . I believe there is nothing that calls for so much watchfulness and prayer on the part of those engaged in public ministry as the liability, through the infirmity of the flesh, to become the object of the thoughts of those ministered to.”14 In the later 1840s, these divisions in the Plymouth assembly destroyed the unity of the movement across Europe, when brethren fractured into networks that came to be identified as “open” and “exclusive.”15 For all of the heartbreak that it involved, the schism offered Darby and those who shared his vision a second chance to realize their catholic hopes. But the pragmatism and ambiguity that made possible the community’s early growth worked to both create the conditions for division and frustrate agreement on exactly which issues were at stake. Parties came to be formed around charismatic leaders who defended theologically distinctive positions. Many of those who had been drawn to Newton’s ministry had extraordinary commitment to his ideals, sometimes with more than a hint of fanaticism: Newton’s followers made their preference for his preaching clear, even to the extent of drumming their feet on the wooden floor when anyone else rose to speak in the Plymouth assembly, while, in 1838, an auction of luxury items, donated by members of the congregation in imitation of the primitive communism of the apostolic church, took three days to complete.16 Newton himself remembered that “there was no such thing as domestic

Ecclesiology  59 privacy among the early Brethren. I had always had seven or eight to dinner besides my own household.”17 Likewise, many of those who had been drawn together under Darby’s ministry around the shores of Lake Geneva suffered violence for their commitment to his ideals, not least when their Sunday meetings were disrupted on such a regular basis that they began to break bread in smaller, occluded gatherings.18 But these challenges worked to consolidate “the recovery.” For, as Leon Festinger would later discover, one of the most effective ways of ensuring the stability of a new religious movement is to ensure that its participants develop strong social bonds and then to have those individuals make sacrifices for the group that are so costly that their losses can be rationalized only by continued involvement.19 In Plymouth, as in Switzerland, the growth of competing parties of brethren was made possible by their suffering and sacrifice. In 1845, when these rivalries broke out into open dissension in the Plymouth assembly, those loyal to Darby and Newton could not agree on what the controversy was actually about. Darby was quite clear that what he described as the “ding dong” in “Plymouth affairs” had little to do with a clash of personalities or an eschatological dispute.20 While the two men had a long history of disagreement, Darby had “no complaint” against Newton, he explained to Wigram in April 1845, for Newton “had done nothing against me.”21 Neither did the controversy center on the chronology of the end times. Darby feared that his opponents wanted to frame the division around matters of prophetic interpretation so that believers should be forced to choose between his pre-​tribulation and Newton’s post-​tribulation expectation of the parousia.22 But he resisted this move. In fact, he insisted in 1845, he cared “scarce a fig” about the “difference of opinion” as to whether the rapture should be expected before or after the tribulation.23 In January 1846, he explained that he had understood the difference between his position and that of Newton “these 10 or 12 years.”24 When he had visited Plymouth, he continued, he had been “quite undecided on the great point of difference on prophecy.”25 He insisted that “it is not difference on prophecy in the least which has caused me to act as I have done.”26 What was at stake was the “doctrine of the church.”27 “Plymouth has lost, or for the most part never has attained, the idea which seems to me essential to the church,” he explained.28 In Darby’s mind, the dispute revealed that the aspiration for catholic unity that had turned confessional ambiguity into ecclesiological virtue, and which had enabled the growth of the movement, could not be sustained. Everyone agreed that the movement should be catholic. But the dispute that rocked the

60  J. N. Darby Plymouth assembly and that called into question the future of the movement more generally concerned the best mechanism for maintaining catholicity—​ ensuring Christological orthodoxy by means of effective ecclesiastical discipline.29 In the late 1840s, the division of the brethren was rooted in conflicting views about the nature of the church. For all of their other differences, Darby and Newton agreed on the importance of ecclesiology. They shared a concern about discipline. They worried that the movement of which the Plymouth assembly was widely identified as the flagship was becoming the victim of its most ambitious principles. Perhaps the Plymouth assembly—​which, by the 1840s, had more than one thousand people attending each Sunday—​was too big not to fail.30 Both men worried that the contributions to its meeting for open worship did not always tend to edification. They agreed that the open format of this meeting—​in which any brother could pray, minister the word, or suggest a hymn—​was being abused. The problem pressed most immediately upon Newton who, during the later 1830s and early 1840s, had remained in Plymouth while Darby itinerated in Switzerland and France. During Darby’s absence, Newton centralized control of the meeting, keeping broad boundaries of fellowship while ensuring strong leadership from the front—​and, if necessary, forcibly silencing unprofitable contributions.31 Darby agreed on the need to prevent the abuse of the open meeting. “I never could understand why the Church of God is to be the only place where the flesh is to have its way unrestrained,” he complained: “I desire the fullest liberty for the Spirit but not the least for the flesh.”32 But Darby feared that Newton’s remedy was as bad as Plymouth’s disease. He believed that the presidency of one or a handful of individuals, policing contributions that were supposedly being guided by the Holy Spirit, represented a return to the “clerico ministerial principles” that he had abandoned with the establishment.33 And so he had to find another way of ensuring proper order at meetings of Christians that reflected the liberty of the Spirit as much as the breadth and diversity of the body of Christ. This is why the division of the Plymouth assembly, in 1846, and the wider brethren movement, in 1848, offered Darby a new beginning. The division allowed him to rethink the meaning of catholicity and control. “The need of union is felt: of this there are two kinds,” he noted, “respectable courteous union among men, and the unity of the church of God.”34 For, as their movement divided, brethren were presented with an opportunity to embrace all three of those “marks of the church” that had been identified by the sixteenth-​ century theologians who set out to reform, not abandon, the Catholic

Ecclesiology  61 Church—​the preaching of the gospel, the administration of sacraments, and, now for the first time since the beginning of “the recovery,” as some key exclusive publications recognized, the effective exercise of discipline.35 This chapter argues that Darby’s catholic ambitions shaped the “exclusive” network that developed out of the brethren movement’s first major division. Paradoxical though the claim may appear to be, these catholic principles pushed the exclusives into more radical versions of separatism and shaped the environment in which Darby developed his wider dispensational agenda. No longer competing for influence in a broadly defined movement, he was able to think through the significance of the “ruin of the church” and, on that basis, to reconsider the principles that had made possible the community’s earlier growth. This research confirmed his primitivism—​his conviction that the ideal form of the church was to be found in the New Testament. But he became more than ever convinced that the church of the New Testament could not be restored. The exclusive brethren were not repristinating anything. Instead, they argued that apostolic order could never be revived and met on principles that recognized its irretrievable failure. Darby kept a close eye on developments within the Newton circle, which also rejected restorationist agendas and embraced a similar view of the “ruin of the church” even as the congregations that they established moved closer to the ecclesiological formats of dissent, with elected pastors and deacons.36 But he continued to argue that there was no basis for the continuation of ministry on the basis of office, for the only recognized church officers were those who had been ordained by apostles or those who acted on their behalf.37 Distinguishing church office from spiritual gifts, he argued that meetings of Christians should be guided by the Holy Spirit working through gifts. He made clear that this was not an egalitarian ideal. As one of the movement’s historians has noted, the growth of the movement, “following principles of minimal organization” can be “understood only in terms of the role played by a relatively small number of leading brethren.”38 The growth of the brethren, and the development of their dispensational thinking, was not an element of the “democratization of Christianity.” For Darby, even in church, never lost his high Tory sensibility, by turns paternalistic and authoritarian, and, perhaps unconsciously, he remained committed to notions of hierarchy even among brethren. His leveling of status within the church went hand in hand with his elevation as a thought leader in the print culture that exclusive brethren developed. In this respect, the exclusive brethren become emblematic of the ascendency of influence

62  J. N. Darby in the differentiating cultures of nineteenth-​century evangelicalism as increasingly diffusive denominational cultures supported an increasingly influential cultures of print. And so, as brethren weakened formal leadership structures, they enabled a more charismatic and entrepreneurial form of authority centralized around key decision-​makers. These preachers, writers, and print capitalists established the rights of a small group of brethren in London to make decisions that became binding in an increasingly global exclusive network. Within that tiny group of influencers Darby, for a while, reigned supreme. Forty years after the division, the raison d’être of the exclusive brethren was no longer recovery of the Reformation ideal of discipline. It was the pursuit of separatism in the name of catholicity that enabled the development of the ideas that would be packaged together as dispensationalism.

I From the beginning of his discontent with the Irish establishment, Darby elaborated his ecclesiology around his reading of ecclesiastical history. Darby rejected this High Church historicism and proposed a radical alternative. Since the mid-​1830s, he had been arguing not only that the church was fallen—​which, after all, was a staple of Protestant polemic—​but also that it was ruined beyond the possibility of recovery.39 The “ruin of the church,” he believed, was evident within the New Testament itself. Paul “felt and knew well that Ichabod was written on the dispensation,” even as he addressed the Ephesian elders in Acts 20.40 This ruin explained why later apostolic writings addressed the issue of whether Christians should withdraw from a corrupted congregation (2 Timothy) and how they should conduct themselves under the threat of being expelled from church fellowship (3 John).41 The “ruin of the church” to which the New Testament bore witness became more obvious in the writing of the earliest fathers.42 History bore witness to the increasing divergence between the life and work of the church of the apostles and that represented in what Darby described as patristic and scholastic “lore.”43 As another brother put it, the appeal to tradition that was represented by the “Tracts for the times” (1833–​1841), which argued for the recovery of Catholic practice within the English establishment, and did not acknowledge its “evil and fallen state.”44 Darby feared that the renewal of interest in the early church that was developing among many of his Anglican contemporaries

Ecclesiology  63 did not take seriously this departure from apostolic principles. Not all of those who seceded from Anglicanism for fear that it was insufficiently catholic ended up in the Roman Catholic Church.45 “People are writing books to show how others have departed from the truth,” Darby noted in an undated conversation, “but the ground I have taken is, it is not that the church has departed, but that the church is the departure.”46 This radical account of decline was a significant innovation within evangelical historiography. Since the sixteenth century, Protestant historians had portrayed the experience of the church as one of ruin, reformation, and recovery. This narrative of progress was reflected in their eschatological hopes. In the 1730s, the first generation of evangelicals had formed around expectations that the fortunes of the church would continue to improve. This optimistic reading of history expected that the expansion of Christian influence through missionary efforts and revivals would continue and that this continuing enlargement of the kingdom of God would create the conditions of the millennium, after which Jesus Christ would return.47 In the early nineteenth century, these views were widely shared within the Church of Ireland and among Darby’s tutors at Trinity College Dublin.48 But Darby rejected this postmillennial theory and the narrative of progress and denominational validation that it assumed. His earliest writing—​which he prepared but did not widely circulate—​condemned his church’s achievements. In the 1820s, some of the achievements of the “Second Reformation” were significant. Commentators observed a “stir” among Irish Catholics.49 Darby recalled that, during this period, “Roman Catholics were becoming Protestants at the rate of 600 to 800 a week”—​a claim that, as Akenson has noted, was almost certainly an overstatement.50 For this “Second Reformation” was being pushed as political pressure for the repeal of the Test Acts, Catholic emancipation, and wider democratic reform also moved toward its crescendo. It was a period of enormous disruption: as Lady Powerscourt put it, “the church and the world are like tumbled drawers.”51 Darby remembered his anxiety about the constitutional revolution of 1828–​1832: “I, a conservative by birth, by education and by mind; a Protestant in Ireland into the bargain; I had been moved to the very depths of my soul on seeing that everything was going to be shaken. The testimony of God made me see and feel that all should be shaken, but . . . that we have a kingdom that cannot be shaken.”52 The situation in the Irish church drove him toward an “ecclesiology of crisis.”53 For, as W. J. McCormack has noted, the movement “can be accounted as the product of Irish religious life to a degree which no other denomination can rival.”54

64  J. N. Darby Darby’s reading of church history and his development of dispensational theology was shaped by his experience in the Church of Ireland. At least in Darby’s mind, brethren had always focused on ecclesiological issues. Their account of ecclesiastical history was not quite the “rejection of the entire history of the Christian church” that J. P. Callahan observed.55 But Darby and his fellow travelers did become “careful diagnosticians of ecclesial apostasy,” reconstructing the history of the church in the “humble guise of mourners.”56 Darby extended his theory of decline to critique the achievements of the Protestant Reformation. From his perspective, the Reformation had been necessary, just as its failure had been inevitable.57 These themes were evident in his earliest writing. His first publication was addressed to William Magee, the archbishop of Dublin. The two men had met before, as we have already noticed: Magee had priested Darby in February 1826, and had appointed Darby to his first, and only, formal pastoral role.58 But they soon parted ways. In October 1826, Magee issued a charge to the clergy in his diocese, which several months later was published.59 Magee wished to defend the established church against its critics, emphasizing that the Acts of Union had cemented the Protestant constitution of the state and that state and church were but “two different aspects of the same Christian community.” He insisted that it was the duty of a sovereign to take care of the spiritual needs of his subjects and therefore to establish a national religion. Clergy were the “instruments of the state . . . bound up in it for the public good”—​and so deserved the compulsory tithes that were collected alike from churchmen, dissenters, and Catholics.60 On that basis, he defended the Test Acts that preserved the state’s religious complexion.61 Echoing these sentiments, in February 1827, a large number of the clergy in Magee’s diocese presented a petition to the House of Commons requesting the protection of the state. Darby was horrified by this turn of events. Little more than a year since his ordination as a priest, he recognized that he was still a “very obscure brother,” but set out to challenge his archbishop’s remarks and to criticize his clerical colleagues.62 His Considerations addressed to the Archbishop of Dublin (1827) contained a faintly political ring: while Magee defended his church as “the Church of England” or as the “United Church,” Darby preferred the traditional descriptor and described it as “the Church of Ireland.”63 His attack on the imposition of oaths was obvious: “the oath of supremacy is proposed by the Archbishop to the converts,” which “makes the admission into the Establishment” a necessary part of conversion to the established church.64

Ecclesiology  65 For all his conviction, it is not entirely clear what Darby was describing. In Ireland, the penal laws had already begun to unwind. In 1780, the sacramental test had been repealed, so that holders of public office were no longer required to take Anglican communion.65 Converts to the Church of Ireland were not required to take any political oath. But other Test Acts remained, and their significance was highlighted by the election as Member of Parliament of Daniel O’Connell on 5 July 1828. For O’Connell was a Roman Catholic, whose commitment to the temporal authority of the Pope meant that he could not swear the oath of supremacy to George IV and so take his seat in the Commons.66 Political events, in other words, were highlighting the link between church and state that Magee was defending. If the matter of oaths was not a central feature of his charge to diocesan clergy, it did become a central feature of an important Catholic response. A reply by J. K. L. to the late charge of the Most Rev. Doctor Magee (1827) showed how some Catholics responded to the archbishop’s claims and worried about the effects of the imposition of the oath of supremacy, not in order to join the established church, but to take full part in the institutions of the state.67 “J. K. L.” was the pen name of James Doyle, the Roman Catholic bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, a well-​established polemicist, who followed his Letters on the state of Ireland (1825) and his proposal for the unification of Ireland’s Protestant and Catholic churches with a detailed critique of Magee’s charge, along with a very substantial appendix documenting the imposition in Ireland of oaths of supremacy from the mid-​sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century.68 To this tract, C. R. Elrington, a fellow of Trinity College Dublin, replied.69 Appealing to the Thirty-​Nine Articles, he denied that the supremacy of the sovereign had any bearing on the governance and liturgy of the church and argued that church–​state relations were more at risk from the claims of the papacy to temporal power.70 In this context, Darby’s intervention seems confused. His postscript to Considerations noted that the oath of supremacy was being “proposed” by the archbishop to the converts—​which was not the case.71 Magee was only defending the oaths insofar as they maintained the religious character of the institutions of the state. But, had Darby been reading about Magee’s charge at secondhand and through the medium of J. K. L.’s critique, it is easy to see how his confusion could have occurred. In other words, Darby may have been responding to the Erastian claims of his archbishop by adopting the concerns of his Catholic critics. But that is not how Darby remembered the significance of his first printed tract. Later in life, he considered that his concern about church–​state

66  J. N. Darby relations in Considerations addressed to the Archbishop of Dublin was the “first germing of truth which has since developed itself in the Church of God.”72 If converts were to subscribe to political oaths, Darby argued, they would be putting state above church and conscience and would become hostages to fortune, pledging “their souls to that which (if the civil Sovereign should choose wrong) would be Popery.” Furthermore, Magee’s appeal to the state worked against “true catholicity,” which recognized “union with Christ” as the “vital principle and bond of the true Church, that general assembly and Church of the first-​born whose names are written in heaven, which is the true Church, the fulness of Him, that filleth all in all.” For the church to move from this heavenly reality to appeal for protection to the state was to slip from true catholicity to “Popery, however modified.”73 Darby’s response to Magee’s charge was to claim, on the one hand, that the archbishop was insufficiently Protestant, and, on the other hand, to recognize that his Protestantism, by view of its connection with a religiously exclusive state, was insufficiently catholic. But it is important to notice that Darby wrote the tract that contained the “first germing of truth” before what we might recognize as his evangelical conversion.74 For there was little in Considerations addressed to the Archbishop of Dublin or the two addresses to his “Roman Catholic brethren” (which, as we will see, were likely written around the same time) with which a high churchman, upholding the Anglican tradition’s commitment to baptismal regeneration and justification by faith alone would have disagreed.75 This early ecclesiological writing was entirely consistent with his convictions as an “exact churchman,” and he developed his arguments while retaining a high view of the church and its sacraments as he passed “in the deepest way” through what was later called “Puseyism,” and rested “in hope . . . but not in faith” in the work of Christ.76 In 1827, Darby might not even have been sure of his ideas. He printed Considerations addressed to the Archbishop of Dublin and shared it with some clerical colleagues but did not publish it.77 The pamphlet circulated nevertheless. One of the copies still extant in Dublin archives may be found among Magee’s collection of tracts, while the copy preserved in Queen’s University Belfast is bound in a volume with Magee’s 1822 and 1826 charges, alongside J. K. L.’s critique and Erlington’s defense.78 Shortly after the completion of this text, as we have already noticed, Darby suffered a riding accident that required him to leave his parish ministry in Calary, County Wicklow, to spend several months recovering in his sister’s Dublin and Delgany homes. During these months, in winter 1827–​1828, he

Ecclesiology  67 appears to have written two addresses to his parishioners, whom he described as his “Roman Catholic brethren,” the texts of which showed that he was committed to the high view of baptism that was typical of “exact churchmen.”79 But, by early 1828, his thinking had begun to move in a less sacramental direction. As his recovery continued, he gained new insights into the character of the church and its distinctiveness from Israel, which resulted in his elevation of the ministry of Paul over that of the other apostles. This was a position that other early brethren shared: “Paul is a type of the present dispensation, and his ministry the pattern of what the Church’s ministry ought to be.”80 On that basis, Darby argued, the doctrine of apostolic succession, upon which depended the claims of the Church of Ireland, was meaningless.81 For the history of the church bore witness not to the development of truth among the successors of the apostles, but to the development of error among those who returned to Jewish ordinances. Noting this sharp distinction between Israel and the church, Darby became especially alert to ecclesiological practices that seemed to muddy the distinction between these two bodies and the competing spiritual principles that they represented. Darby came to see that the “Judiazing” turn that had been rejected by the apostles had returned among the fathers and had been elaborated upon within the medieval church, the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and even within the Church of Ireland. It was this realization that propelled him to investigate the informal groups for Christian fellowship that had begun to meet around Dublin. For Darby, “joining ranks with the Brethren was tantamount to joining ranks with the primitive church.”82 Brethren writers pressured believers to choose between primitive Christianity and the most advanced iterations of the Judiazing turn.83 Darby developed these concerns in his earliest writings. In spring 1828, he circulated a pamphlet entitled Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ.84 In this tract, he understood that the problems he had identified in the Church of Ireland had their counterparts among the English denominations, too. These ecclesiastical problems were manifest in the lead-​ up to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, which received its royal assent on 9 May 1828. What is going on in England at this moment, a moment of anxiety and distress of judgement among her political and thinking men? Why we see the Dissenting Churches using the advocacy of actual unbelievers, and the Established Church of practical unbelievers (I say it in no scorn to them) to

68  J. N. Darby obtain a share in, or keep to themselves the secular advantages and honours of that world, out of which the Lord came to redeem us.85

In this moment of crisis, as the ancien régime began to implode, Darby was still persuaded that the “great truths of the gospel are the professed faith of the Churches, as they are in all the genuine Protestant Churches.”86 He had not yet begun to condemn the Anglican formulae for their defense of baptismal regeneration. But his appreciation of the work of the Reformation was more qualified than it had been in his addresses to his “Roman Catholic brethren.” While the reformers had recovered “doctrinal truth . . . for the foundation and edification of the faith of Believers,” he now understood that they had not recovered the doctrine of the church.87 In the following centuries, the efforts made by dissenters to pursue this recovery of the church had only led to the fragmentation of catholic unity, so that believers were divided among many denominations, with the effect that the “true Church of God” now “has no avowed communion at all.” The Protestant denominations did not bear witness to the “unity of the people of God, but really in point of fact [to] their differences.”88 In view of Christ’s prayer for the unity of his people, in John 17, Darby believed that whoever pursued the “interests of any particular denomination” should be regarded as an “enemy to the work of the Spirit of God.”89 In fact, he continued, “so far as men pride themselves on being Established, Presbyterian, Independent, or any thing else, they are Antichristian.”90 “No meeting, which is not framed to embrace all the children of God in the full basis of the kingdom of the Son, can find the fullness of blessing.”91 Darby concluded that the unity of the church would only be visibly realized at the Second Coming but rejoiced that, even in this age, “believers have a way before them marked in the word; that if we are not given to see as yet the glory of the children of God,” they could follow the “path of that glory in the wilderness.”92 Some of Darby’s friends were turning his theory into practice. As we have already noticed, by May 1830, a number of private and informal meetings for Christian fellowship had combined in a congregation that met publicly and formally in rented premises in Aungier Street, Dublin. Initially, the new congregation adopted a pattern of leadership and an order of service similar to that of the dissenting churches. But it quickly moved to abandon the formal recognition of elders and a fixed liturgy.93 Similar things were happening in Plymouth. In 1830, Darby’s visit to the congregation that had been established by Newton, Wigram, and Harris was transformative: “Plymouth . . . has

Ecclesiology  69 altered the face of Christianity to me,” he confided to a correspondent.94 Darby’s writings made sense of the existence of these congregations and their ecclesiastical principles—​and they began to be published. As they entered the public sphere, Darby’s publications combined around several major themes. First, he wanted to remind his readers of the political crisis through which they had passed and of its implications for the safety of the church. In his earliest writing, he had very mixed feelings about the constitutional revolution that was represented by the repeal of the Test Acts (1828), Catholic emancipation (1829), the Reform Bill (1832), and the reorganisation of the Church of Ireland (1833). Darby had previously lamented the ways in which he believed the Test Acts had forestalled evangelistic work among Irish Catholics, in requiring converts to take political oaths, but he now recognized that this legislation bore witness to the state’s recognition of divine authority in public life. The result of the repeal of this legislation, Darby now complained, was “public latitudinarianism,” a sweeping denial of the state’s obligations to God.95 Darby could see that the “sense of danger is universal” and that believers were preparing in different ways for the “coming storm” that would be the consequence of the “great progress of infidelity, of atheistical principles, and the spirit of rebellion against lawful power.”96 Political reform offered only “infidel liberty,” which, while “not Christian liberty,” could be used by God “for His own purposes in punishing the wicked.”97 Darby raised his voice against the democratic principles that were sweeping away the last vestiges of the ancien régime. He had no sympathy for Tom Paine: as he later put it, “he who speaks of the rights of man, whether of an individual or of mankind, only speaks of sin.”98 For Darby, the political crisis of the early 1830s was made worse by the fact that the state needed an ecclesiastical establishment that lacked any biblical warrant. The management of the church by parliament had been unacceptable even before the constitutional revolution allowed Roman Catholics into that body. But if a mixed-​religion parliament should not control churches, he argued, neither should private individuals. The “placards of auctioneers and the advertisements of newspapers are evidence that the pastorships of the Church of England are bought and sold in the market like other property,” he noted.99 He lamented that evangelicals were happy to take part in this trade: “Mr Simeon, of Cambridge, and others, used to buy up livings in order to get godly men into them: has this the smallest resemblance to spiritual pastorship in the Church of Christ?”100 Darby was correct: Simeon controlled twenty-​one advowsons.101 But most of all, Darby bemoaned the

70  J. N. Darby failure of the establishment to implement the third mark of the church—​ sacramental discipline.102 The English liturgy encouraged all who had been baptized to believe that they were regenerate and to share in the eucharist.103 Consequently, he announced at the Powerscourt conference in 1831, the “church as a body has apostatized completely.” Now, he insisted, “resistance of evil is the essence of the church of God.”104 Darby believed that the apostasy of the church was evident in its sacraments and offices. By 1835, he was sure that baptism did not constitute the “glory and power” of the present dispensation—​in fact, the “exercise of the Church’s mind” about baptism and other subjects in sacramental theology “proves its return to Judaizing principles.”105 And believers should be constantly on guard against this tendency, he argued: for, “whenever then we turn to what is Jewish . . . we have the principle of apostasy in us.”106 He believed that the legal requirement that certain classes of individuals, in order to maintain political or legal office, take communion three times per year—​irrespective of their spiritual state—​was simply antinomian.107 It was little wonder that Anglican spirituality was at such a low ebb: “I know scarcely a single active devoted Christian layman in the Church of England,” he admitted. “There may be a few readers in parishes paid by the clergyman, and I trust God will bless their labours; and there may be a few gentleman patrons of religion in their neighbourhood, but otherwise I do not know such a thing in existence.”108 And, all the while, Darby was keeping his eye on the high churchmen in Oxford. He concluded an 1834 pamphlet with a long quotation from Reverend William Dodsworth, a “godly highchurchman” and former associate of Edward Irving who would later identify with the Tractarians and then convert to Rome.109 Darby seems to have retained an affection for Anglican forms. While other brethren published accounts of their secession from the established church in the early 1830s, he never formalized his withdrawal.110 His respect for his clerical peers could be expressed in the most unexpected ways. In 1834, for example, he printed another pamphlet, The connexion of the term clergy with the penal guilt of the present dispensation, and the sin against the Holy Ghost (when this text was edited for inclusion in the Collected writings, Darby gave this text its more enduring title as “Notion of a clergyman dispensationally the sin against the Holy Ghost”).111 Darby’s argument was that while every Christian had been provided with spiritual gifts, the clerical system prevented these gifts being used—​and so the ministers of the church were quenching the Spirit’s work. But, he explained later

Ecclesiology  71 in life, he did not circulate this pamphlet—​having been prevailed upon by several leading clergy not to do so.112 It is not at all clear why Darby should denounce the influence of the clergy and then accept their advice to suppress this criticism.113 But the pamphlet did circulate. It was read by Reverend Joseph Singer, in whose collection it is held in Trinity College Dublin.114 It made its way to England, where it was criticized by Reverend Joseph Baylee, who would become well-​known as a theological polemicist in Liverpool, and Reverend John Venn, an Anglican minister in Hereford.115 Yet the pamphlet was never formally published. Darby was still oddly deferential to the sensitivities of his clerical peers. Yet he had not yet broken with Anglican liturgical forms. In 1834, he admitted to one correspondent that he was carrying nothing “but my Bible . . . and a borrowed liturgy.”116 He was still traveling with a borrowed liturgy in 1839.117 By then, he was clear that believers should withdraw from mixed communions. Catholicity would be made possible only by separatism: “I would rather worship with two or three in a house separate from evil, though it were in every street of Dublin, than to be deliberately mixed with evil.”118 For, he concluded, “separation from evil” was “God’s principle of unity.”119 Darby’s appeal for separation was not an appeal for churchmen to join the ranks of dissent, for the ecclesiastical agenda of the dissenting denominations also worked to frustrate his catholic goals. In 1841, he published in English a critique of dissenting congregationalism that had originally appeared in French.120 He found no encouragement in the growing number of dissenting congregations in Geneva and Lausanne. In fact, he suggested, the “project of making churches is one of the hinderances in the way of accomplishment of what all desire, namely, the union of saints in one body.”121 He was not reassured by the commonplace distinction between the visible and invisible church, which, he suggested, theologians had invented to excuse the obvious lack of Christian unity.122 And the common practice among dissenters of electing pastors in a popular vote had no scriptural warrant.123 The Spirit continued to supply gifts to the church—​“pastors, and doctors, and evangelists”—​but these gifts did not equate to church offices.124 The restoration of apostolic practice was not the point: for Darby, “obedience, and not the imitation of the Apostles, is our duty.”125 The Acts of the Apostles was not, after all, a manual for the modern church. So in what did that obedience consist? The need for a new beginning was widely recognized among brethren: throughout the 1830s, they argued, an individual’s recognition of the fallen state of the Church would provide the key to conduct in the

72  J. N. Darby apostasy.126 But Darby was not issuing a call for action. Believers should meet on the basis not of their own but of God’s activity: “God is working in the midst of evil to produce a unity of which He is the centre.”127 He worried about “this pretended necessity for organization.”128 Evangelical activism was something that he feared: “If you say, what then is to be done? I rejoin—​ Why are you ever thinking of doing something?”129 Third, Darby set out to defend those who met on the basis of the unity that he described, who were beginning to be noticed by an often-​hostile press. Brethren were not like Swedenborgians and Quakers, he argued, and neither were they suffering from some kind of “mental derangement,” as a prominent evangelical journal had claimed.130 Nor were they the victims of a personality cult, although even as early as 1836 those identified with the movement were being described as “Darbyites.”131 Instead, brethren were the most ecumenical of separatists. Christians from all kinds of backgrounds were welcome to come among the brethren. He accepted that “many dear children of God” were to be found in the national churches.132 And, he added, they could be found in the Roman Catholic Church, too.133 In fact, Darby explained the grounds upon which he would be happy to welcome a Roman Catholic to a meeting of brethren for communion.134 Aspiring as they did to universal comprehension, Darby’s views were hardly those of a “leader of an extravagant class of schismatics.”135 And finally, in his writings in this period, Darby began to set out a theological stall that made sense of his declinism, his criticism of the established and dissenting churches, and his call for believers to leave their denominations and to meet simply as Christians. So he began to clarify his terms. While, following a common Protestant convention, his earlier writing had used “dispensation” to refer to a period of time in redemptive history, he now wanted to sharpen his definitions. A “dispensation” is a “certain state of things, established by the authority of God, during a given period,” he argued in 1841.136 He was, he believed, living at the end of this kind of a dispensation: “we live in an apostacy hastening to its final consummation, instead of a church or dispensation which God is sustaining by His faithfulness of grace.”137 Within that apostacy, “individuals may be saved by grace,” but they had “no promise” that apostolic church order would be revived.138 He wrote to confute assumptions that God would “re-​establish the economy or dispensation on its original footing after it has failed” and to deny that that his addressees were “both able and authorized to restore it.”139 But “let us not, like foolish children who have broken a precious vase, attempt to join together its broken

Ecclesiology  73 fragments, and to set it up in hopes to hide the damage from the notice of others.”140 For the damage was irreparable. In the mid-​1840s, the dispute between brethren had focused on issues of church governance and discipline. In the aftermath of this dispute, the agenda for separation that the exclusive brethren advanced focused instead on Newton’s Christological errors and the reluctance of others to break fellowship with anyone who was attending a fellowship in which those errors were tolerated. Exclusive brethren condemned “Newtonism” and anyone who did not separate from it. By the end of the 1840s, the movement of brethren, like the church as a whole, had been reduced to “broken fragments.” For Darby and his supporters, a second effort at catholicity would require another call for separation. The division of the brethren in the later 1840s was caused in part by Darby’s returning to England with the ecclesiological principles that he had developed in Ireland and refined in Switzerland and France. In 1845, in debates with the Protestant clergy of Geneva and Lausanne, he had defended brethren from the charge of religious radicalism by more sharply articulating his idea of the ruin of the church.141 He cut the ground from under his critics in the Swiss Protestant national churches and in the smaller congregations of dissent: “all the National Churches, the Lutheran and the Presbyterian, are a public lie against the word of God; their unity is a human invention; they are not churches. The word of God . . . only recognizes the Church in glory, and local churches as at Corinth, or at Sardis.”142 But, he believed, the same principles should be applied in Plymouth and throughout Britain and Ireland. The efforts of Newton and open brethren to look to Scripture for guidance on how to restore apostolic Christianity were entirely misguided. The “testimony of God specially committed, as I believe, to those commonly called the brethren” was “as real a question of God’s truth as in Luther’s days: I do not say as important a one; because in Luther’s time the question was one of individual salvation . . . whereas the question now at issue is the position and standing of the Church.”143 In the late 1840s, the recovery of discipline among brethren would amount to a “Second Reformation.”

II Darby’s ideas were widely shared. “Nothing . . . is more contrary to the counsels of the Lord, than the hope of re-​constituting the church,” observed one of his disciples in 1849, “and yet nothing is more plain than that the

74  J. N. Darby essential principle of this dispensation is, ‘the gathering together in one of the children of God that were scattered abroad.’ ”144 The challenge facing the critics of Newton and those who refused to separate from him was in knowing how to combine this understanding of the ruin of the church with an effort to work for the regathering of Christians on catholic principles. From the late 1840s, Darby’s call for separation, which had been designed for believers in mixed denominations, came to be directed at other brethren. Those who responded to his appeal to leave the pragmatism of the broader movement became known as “exclusive brethren.” Their network of assemblies, or “meetings,” as they came to be known, took seriously his aspiration for catholicity and separation. Initially, they retained something of the theological breadth that had marked earlier phases of the movement’s history. “I like that there should be great breadth amongst brethren, and not a party formed upon certain views,” Darby noted in 1850, “provided also that devotedness and separation from the world, and the truths that lead us to this, be also maintained in all their energy.”145 But exclusive brethren also wished to institutionalize those features in connectional relationships that were as informal as they were tightly policed. These relationships were established between meetings to ensure that decisions on controverted issues should be made, approved, and sustained across the movement. This attempt to create disciplinary order offered exclusive brethren the opportunity for a new beginning. At least for Andrew Miller, a devotional writer and historian among brethren, the division represented a step-​change in theological development: “there was more clearness, fullness, and definiteness in their teaching after the division than before it, especially as to the heavenly relations of the church, the union of Christians with Christ in the glory, the rapture of the saints before the tribulation, &c., &c.”146 As the exclusive network coalesced around Darby and other charismatic leaders, its boundaries were increasingly defined so that dispensational ideas could be more clearly developed. These boundaries were quickly institutionalized—​but not always in ways of which Darby approved. From the late 1850s, lists of meetings began to circulate, much to his dismay. He worried, as we will see, that this was a first step toward exclusive brethren adopting a denominational identity. This delineation of boundaries developed alongside an expectation that exclusive brethren would want to make unanimous decisions. That hope was not to be fulfilled. The expectation that decision-​making would be unanimous within these well-​defined boundaries provoked a sequence of controversies. As the

Ecclesiology  75 movement of exclusive brethren grew in size, significance, and geographical range, and as a new generation of leaders emerged to develop themes in the writings of the movement’s founding fathers, the earlier and informal method of decision-​marking proved to be impractical. As the movement coalesced, exclusive brethren returned to an old proposal that decision-​making should be centralized. The idea of centralization had been mooted first in 1838, when Wigram had suggested to Darby that a committee of brethren might be established to adjudicate on disciplinary matters.147 In 1839, brethren in London had been alarmed when Wigram began to convene meetings of assembly leaders on Saturday mornings.148 Twenty years later, and in very different circumstances, brethren returned to this idea. By 1860, a clearing house for discipline had been established in the Saturday night meetings of representative brethren at London Bridge. Wigram emphasized that this was not, as some believed, a meeting of “elders.”149 Darby, too, was modest about his own contribution to this adjudicating body: he had already explained that he did not want to be seen as “an infallible authority; it is just the opposite; I am subject to the truth.”150 Nevertheless, as decision-​making centralized, he came to be recognized as the community’s principal leader, raised up by God to enable the recovery of aspects of apostolic teaching that had been lost in the history of the church. By the end of the 1870s, this view was widely shared. In fact, Darby may have found himself occupying a position of far greater influence than that offered to any office holder in the existing Protestant denominations. As God’s man for the hour, many of his followers believed, he had been raised up with an almost oracular authority, which few of his disciples had the courage to contest. If Darby’s commitment to catholicity had driven his agenda for separation, his theory of ecclesiastical “ruin” provided him with a status that found an equivalent in other denominations only in that ascribed to the Pope. Darby gained this authority through the entrepreneurial activities by which the network of exclusive brethren began to coalesce. In 1848, Wigram began to plan for the production of a new journal, The Present Testimony, which he regarded, as the subtitle put it, as the “original Christian Witness revived.” The journal appeared irregularly and, as it always ran at a loss, only because of the subventions of its exceedingly wealthy proprietor.151 From the mid-​1850s, Kelly edited The Bible Treasury, which, he explained, “seeks to educate the top class in the school spiritually.”152 His increasing prominence among the brethren generated tension among its leaders and with others whom he regarded as “underlings.”153 Nevertheless, he insisted, “one may

76  J. N. Darby and ought to look for companions and fellow-​witnesses called to like fidelity. Never should one contemplate isolation.”154 For catholicity and separatism went hand in hand. In 1861, Darby insisted, “I desire the table to be open for every saint with all my heart, fully open.”155 Kelly agreed: writing in 1875, he insisted that “Scripture knows nothing of keeping outside a godly-​walking member of Christ.”156 But separation was also required. For a pattern for “extreme exclusiveness” was also being established. In 1852, at a meeting for mourning and repentance that combined representatives of open and exclusive brethren, Darby did not take part in any common meals.157 In an undated letter, he stated that he would not eat with anyone under ecclesiastical discipline—​as he believed open brethren were.158 In 1873, he explained that he would not “say grace at table” with open brethren.159 Other brethren developed this cautious approach. In Orkney, in 1874, only several years after the movement’s arrival, one family had divided between the open and exclusive networks. The exclusives within the family refused to eat at the same table as its open brethren or even to eat food that had been cooked in the same pots.160 This behavior was extraordinary, but it reflected increasing concern about the doctrine of separation. Miller acknowledged the paradox: exclusive brethren would “receive persons to the Lord’s table from the church of England, where much error is held, but refuse the most godly saint” from an open brethren assembly. Miller justified this policy on the basis that open brethren profess to assemble on the basis of the one body of Christ, whereas Anglicans met merely as members of one denomination.161 Open brethren made claims to catholicity and had to be held to a higher standard. This effort to define the boundaries of the exclusive community was, at first, local. In 1857, a handbill was circulated describing Places and times of meeting in and near London.162 The handbill is a fascinating glimpse into the life of the thirteen London meetings as their network coalesced. At face value, it emphasized their unity. With very few exceptions, brethren assembled on Sundays at 11 am for the Lord’s supper and at 6:30 pm for preaching. Six of the thirteen meetings gathered on Monday evening for prayer. The others gathered on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday evenings for worship, prayer, Bible reading, or a lecture. The handbill showed how busy life among the brethren could be. The believers in William Street met twice on Sundays and on three weekday evenings, for example, while also attending the “reading meetings” that called for considerable preparation.163 Some of these gatherings were quite large. In 1851, on census day, a congregation of

Ecclesiology  77 three hundred people were worshipping in the Rawstone Street hall with a further fifty worshipping on Orchard Street.164 Others were very small. In 1855, the Sunday evening congregation at Rosamon Street had dwindled to around eight people.165 By 1857, the believers in Greenwich were still able to gather in homes for Monday and Thursday evening Bible readings, while the believers in Kennington met on Friday evenings in the home of Dr. Cronin. There were other differences between these meetings. Not all were dominated by their menfolk, for example. In March 1861, Kelly suggested to Darby that it would have “needed some faith and courage to have resisted the females” who met at the Priory.166 In addition, only one of these halls was licensed for weddings. In the movement’s early years, Kelly remembered, brethren “had to remain unmarried, or to go to Scotland for the purpose.”167 But, by October 1860, Andrew Miller had registered the William Street hall as a venue for weddings.168 Into the 1890s, William Street remained the only London meeting room to be thus licensed.169 His effort to make the brethren more sociologically sustainable turned out to be very controversial. “I look on it as a point of union with the world,” Darby lamented.170 Some brethren preferred brethren to get married in the registry office, to keep the world and the church distinct.171 Brethren did not reflect in writing on the likely consequences of telling believers that they had to be married elsewhere. Worried by this expression of diversity, exclusive brethren leaders began to argue for increasing uniformity. These arguments were advanced by new claims that meetings in a large metropolitan area should be regarded as expressions of a single city-​wide assembly. In 1863, there were rumblings of discontent among the eighteen meetings in London, among whom there was much disagreement as to the principle of city-​wide decision-​making.172 This led to sometimes bizarre debates about topographical boundaries—​and who had the right to determine them. Even in 1875, Kelly was suggesting that local government officials had the right to determine London’s city limits—​ and consequently where the boundaries of the London assembly ought to lie.173 “God’s assembly is as much bound in London as in Ephesus to express unity,” he insisted, while the “powers are entitled to say what London is; we have to walk as God’s assembly within it if living there.”174 The understanding that multiple meetings made up a single assembly called for careful thought about how that assembly should be governed. And so, in autumn 1860, Wigram returned to his proposal that representatives of the “12 or 14” meetings that made up the single London assembly should convene a monthly meeting as a “help to government.”175 Brethren paid attention to his

78  J. N. Darby arguments, and their representatives gathered for mutual care on Saturday nights at London Bridge. But not everyone in the exclusive community bought into this ideal of collective action. By the end of November 1860, Hall was in London, complaining about these centralizing tendencies and arguing for much greater congregational autonomy.176 Hall had form, as a late convert to the exclusive cause and, in Unity: A fragment and a dialogue (1851), one of its most significant internal critics.177 Hearing of Hall’s dissent, Darby lamented that his old friend still felt the pull of “local constituted order” and suggested that he had never had a secure grasp of the “unity of the body” that was promoted in exclusive ecclesiology.178 Darby’s response to Hall’s challenge recognized that three parties had developed among the exclusives: one more or less happy with the informal connectional relationships that the community had developed after the split; another following Hall’s arguments for greater congregational autonomy; and the third following Wigram’s arguments for increasing centralization. As these divisions became more manifest, Darby was worried about lists of “approved” meetings and about who exactly was conferring this “approved” status.179 He doubted whether “half the gatherings” on the list really deserved to be there.180 But, at the same time, he saw the benefits of these published associations, arguing that the list of thirteen exclusive meetings in London that had been drawn up in 1857 would be meaningless if it were merely a list of independent churches, given the variety that any admission of independency would permit.181 And so, with his critical appreciation, the lists began to grow. Following the publication of that initial list of thirteen meetings, Kelly and Darby corresponded about a “list of 40” London meetings in March 1861.182 Darby’s concern that lists of meetings were creating a denominational identity did not do away with the fact that, for a connectional body, they were extremely useful. Before long, the project was being taken up nationwide. In the late 1860s, an unknown hand produced another list of meetings that covered England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, as well as the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.183 The large number of assemblies represented suggests that the exclusive community was experiencing considerable growth—​and mobility. Only five of the London meetings that had been recorded in 1857 were still gathering in the same locations. This list shows evidence of the increasing social diversity of the exclusive brethren—​as well as some of the difficulties that they faced. One of the most serious of these problems was that of finding suitable premises. A list produced in the late 1860s recorded that brethren in Uttoxeter met for worship in the “Red Lion.”184 However unexpected it might

Ecclesiology  79 have been to Victorian teetotalers, the willingness of these brethren to gather for worship in a public house was far from unusual. In fact, H. W. Pontis, one of the younger exclusive brethren, took a special interest in meetings that convened in public houses—​perhaps because the meeting in Rotherham, where he was based, had broken bread in the Butcher’s Arms before moving to a more commodious room in the White Hart. Somewhat defensively, Pontis included in his scrapbook of brethren memorabilia his own list of meetings with similarly alcoholic locations. In Othery, brethren met in the Black Bull, where William Trotter had given prophetic lectures in 1848. In Burton-​on-​Trent, brethren met in the Queen’s Hotel. In Peterborough, they met above Page’s Ale Stores. In Haverill, Suffolk, they met above Jenner’s brewery.185 And other instances might have been added to Pontis’s list. In the north of Ireland, for example, brethren met in a converted distillery at Moore Fort, near Ballymoney, in County Antrim.186 And the same phenomenon was evident overseas, too: in 1857, Darby preached in a German inn, while the 1884 list of meetings provided a Danish contact in the Carlsberg Brewery.187 This occasional habit of meeting in less than respectable premises made a point that brethren wanted to reinforce—​that the church was not defined by sacred buildings but by the presence of the Holy Spirit in a gathering of believers. But many observers were shocked by this carelessness about ecclesiastical convention. Some critics of the movement condemned its “liberty”: “Liberty was the great ‘desideratum’ with them, and they have got to their hearts’ content—​perfect liberty, that owns no law, no order, no ministry, and no Church.”188 Individually, brethren “may all be very excellent people; but collectively, they are nothing—​absolutely nothing.” Not only were exclusive brethren unworthy of the status of a church, this critic continued, they were “literally unworthy of the name of a sect.” If they did take a name, it should be “Darbyism.”189 The fact that critics of the movement identified the network by the name of its principal leader became increasingly significant—​not least because the divisions of the exclusive brethren that began in the mid-​1860s tended to focus on the question of Darby’s status and the claims that it allowed him to make. From the late 1850s, as we have noticed, a controversy about his teaching on Christ’s sufferings developed until, in 1866, several prominent leaders withdrew from the movement. Dorman recognized this controversy as ultimately being focused on the limits of Darby’s influence. His justification for withdrawing from exclusive fellowship offered

80  J. N. Darby a retrospective of brethren history. For all that he had supported Darby in the debates of the 1840s, he had come to believe that the position of exclusive brethren had been “entirely remodelled on the ground of separation.”190 Most significantly, Dorman believed, the man whom he had once regarded as a hero had been given far too much personal power and was regarded by too many of his followers as infallible. Dorman worried about the effect on the brethren of allowing this kind of preeminence to a teacher of the word. Suppose some one of the disciples of Mr. D. who are diligently training themselves to fill his place when he is gone, should think himself more profound than his teacher, and a clearer expositor of his views; are we still further to leave the plain witness of Scripture to attach ourselves to his profundity also? Alas! whither are the poor brethren drifting? and where under such pilotage will their vessel be stranded at least?191

Dorman worried that those who followed Darby would end up submitting to claims to infallibility similar to those recently defined in the Roman Catholic Church.192 For, if Darby’s elevation were to continue, “reasoning is at an end, and an appeal must be made from a fanaticism that utterly binds the understanding, to people’s common sense and common judgement.”193 In 1866, Dorman and Hall withdrew. It was ironic that the preacher who had first lent his name to the brethren in Plymouth—​then known as “Hallites”—​should have been pushed outside the movement.194 But others, who were loyal to Darby, shared this concern about his elevation. In 1876, Wigram suggested that brethren in England had become too dependent upon their leader and so was relieved that Darby’s trip to the Caribbean was taking longer than some brethren might have hoped: “I am not anxious for your return to England just yet. Many there are learning lessons before God about dependence on Him.”195 Darby was being elevated against his own preferences and the movement’s better judgment. But Darby’s influence continued to grow as the meeting lists expanded. In 1873, another list recorded a much larger number of gatherings in London, as well as across Britain and Ireland, with additional assemblies being recorded in France, Alsace, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Malta, Norway, Russia, the United States, Canada, West Indies, New Zealand, and Australia.196 The List of meetings, September 1874 extended the network into Brazil.197 In 1878, Miller estimated the existence of 750 meetings in the

Ecclesiology  81 United Kingdom and the Channel Islands; 189 meetings in Germany; 146 in France; 72 in Switzerland; 39 in Holland; together with 91 meetings in the United States and 101 meetings in Canada.198 A further list produced in 1880 signaled both the growth of the network and its increasing diversity. In Aldershot and Alnwick, the meetings were led by a carpenter, grocer, and shoemaker. There were meetings in Majorca, Minorca, Algeria, Egypt, China, and even St. Helena.199 The brethren had come a long way from gatherings of the elite at Powerscourt. But Darby continued to be concerned by the movement’s growth. “The increase of numbers has tended to lower the barrier against the world,” he worried in 1879.200 He refused to recommend printed lists of meetings though he recognized that they were “convenient.” The “printed lists of meetings” represented the danger of “slipping into sectarianism.”201 And he was right to be concerned: the 1880 list would be the last record of a united exclusive network. For Darby was expressing caution about institutionalized boundaries of fellowship just as the exclusive community entered into its worst crisis. The difficulties were centered on individual known only as “T. C.” In 1859, T. C. had traveled to France to marry his deceased wife’s sister, a union that was illegal under English law. Seven years later, T. C. was received into the meeting in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, where a number of brethren were concerned about the legal status of his marriage. In April 1877, brethren in the Ryde meeting rebuked the offender and prohibited him from ministering, but allowed him to continue to break bread. In July 1878, the Ryde meeting excommunicated T. C. But it was already too late: a number of brethren, frustrated by the lack of disciplinary action, had left the Ryde meeting to establish their own fellowship.202 This action sent shockwaves through the exclusive network, which recognized the problems in the original Ryde meeting and the invalidity of the secession. The problems were exacerbated by brethren print culture and by the institutionalizing of the response. In the September 1878 issue of The Bible Treasury, Kelly wrote a question about the principles involved in the Ryde controversy and supplied an answer that called for rigorous implementation of discipline on the original meeting. His duplicity—​in framing his comment as a response invited by another—​ was almost immediately discovered. After being publicly embarrassed, he published a more moderate response in the October issue. Then the problem was compounded. Reverend Charles Finch, a Church of England clergyman in Ryde, withdrew from the established church and, with some of his former parishioners, established a new fellowship very much along brethren lines.

82  J. N. Darby There were now three brethren-​style meetings in the same town—​only one of which the larger body of exclusives could recognize.203 Edward Cronin, one of the longest-​standing brethren, was not slow in deciding what to do. In February 1879, he traveled from London to Ryde and broke bread with Finch’s new fellowship. For having trespassed beyond the list of approved meetings, Cronin was censured by the Kennington brethren in March 1877. He returned to Ryde in May, claiming to have a “kind of private inspiration” from the Holy Spirit, where he rebuked the original and still officially recognized meeting.204 His action seems to have been born of frustration. Like Darby and Wigram, Cronin believed that the movement had gone astray and that its principles needed to be reestablished. His ambition, Darby believed, was to offer brethren on the Isle of Wight the chance of a new beginning.205 But his brethren did not support him. In May 1879, Cronin was publicly rebuked by his home meeting. He immediately expressed his regret for his peremptory action but gradually withdrew from the Kennington believers. In June 1879, Darby received a solicitor’s letter that described his criticisms of Cronin “and others” as being of a “libellous character” and that warned him of legal action.206 This letter may have been what caused Darby to begin wondering, in the same month, whether he should withdraw from the wider movement.207 He was becoming jaded, fearing that brethren journals “have a good deal lost their power . . . the tone of brethrenism tends to lower with increasing numbers.”208 But Cronin was forced to withdraw: he was formally excluded in August 1879, and he ended his life breaking bread in his own home with a handful of friends.209 Among exclusives, the controversy about Cronin created a national crisis. On the same evening that he was expelled by Kennington, and without knowing that this discipline had been enacted, the Park Street meeting also moved to censure Cronin and to “disown” the Saturday night meeting, which for almost twenty years had functioned as a central point for communication between the many meetings that made up the single London assembly. On the following Saturday night meeting, London brethren received news of the Kennington and Park Street decisions, recognized that their ends had been achieved, and gave thanks for the unity of the city’s twenty-​six meetings. But news was not so swiftly communicated to outlying districts. The meeting in Ramsgate, Kent, received news of the Park Street censure but not of the Kennington expulsion. Believing that the Kennington meeting was still in the wrong, most of the Ramsgate brethren acted to censure the Kennington

Ecclesiology  83 meeting. On 24 August 1879, these brethren did not attend the regular breaking of bread. When news came that there was no need for division, the seceders sought restoration with the rump who still held keys to the hall. But, following the established principles of exclusive ecclesiology, the rump declared that they could not receive the seceding brethren as a group, but only as repentant individuals. Despite overtures for union from both sides, this issue of reception kept the two groups in Ramsgate apart. Both sides justified their policy by appealing to the conventions of exclusive discipline.210 Watching from a distance, Darby was dismayed. Had brethren been in better heart, he believed, “five minutes would have settled the case.”211 He became very gloomy, remembering Wigram’s dying observation that the movement was “all over.”212 He wondered whether he had a future among these brethren.213 They were clearly in decline: “we are not what we were, I fear, in any way,” he believed in September 1879.214 Brethren had become too sure of themselves. As the movement expanded, its spiritual quality had diminished. Brethren had risen “in thoughts of themselves as they declined in consistency with the testimony.”215 The “mere state of brethren was caring for brethrenism, not for God’s glory.”216 The fault lay in their “making a list—​ numbering the people—​and of brethren a distinct sect; as Congregationalists or Baptists might count their churches.”217 The lists of meetings and the publication of Andrew Miller’s celebratory The Brethren (commonly so-​called): A brief sketch of their origin, progress and testimony (1878) suggested that the movement was “slipping into sectarianism.”218 Darby feared that its self-​ regard evidenced “sectarian pretension.”219 Others agreed. Lord A. P. Cecil believed that God had permitted the Ryde controversy to warn brethren against sectarian thinking—​ and in particular the sectarian thinking represented by the fifty-​year retrospective of the movement that had recently been published in Miller’s history.220 “The Lord has a controversy with us!” Cecil insisted, at the very moment when we are calling ourselves “The Brethren,” and speaking of our origin, progress, and testimony, the Lord is shaking us to our very centre. I am afraid many of us have no higher thought, corporately, than that we belong to the Brethren, who began fifty years ago, and when we compare such a thought with Scripture we cannot find it, except as 1 Cor. i. shows it to be, a wretched sectarian thought . . . it strikes at the root of the fundamentals of Christianity.221

84  J. N. Darby Cecil abominated the “movement” thinking that brethren were promoting: “We are ‘brethren,’ a returned remnant come back to Christ, but not ‘the brethren,’ much less ‘Plymouth Brethren,’ as a new body.”222 Darby agreed. He also worried about the circulation of Miller’s history: “I always dread whatever would represent the brethren as a sectarian body.”223 He feared that God was about to set the brethren aside.224 He wondered whether he should abandon the brethren, too.225 The dispute grew in size and significance. Some recent converts tried to make positive interventions, including William Reid (1822–​1881), a Presbyterian minister who had followed up his conversion to the brethren by editing one of its most robustly intellectual journals, The Bible Witness and Review (1877–​1881). As a relative newcomer and a significant literary figure in his own right, Reid claimed to “stand in a perfectly mediatory place” and, in December 1879, offered to facilitate a meeting for reconciliation between the factions.226 But no one took up his offer. Instead, in April 1881, meetings were convened at Park Street to broker a solution. Both groups in Ramsgate agreed that Park Street should moderate this effort at reconciliation. The Park Street meeting recognized that the party that had withdrawn from the Ramsgate meeting should be recognized as possessing the Lord’s table in that town. But the Blackheath meeting—​Kelly’s home meeting—​disagreed. The meetings in London divided over Ramsgate’s rump of seceders, and the exclusive community split between the majority who followed the lead of Darby and the centralized disciplinary decision-​making that was represented by Park Street and those who followed the lead of Kelly and the more consensus-​driven disciplinary decision-​making that was represented by Blackheath. Despite Darby’s hesitation about getting involved in the dispute, it was resolved with reference to his own authority. Paradoxically, his elevation showed that he had lost control of the “Darbyites.” That, at least, was the feeling of Horatio Darby, when he wrote to Kelly in April 1882, reporting that his brother had “suffered things to be said & done” to Kelly of which “he did not wholly approve.” Horatio Darby explained that his brother “could not control the more violent [exclusive brethren] without breaking with them, which he did not wish to do.”227 The implication was clear: Darby had become a victim of his elevation to figurehead status. As the exclusives divided into competing parties, Darby opted to preserve as much of their unity as he could, even if it meant sacrificing the devoted friend who had edited his Collected writings. As the unifying leader of a movement driven by separatist ideals, he could not defend a minority position without seeing the exclusive

Ecclesiology  85 community dissolve. He could preserve the unity of those who remained loyal to him only by refusing to check them. For his authority had become absolute—​as long as it was not asserted.

III From their inception until the end of the nineteenth century, Darby and his followers presented themselves as the last true Catholics. This line of thinking was characteristic of the early brethren but, in the second part of the nineteenth century, as open brethren increasingly took on a restorationist agenda, was particularly identified with exclusives. This way of thinking about the church called for a radical reconsideration of its history—​and of what it meant to be Protestant. Reid understood brethren to be an alternative to “Popery and Protestantism” and as the answer to the problem of Christian history.228 He wished to “take all Christians out of Popery . . . also take them out of Protestantism, seeing that their being [there] ecclesiastically is as entirely out of the present mind of Christ as the other.”229 For the Protestant Reformation was seriously flawed, and believers ought to abandon its unbiblical pretensions. Frances Bevan described the Reformation as demonstrating both “light in darkness, and darkness in light.”230 Mackintosh saw it as the “result of a blessed work of the Spirit of God; but Protestantism, in all its denominational branches, is what man has made of it.”231 The solution was not to reestablish some long-​lost apostolic church: exclusive brethren were “not the church of God,” Darby argued, “but those who alone meet on the principle of its unity.”232 Darby’s critics among these denominations recognized the challenge of his doctrine of the church. Reverend Thomas Croskery, a Presbyterian minister in County Londonderry, Ireland, began his long account of The heresies of the Plymouth Brethren (1879) with eleven chapters on the church and the Holy Spirit while offering only four chapters of discussion on Christology, soteriology, and eschatology. Croskery’s focus on the doctrine of the church illustrated the extent to which the challenge that the brethren represented was focused, for many of their Reformed critics, on ecclesiological themes. After all, without first persuading an individual that Israel and the church were different bodies, it was virtually impossible to make the case that Christians should not look to the Ten Commandments as a rule of life or to argue that Christians and Jews would have different eschatological destinies.233 Darby’s

86  J. N. Darby critics properly noted that his understanding of the church lay at the heart of his dispensational theology. Equally, they seemed to recognize that his argument about the church was, at least, plausible. No one with any understanding of the Christian world could deny that the church had fragmented and that the pursuit of competing denominational agendas did not seem to expect any immediate fulfilment of Christ’s prayer that his people should be one. If an individual accepted that the church was unnecessarily divided, the groundwork had been laid for an argument that denominational structures were getting in the way of the realization of God’s purpose for the church and thereby subverted the credibility of clerical status and confessional traditions. Darby’s critics focused on his doctrine of the church because it made his other arguments possible. But they also focused on his doctrine of the church because it showed how his arguments played out in real time. It could be difficult to engage in debate about the errors of Darbyite eschatology when the eschatology of the Reformed tradition had never been agreed upon. But the practice of brethren ecclesiology—​from the unprincipled elevation of a leader to the rounds of excommunications that followed upon his elevation—​provided its own proof that Darby’s doctrine of the church sowed the seeds of its own failure. Some learned this lesson in real time. In 1884, not long after Darby’s death, a Scottish doctor called Alexander Murdoch moved with his sister to London and found himself drawn into this unusual religious community. An old family friend, Captain Francis, who was “one of the most prominent members of the Darbyite, or Exclusive, section of the brethren,” encouraged the Murdochs to “withdraw from all the systems, and . . . be gathered simply to the name of Jesus. The unity of believers—​there is no thought more glorious than that.”234 Murdoch asked his friend whether “all Christians, no matter how widely they may differ on points of doctrine, would be received to fellowship by the Plymouth Brethren?” Of course, came the reply: “for surely the basis of union in glory is sufficient for our union on earth. How can we join hands by faith with those that have gone before, if we refuse fellowship to our brethren who are with us now?” The doctor’s sister understood the claim to catholicity in historical and confessional terms. Would brethren, who expected to have fellowship with Roman Catholics in heaven, be prepared to have fellowship with them now? “ ‘That question,’ said Captain Francis, ‘was once put to Mr Darby, and he replied that he would have no right to refuse to admit even a Roman Catholic, ‘if he really extolled Jesus as his Saviour, and His one sacrifice of Himself ’.’ ” In that cases, Murdoch concluded, “the

Ecclesiology  87 Plymouth Brethren are not so narrow and bigoted a sect as most people believe.”235 But, he also discovered, this ecumenical ideal was being put under extraordinary pressure. “Both in public instruction and in private conversation the main topic of all the Brethren seemed to be ‘judging evil,’ ” he remembered, “as if that were the chief duty of the saints.”236 For the brethren were turning in upon themselves, judging evil within their own meetings as they divided from each other in the first major exclusive schism. Murdoch’s account of his life among the brethren was noticed in Spurgeon’s Sword and Trowel (1891). The review offered a caustic reflection on Darby’s legacy. Brethren, “in their earlier days, bore grand witness for the truth of God, and they aimed at a high ideal of church life,” the reviewer noted. “Fidelity to the Word of God was their eminent characteristic. . . . Among them were some of the excellent of the earth, well-​instructed saints, far-​seeing students of the Word.” But, he added, “another spirit came in. One brother became the virtual head of the community, and at his bidding true saints of God were cast out, and a sect was formed which may challenge all others for extreme exclusiveness.”237 Murdoch might have been fortunate to have escaped. The brethren seemed to be following in the wake of the Anglo-​Catholics—​worrying about the constitutional revolution, pursuing a critical reading of church history, and wondering about the implications of ecclesiastical authority, whether in the elevation of Darby or in the First Vatican Council’s declaration of papal infallibility (1869–​1870). For all their appeal to apostolic order, brethren were creatures of their times. But Darby’s aspiration to catholicity was genuine. Despite his understanding that the church was in ruins, he did not dismiss Christendom as valueless, as evangelical dissenters often did. Instead, he argued, all those who had been baptized in the name of the Trinity made up the “great house” of God.238 A much smaller group of regenerate believers made up the body of Christ.239 This was why, “if the professing church takes the position of the camp here below, the place of the believer is always outside.”240 That was where Christ would be found as a “new gathering point and the one only gathering point in a world without God.”241 There might not be much to commend being outside the camp. The little groups that met in halls, homes, and public houses would not always look impressive. But God “sees the beauty of His people, of His assembly, through everything else, for she is beautiful.”242 It was this combination of catholicity and separatism that Darby developed in his dispensational claim.

3 Pneumatology “Within the assembly is the Holy Ghost; God dwells in it as His house by the Spirit. Without is the world of which Satan is the prince.”1

One of the most persistent themes in Darby’s writing about the church was that the Body of Christ was the special sphere for the Spirit’s operations. Like many of his contemporaries, he was intrigued by the charismatic phenomena that were reported in Port Glasgow, in southwest Scotland, in 1830.2 These manifestations of speaking in tongues and prophecy were regarded by many radical evangelicals as evidence that they were living at a turning-​point in the history of the church. The extraordinary gifts that were described in the Acts of the Apostles, which had disappeared in the early Christian centuries, had suddenly returned.3 Darby’s interest in the phenomena was linked to his concern that institutional churches had quenched the ministry of the Spirit. As we have already noticed, he feared that clergy had imposed structure and formality where the Spirit would have freedom, and he argued that believers, gathering for worship, should be able to use their spiritual gifts without liturgical restrictions. But, after visiting the area to witness the phenomena at first hand, spending time with Thomas Erskine and John McLeod Campbell, he concluded that they were not authentic.4 “I went to see the reputed workers of miracles,” he announced at the Powerscourt conference in 1831. “I think some of them are imposters, some of them imposed upon. I consider some of them to be children of God, but under a delusion of Satan.”5 Even those involved in glossolalia were speaking only a “mixture of Greek & Latin.”6 Nothing was quite as it seemed. Darby’s curiosity continued as he grew concerned about the doctrinal problems with which the prophetic movement was associated. On the one hand, Edward Irving, who became recognized as the leader of this prophetic movement, was defending a heretical Christology, which led to his excommunication from the Presbytery of London (1830), to the formation J. N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism. Crawford Gribben, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190932343.003.0004

Pneumatology  89 of the body that became known as the Catholic Apostolic Church (1832), and to his excommunication from the Church of Scotland (1833).7 On the other hand, Irving’s followers claimed that their possession of extraordinary spiritual gifts showed that the apostolic church had been fully restored—​ something that brethren had already concluded to be impossible.8 So Darby rejected the assertions of the Scottish prophets. His evaluation of charismatic phenomena was being driven by his doctrine of the church. For Darby, the church was in ruins: any effort to promote its restoration was doomed, and so any manifestation that seemed to demonstrate its restoration had to be false. But, even if he rejected the claims of the Irvingites, he continued to think about the work of the Spirit. In the early 1830s, this interest was reflected in the agenda for the Powerscourt conferences. Lady Powerscourt, who hosted these events, had taken an active interest in Irving, whom she had invited to her County Wicklow estate in 1830.9 But those who attended her conferences, which began in the following year, took a harder line against Irvingite claims. In 1838, an anonymous writer in The Christian Witness compared Irving’s arguments to those of the recently established Church of Christ of Latter-​Day Saints.10 With their dispensational thinking premised on the idea of the ruin of the church, brethren opposed all forms of restorationism—​but were preoccupied by thinking about the Spirit. In the radical evangelical cultures of the 1820s and 1830s, Darby’s curiosity about the possibility of a return of the charismata was far from being unusual.11 Since the Reformation, Protestant theologians had paid a great deal of attention to the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Calvin, who wrote on the Holy Spirit at some length, cautiously suggested that God could raise up apostles, prophets, and evangelists “as the need of the times demands.”12 On the Continent, Protestant scholastics moved to deny this claim and to emphasize that the close of the canon of Scripture had brought an end to extraordinary revelation.13 English Puritans revised these arguments to suggest that the Spirit’s work continued in a post-​conversion experience of “sealing,” and the more mystical among their number even made tentative suggestions that revelation might not, in fact, be complete.14 During the eighteenth century, however, evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic closed down on these claims, emphasizing the sufficiency of Scripture and tending to identify the new birth, commonly described as “regeneration,” with the baptism and sealing of the Spirit. For orthodox evangelicals, these were three aspects of the same event. Darby came to disagree with this consensus. Over the course of his career, while he never questioned the sufficiency of Scripture or

90  J. N. Darby claimed to possess any distinctive spiritual gift, he moved ever further from the standard categories of Calvinist pneumatology—​and ever more critical of pneumatological trends in the evangelical world. For Darby was not a cessationist: he did not believe that the extraordinary gifts given to the church by the Holy Spirit had ceased with the close of the canon of Scripture.15 He moved from his early concerns about the doctrine of the church to consider the work of the Spirit in the present age and to understand the church as the environment for the Spirit’s work. In that sense, he developed a pneumatic ecclesiology around his dispensational distinctives between Israel and the church and between law and grace. The Spirit baptized the apostles on the day of Pentecost and formed the Body of Christ. The Spirit granted sinners new birth, as a consequence of which they could repent and believe the gospel, uniting them to Christ and incorporating them into Christ’s body. Over time, Darby further developed these ideas. He began to argue that the sealing of the Spirit was an experience that believers enjoyed some time after regeneration, a position that influenced some nineteenth-​ century accounts of sanctification and which, as we will see, was referenced and developed by one of the most influential twentieth-​century defenders of charismatic theology. He maintained a life-​long opposition to ideas of sinless perfection—​from the Wesleyan perfectionism that he combatted in Geneva in the late 1830s and early 1840s to his teaching about Robert Pearsall Smith’s “higher life” in the 1870s. Yet he also developed a “theoretical Pentecostalism” of his own.16 Like Calvin, he accepted the continuing role of apostles and prophets, if only “in a lower sense.”17 In fact, he concluded, Calvin, along with Luther and Zwingli, had likely received extraordinary revelation, but this supernatural knowledge had not added to the word of God.18 Darby was certainly aware that he was teaching something novel. But, he insisted, that did not make him a prophet: “no-​one pretends to inspiration in the sense of new revelation.”19 He might be making more fundamental claims, but he was not comparing himself to the magisterial reformers. However Darby nuanced them, these were startling assertions. His critics were concerned by the impact of his pneumatology upon his doctrine of the church. Just after his death, the Free Church of Scotland theologian George Smeaton claimed that brethren had “produced a literature on the Holy Spirit of a very mixed character.”20 He recognized that Darby, Harris, and Kelly had written many “excellent things” on the distinction between Christ’s work for and the Spirit’s work in believers. But he worried that their arguments had taken the wrong dispensational turn. He sought

Pneumatology  91 for precedents in the disputes that divided the followers of Gisbertus Voetius and Johannes Cocceius in mid-​seventeenth-​century Holland. Brethren, he feared, had revived the “Cocceian notions as to the alleged low platform of the Old Testament saints. They represent them all as burdened and fettered by the Spirit of bondage.”21 In addition, he claimed, brethren made a “presumptuous claim” for the “presidency” of the Spirit in their assemblies, and, “accordingly, they venture to carry out the decrees and resolutions come to under this imagination with a confidence little less than apostolic.”22 Yet, for all their dependence upon the Spirit, Smeaton noted, brethren were strangely reluctant to address him. They took “exception to what most other Churches, not swamped by Ritualism, have always regarded as one of the most important and blessed duties—​to prayer for the Holy Ghost.”23 Smeaton’s comments recognized two opposite tendencies within Darby’s writing—​to both elevate the work of the Spirit in the life of the church and deny that the Spirit should be an object of worship. Influencing his doctrine of the church as well as his understanding of the Christian life, Darby’s “laundered charismaticism” was central to his ministry.24 But it did not survive the systemization of his ideas in the theological agenda that became known as “dispensational premillennialism.” When, thirty years after his death, these ideas were developed into a theological system, its most influential exponents abandoned his more striking claims about the ministry of the Spirit. Hardly anything of Darby’s pneumatology made it into the Scofield Reference Bible (1909), for example. Paradoxically, Darby’s pneumatological innovations found their most permanent home not among dispensationalists, but in the tradition represented by his Calvinist critics and by the theological descendants of the prophets from Port Glasgow.

I Like many of their contemporaries, the radical evangelicals who gathered in the earliest assemblies of brethren combined a commitment to high Calvinism and a sense of the church’s ruin with earnest hopes for the return of the Holy Spirit’s extraordinary gifts. Week by week, brethren gathered in expectation that the Spirit would direct their meetings. This expectation controlled the structure of their worship. From 1830, as we have noticed, the earliest brethren congregation in Aungier Street, Dublin, established a liturgical format that was broadly similar to that of other dissenting traditions before moving to an

92  J. N. Darby entirely open arrangement. This progression toward less structured and more open forms of worship may have been influenced by the Quakers, who joined the brethren movement during the Beaconite controversy—​the dispute, in the 1830s, that divided English “friends” between those who maintained a conventional view of the Bible’s authority from those who saw Scripture as being subservient to the inner light.25 Outsiders certainly noticed similarities between the two movements: early brethren were sometimes thought to be a variant within the broader Quaker tradition and made efforts to distinguish themselves from that much larger dissenting community.26 This preference for non-​liturgical meetings was reflected in early brethren writing. It reflected the general tendency of brethren to structure their theology and practice around expectations of divine intervention. By the 1830s, the new movement was characterized by a strongly interventionist theology. The Calvinist soteriology that was shared by so many of its leaders emphasized divine intervention in salvation, while, as we will see, its premillennial eschatology emphasized divine intervention in history. Brethren made the same emphasis in their thinking about the church. Their public worship was not to be guided by a fixed liturgy or controlled by church officers. Instead, worship should be guided by the Spirit, who would lead men within the fellowship to make a variety of audible contributions. Brethren found biblical support for their practice in the New Testament’s only description of a worship meeting, which begins by describing this kind of charismatic informality: “whenever ye come together, each [of you] has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation” (1 Corinthians 14:26). This open and unstructured format suited some congregations better than others, and it is hardly surprising that it turned out to be less practical in some of the largest assemblies, like that in Plymouth, which, as we have already noticed, had grown by the early 1840s to number over one thousand congregants.27 By that time, nevertheless, this unstructured format had become one of the movement’s defining features. Brethren carried these expectations of the immediate work of the Spirit into their personal lives, too. Some of the movement’s leaders reported large numbers of unusual spiritual experiences. Sir Edward Denny, for example, maintained a life-​long interest in the possibility that dreams could convey extraordinary revelation. He experienced these dreams at key moments in his life. In 1832, like many other brethren, he was extremely concerned by the pressure for democratic reform and its likely social and political consequences. This was, he later remembered,

Pneumatology  93 a time of uneasiness in the country, when the reform bill, being the all-​ absorbing question in the political world, men’s hearts were beginning to fail them for fear. I, in common with others, was alarmed, so much so, that I remembered often lying awake at night, dreading what might be the probable results of this movement.

But God “spoke to my heart and silenced my fears,” he later remembered, “in a dream of the night.”28 As the movement came together, Denny’s claim to extraordinary revelation was not especially unusual. In 1835, The Christian Witness published similar claims, referring to instances of healing, dreams, exorcisms, and speaking in tongues, only some of which were qualified in an editorial comment.29 For leaders within the movement encouraged this interest in charismatic experience. In Plymouth, in the 1830s, Hall hoped for an outbreak of glossolalia, while Darby witnessed instances of miraculous healing.30 In fact, in both Plymouth and Switzerland, Darby was involved in praying for the sick and anointing them with oil.31 Far from being embarrassed by his actions, he encouraged brethren to expect more of these extraordinary occurrences. In fact, he argued, “if we were more faithful, there would be a great deal more of the intervention of God.”32 The problem was that brethren were not faithful—​that they shared with all other Christians the experience of living through the ruin of the church, when the gifts that should have continued through its history had been temporarily withdrawn. Late in life, Darby rolled back on some of these claims. “I do not believe that miracles are performed today,” he insisted in 1877.33 But here, as elsewhere in his theology, he switched between positions. Also in 1877, he suggested that Satan was particularly at work in Catholic countries, where observers could not account for such miraculous phenomena as “winking Madonnas.”34 In 1881, he wrote an account of healings performed by unorthodox Christians, which he appeared to take at face value.35 Under this kind of leadership, brethren grew increasingly interested in the work of the Spirit, curating worship meetings that valued charismatic freedom over liturgical structure, forbidding the exercise of extraordinary gifts while being open to extraordinary guidance. Brethren writing had a very strong focus on the Spirit’s work. The interest may initially have been prompted by local concerns. In the mid-​1830s, brethren had endured the “painful necessity” of excluding from the celebration of the Lord’s Supper a person “unsound” on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.36 The incident caused some soul-​searching among the community’s

94  J. N. Darby opinion-​makers. The editors of The Christian Witness recognized that a concern to establish the “proper divinity and proper humanity” of Christ and the union of believers “in His one blessed, undivided, and spotless Person” may have led to a lack of emphasis upon the person and work of the Spirit, and set out to correct this imbalance.37 This project began in October 1836, when Bellett insisted that fellowship among brethren would require a confession of faith in the Trinity.38 His brief statement on this theme was followed by Darby’s much more extensive account of “The operations of the Spirit of God,” which appeared in several instalments in The Christian Witness in 1837.39 That was when his distinctive pneumatology began to form. Darby’s multipart article set out his earliest convictions regarding the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer and in the life of the church.40 He began with discussion of soteriology. He suggested that many believers were too apt . . . to separate, and too apt to confound, Christ and the Spirit. That is, they separate Christ and the Spirit in operation in us too much; and they confound the work of Christ for us too much with the Spirit.41

Darby established this claim by pointing to the methods used by Christians to gain assurance of salvation. While the Reformed confessional tradition had emphasized the need for introspection, in which believers gained assurance of salvation by diagnosing evidences of sanctification, Darby argued that believers should ground their hopes in the work of Christ for them rather than the work of the Spirit in them. He argued that the objective reality of redemption, rather than subjective evidences of regeneration and sanctification, should be the “ground of rest.” After all, he reminded his readers, the work of Christ was complete, whereas the work of the Spirit was ongoing.42 But his article went on to make bolder claims. Darby moved to discuss the Spirit’s operation in the church, showing that the “unity of the Spirit” had been achieved in the body of Christ, while the “unity of the faith” would be achieved through the congregation’s use of spiritual gifts (Ephesians 4:3, 13).43 For the church was the special sphere of the Spirit’s work. After Christ’s ascension, Darby argued, the Spirit had been “sent down into the world to maintain the witness and manifestation of [Christ’s] glory . . . and to be the earnest and testimony of his title to the earth. The Church on earth is the place and depository of this.”44 Believers therefore constituted “the Church in which the Spirit dwells.”45 And the Spirit still distributed extraordinary gifts.

Pneumatology  95 Darby was sure that the “gift of apostle and prophet has not passed away.”46 Similarly, he added, prophets may be believed to exist. It is not that they now reveal fresh truths not contained in the word . . . but that there may be those who not merely teach and explain ordinary and profitable doctrine . . . and guide by the Spirit into present truth, but who by a special energy of the Spirit can unfold and communicate the mind of Christ to the Church where it is ignorant of it . . . can bring truths, hidden previously from the knowledge of the Church, in the power and testimony of the Spirit of God, to bear on the present circumstances of the Church and future prospects of the world, shewing things to come; only that these things are all actually treasured up in Scripture.47

Prophets, in other words, opened up the mind of God in Scripture. The ecclesiastical consequence of the Spirit’s work—​the meetings for worship in which any man could announce a hymn, pray, or exhort—​was not working toward some kind of ecclesiastical democracy. Darby was careful to maintain the rights of formally recognized ministers. While the operations of the Spirit in the Church were a distinctive feature of what he still described as the “gospel dispensation,” the idea of “all having a right to speak in the Church could never enter into the Christian mind.”48 The Spirit supplied gifts to the church and led individuals to use these gifts in public worship, but the result was not, as many of Darby’s critics feared, a culture of “any-​man ministry.” Sometimes there had been too much freedom for unprofitable contributions: “what is called open ministry has given occasion for the flesh.”49 Darby was clear that a Spirit-​filled church was not a democracy. Brethren arguments about the work of the Spirit in the church challenged traditional assumptions about the need for clergy and liturgy. This was recognized by the large number of early leaders among brethren who had seceded from ministry in the Church of England.50 Among their number, Harris, who had been curate in Plymouth, recognized that the Roman Catholic Church had liturgical structures that did away with any need for spiritual gifts. He worried about the “increase of Popery” within the English establishment—​not just for liturgical but also for pneumatological reasons. But, he admitted, even within the Church of England there was “no provision for real liberty of worship, and the machinery of the one as well as the other can go on equally orderly without, as with the Spirit of God.”51 Believers

96  J. N. Darby within these denominations, and elsewhere, should show “real subjection to the Spirit in any of his gifts, whether of teaching, oversight, or rule, instead of bondage to an order of men claiming for themselves the authority of God, and the blessedness of worship in Spirit and truth, instead of bodily exercise and constrained service.”52 Brethren who had been employed as dissenting ministers made similar claims. Dorman explained his resignation from the Congregational ministry in Principles of truth on the present state of the church (1838).53 He expressed his commitment to the freedom of the Spirit in the church as a call to return to his tradition’s first principles. He reminded his readers that Robert Brown (d. 1633), the “earliest of the Independents,” had maintained “liberty of ministry, the equality of Christian brethren, the Spirit’s teaching and competency (and not man’s appointment or ordination), as the proper and only warrant for ministry in the present dispensation.”54 But the Congregationalists had moved away from Brown’s radical claim. In fact, Dorman worried, the more recent requirement for ordination would have closed Congregational pulpits to the preaching of Jesus Christ.55 Dorman’s former colleagues took his point, referring to John Milton’s Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove hirelings out of the church (1659) and admitted that his “wild and incoherent” arguments were “not altogether unscriptural.”56 Dorman was encouraged even by this faint praise. He traced worldliness and decay in the established and dissenting churches to their neglect of the “authority and sufficiency of the word of God” and to their suppression of the “office and operations of the Holy Ghost in the Church.” What Christians required, he believed, was not a new baptism of the Spirit (for the Spirit has never been withdrawn; grieved he may have been, but he abides still with the Church) but the simple recognition of His presence, and authority, and gifts in the Church; and that, in the person of each believer, and in the aggregate of believers, or the Church, he may be allowed an unrestrained and unhindered control and operation.57

Developing an argument similar to that of Darby’s recently published pamphlet, The connexion of the term clergy with the penal guilt of the present dispensation, and the sin against the Holy Ghost (1834), Dorman argued that the Spirit had been “hindered and grieved” by the unscriptural division between clergy and laity and that this division had left the church “weakened and destroyed.” The “ultimate tendency” of the clerical system was to “exclude

Pneumatology  97 the Spirit and his operations altogether.” In fact, he concluded, as Harris had done in the previous year, the “present system of things, whether amongst Churchmen or Dissenters, would go on much smoother and better without the Spirit of God than with it.”58 And he found the solution to his problem in the “laundered charismaticism” of the brethren. The meaning of this “laundered charismaticism” was contested at the end of the 1840s, as the brethren movement divided. The dispute between Darby and Newton was, in part, focused on how best to implement pneumatic ecclesiology. For Darby and Newton had met at the intersection of their very different theological journeys. Darby was moving from a liturgical background into a less structured format for worship; Newton was moving in exactly the opposite direction, from the unstructured Quaker meetings of his childhood to the more formalized structures that were typical of dissent. In the early 1830s, when their friendship had been established, the two men had a lot in common. But their theological odysseys continued and took them in very different directions. Like other brethren from a Quaker background, Newton resisted Darby’s attempts to retain informal liturgical structures. Like many brethren from an Anglican background, Darby pushed hard against any return to liturgical structure. But their differences also reflected the very different contexts in which their ideas were formed. In the late 1830s, while Darby pursued his mission work in Switzerland and France, Newton remained in Plymouth to manage a rapidly growing congregation. In such a large congregation, the open format of the worship meeting was necessarily dominated by a tiny proportion of congregants. Darby, meanwhile, was developing his thinking about the Spirit and the church in the much smaller and less formal gatherings of Swiss dissent. Provoked by a pamphlet on “ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism” (1844), Darby argued against such strict cessationism, worrying that it entirely institutionalized the power of the Spirit in the church.59 Yes, he admitted, while the Spirit remained within the church, his extraordinary gifts had been withdrawn. But the gifts had been withdrawn not because the canon of Scripture had been completed, as nineteenth-​century cessationists routinely argued, but because of the church’s failure.60 God continued to supply gifts for the edification of believers, but he could no longer validate the church with extraordinary gifts of power.61 Darby repeated his argument about modern-​ day apostles as being “those whom the word of God calls apostles, that is, as having been especially sent by the Lord, although it may not have been, as to all of them, with the same authority.”62 Arguing that his views on ministry

98  J. N. Darby were closer to those of Calvin than were those of the Genevan evangelicals, Darby rooted his pneumatology in his understanding of the history of redemption and in the distinctiveness of the church: “although the Holy Ghost has acted from the beginning in creation, although He has from that time acted in the soul, acted in the prophets and others as a divine Being, as God, using them as His instruments, He had not descended to take His place and dwell on earth, as He has done in the Church.”63 But now, in the aftermath of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost has come, in person, on earth in the Church; He is present in person; He is some one who can be grieved. He is present in two ways—​ in the individual and in the Church . . . while He is God, we do not find that prayer is addressed to Him: not that all praise be not due to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but because he is always looked upon as on earth, as the Son was there . . . and He is the source of all prayer and praise to the Father who gave Him, and to the Son who is glorified.64

But the liturgical tradition of the Reformed churches denied the Spirit’s power. In fact, Darby argued, there was an “absolute incompatibility of ministry . . . with the existence of the active energy and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. . . . The Holy Ghost must be excluded!”65 As the crisis continued to develop among English brethren, Darby sought to share his insights into the ministry of the Spirit in the church in a published letter to believers in London (1846). God’s presence in the church was not just through the Holy Spirit indwelling in individuals, he explained, but also through the Spirit dwelling in the temple that is the Church of God.66 The point had become foundational to the new movement’s identity. In fact, Darby suggested, the “presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church was (with the waiting for Christ’s coming,) the grand doctrine on which the whole testimony of . . . brethren was founded.”67 But not all among the brethren were satisfied with this distinction between the high claims for the presence of the Spirit and low expectations of his promise of extraordinary gifts. In the early 1830s, the emphasis upon the Spirit’s intervention had raised hopes that some brethren believed were unrealistic and that other brethren were disappointed had never been fulfilled. For the new community turned out to be much less charismatic than some among its number had hoped. In 1848, Andrew Jukes lamented that brethren had focused on the “visibility of the Church” at the expense of its

Pneumatology  99 “vitality” and admitted that he had found “no satisfactory answer” to the problem of ensuring the visibility of the church after the extraordinary gifts had disappeared.68 How could a charismatic body exist without charismata? If the Spirit’s gifts had been withdrawn, was God validating any of the ecclesial bodies? But not everyone understood what he meant. Dorman found it “extremely difficult to account for” his comments.69 Jukes’s hope that the brethren would be validated by the appearance of extraordinary gifts was, Dorman believed, “unbelief in the actings of God’s Spirit for the maintenance of the holiness befitting his presence, because he is not, as heretofore, setting his signature on the outward condition of the church as his witness before the world.”70 Brethren were divinely validated not by acts of power, as Jukes had hoped would be the case, but by the imposition of exclusive discipline in assemblies of the saints. As the movement divided and Dorman and Jukes moved in different directions, open and exclusive brethren came to be distinguished by their differing expectations of the Spirit. Exclusive brethren retained the “laundered charismaticism” of the movement’s early days. Darby developed a doctrine of the work of the Spirit that shaped his views of salvation, the church, Christian life, and eschatological completion. For the brethren, in other words, the ministry of the Spirit in the ruin of Christendom was a key feature of dispensational thought.

II After the division of brethren into “open” and “exclusive” networks, in the later 1840s, Darby’s doctrine of the Spirit shaped his thinking about other themes in his developing dispensational theology. Those brethren who remained in his fellowship articulated a more clearly reasoned account of the work of the Spirit in redemptive history. For Darby, evangelicals did not really understand the significance of Pentecost. In his view, they tended to see the event in terms of the sudden and relatively brief appearance of miraculous gifts, rather than as representing a step-​change in redemptive history.71 Old Testament prophets had looked forward to two divine missions, he believed—​the sending of the Son and the subsequent sending of the Spirit (Galatians 4:4–​6). The prophets had anticipated the “outpouring of the Spirit . . . as distinctive of the great time of Messiah’s blessing—​the hoped-​ for promised blessing.”72 John the Baptist argued that “one of the two great features” of the Messiah’s ministry would be that he would baptize his people

100  J. N. Darby in the Spirit.73 For Darby, the evangelicals who reduced Pentecost to an efflorescence of spiritual gifts were denying “what constitutes the essential difference of the Christian position. . . . This it is the prophets had prophesied of; this it is Christ had promised; this it is He gave as the witness of His being gone on high and set down at God’s right hand.”74 It was the presence of the Spirit that made the church “distinct.” It was a “wholly new thing” that this divine Person should come and take up His abode on earth, consequent on an accomplished redemption . . . and this was so distinct and prominent a fact, and a fact so characteristic of the earthly condition, of a state of things which was the special object of God’s eternal counsels, that it is said, looking at earth, “The Holy Ghost was not yet” . . . and the reason is given: Jesus was not yet glorified.75

For the teaching of the New Testament was that Christ had been exalted, had poured out his Spirit upon his people in fulfilment of Old Testament and his own prophecy, and that this baptism of the Spirit had created a completely new thing—​the church, the body of Christ.76 “The Church, then, being Christ’s body, could not exist before the Head was in heaven, as Ephesians i. teaches clearly, nor the habitation of God through the Spirit when the Spirit was not sent.”77 This is what made the church a charismatic reality: “before Christ’s exaltation,” Darby claimed, there had never existed an assembly that was the habitation of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22).78 But evangelicals did not understand this truth. “If Pentecost be merely gifts,” then the cessation of these gifts would leave believers in the same place as the Old Testament saints. The evangelical view of Pentecost reduced Christians “to the old patriarchal or Jehovah condition.”79 For Darby, this was an unacceptable conclusion. The evangelical view of Pentecost represented the “denial of Christianity—​I do not say of Christ, but it is [the denial] of Christianity.”80 It was the denial of what made the church distinct—​what made Christianity an entirely new thing in the history of redemption. Darby’s dispensational claim was that the church was distinct from Israel—​and it was the presence of the Spirit in the church that made that distinction. These themes became central to Darby’s thinking about the Spirit, the church, and the claims of the exclusive brethren. He reiterated these arguments in The presence of the Holy Ghost and the coming of the Lord, the living power and true hope of the church of God (1878). Protestantism was something less than New Testament Christianity, he insisted, for

Pneumatology  101 “Christianity is constituted and characterised by the presence of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven.”81 While being grateful for the achievements of reformers, Darby argued that their message had to be rounded out by the “other . . . truths” taught by brethren, including the “coming of the Holy Ghost, and His dwelling in the saints individually, and in the assembly as the house of God, and forming the body of Christ down here.” These, Darby believed, are the “great truths with constitute the present character and specific future of the Christian and Christianity, and which God is now bringing out to awaken the saints of God to their true calling and character.”82 But the truths that God was “bringing out” were also revealing the true state of the Protestant churches: “The more truth and the state of Christendom develop themselves, the more it becomes evident that the evangelical world . . . has never had the full truth of the gospel, nor the present power and hope of God’s assembly; nor the individual Christian his true present standing and calling before God . . . the being in Christ, and knowing it by the Holy Ghost, and what it involves now, and in hope, has dropped out of their creed altogether.”83 Darby believed that his teaching had real pastoral benefits. He built on his understanding of the work of the Spirit in the church to describe the work of the Spirit in the individual Christian, formalizing a distinction between definitive and progressive sanctification while developing a two-​stage theory of the Christian life in his teaching on deliverance from the law and on sealing with the Spirit. In certain respects, he admitted, for all that they belonged to different bodies, believers in the Old and New Testament periods did have similar experiences of the ministry of the Spirit. Old Testament saints were regenerated in exactly the same way as were Christians, for example.84 But there were important differences, too. Old Testament saints “were quickened surely; but if you take Galatians iv., you find they were not in the condition of sons.”85 Sadly, he recognized, many New Testament believers were stuck in the same Old Testament experience. “You see so many saints everywhere who are not settled in their relationship with God,” he noted in 1878.86 Thinking of the years between the beginning of his religious interests and his “deliverance” in 1827/​28, he admitted to having been “seven years without the Holy Ghost.”87 Believers who were working through similar kinds of discouragement would find little find help in Protestant tradition: “Go to Calvin, and he will send you back to your baptism, while the evangelicals go back to the blood [of Christ]. . . . When I go to God I find Christ, who bore my sins, sitting at the right hand of God because He has done it. This will make me see

102  J. N. Darby sin a great deal more than anything else.”88 The “present power” to establish this relationship “is the Holy Ghost come down.”89 For the Christian experience of the Spirit was meant to be distinctive. “The effect of the Holy Ghost’s power is to bring Christ back to us,” he explained, “not in person, as an object, but Christ becoming, by the power of the Holy Ghost, life in me.”90 This entirely transformed the import of sanctification: “It is not any more a question of what I ought to be, but of what Christ has done, and done for me.”91 Darby shifted away from the heavy responsibility that traditional evangelical teaching had placed on believers. Paying attention to the difference between indicatives and imperatives in Romans 6:11, for example, he explained that we are not called to die to sin. No such thought is in Scripture. We are called upon, as alive in Christ, to mortify every movement of sin; but not to die to it. We are alive in Christ who has died, and we are viewed as dead; and called upon to view ourselves as dead. . . . All the sentimental talk about crucifying being a lingering death is the setting aside the plain and imperative sense of these passages.92

In other words, he was arguing, any discussion of progressive sanctification would become utterly legalistic if it were not rooted in an experience of sanctification that was also definitive. For Darby was dissatisfied with the most influential accounts of sanctification. He argued that believers were “set apart” for God at the new birth—​that was their definitive sanctification—​and their progress in Christ-​likeness was the Spirit’s outworking of that status. He believed that the Calvinist argument for the continuation of struggle with sin and the Wesleyan argument for sinless perfection both made the same error: “instead of applying Christ as God’s answer to their experiences . . . they are occupied with self, nourishing self, instead of substituting Christ for it. . . . This is never faith, for faith looks outside itself.”93 And so he continued to differentiate his position from those of other evangelicals with reference to the baptism of the Spirit and his sealing of believers.94 From the mid-​1860s, he insisted that the baptism of the Holy Ghost was not synonymous with regeneration.95 Drawing on Acts 19:2 (“Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”), he argued that baptism in the Spirit was an experience subsequent to new birth.96 “What a blessed place the saints are in!” he exclaimed: “the Holy Ghost to reveal to them all that God delights in as regards the Lord Jesus, His person, His work—​all that the Father has given Him—​all His coming glory.”97 The Spirit

Pneumatology  103 was the promise of the Father’s love: “until we make our home in the Father’s house, He makes His home with us.”98 These general arguments came into focus in the 1870s, as a version of Darby’s teaching on sanctification became internationally celebrated—​ and notorious. His views were taken up in unexpected places and in ways of which he could not approve.99 This was especially the case with respect to the “higher life” movement, which flourished from the 1860s, and in the later 1870s developed into the so-​called Keswick holiness movement.100 The most important leaders of this movement were Robert Pearsall Smith and Hannah Whitall Smith.101 The Pearsall Smiths, as the British press tended to refer to the couple, had a complex relationship with brethren. Shortly after her evangelical conversion, during the revival of 1857–​1858, Hannah joined a brethren assembly in Philadelphia.102 By early 1859, however, she had discovered William Boardman’s The higher Christian life (1858) and had embraced his message of entire and immediate sanctification by faith, which she understood that brethren did not share.103 However, her life of “higher holiness” only began when she began actively to pursue the “second blessing” in 1866.104 Her husband, Robert, experienced his “second blessing” at a camp meeting in 1867.105 The couple immediately began to share news of their experience. Robert summarized his views in Holiness through faith (1870), and Hannah published articles on the subject in her husband’s magazine, The Christian’s Pathway of Power (1873–​1874), which were collected into a single volume as The Christian’s secret of a happy life (1875), a book that has become an evangelical classic.106 By the early 1870s, the couple had developed a distinctive theological offer. But it was almost by accident that they found themselves at the center of the holiness movement in England. In spring 1873, Robert traveled to England for the sake of his health, being joined by Hannah in January 1874.107 Almost without trying, the couple found themselves addressing meetings for the promotion of holiness, which grew until they were being attended by crowds of up to fifteen hundred people.108 This was likely when they met with Andrew Jukes.109 Jukes had played a prominent role among brethren until his withdrawal from the movement and his adoption of an idiosyncratic blend of high churchmanship and universalism, which he defended in The second death and the restitution of all things (1867).110 Hannah would have appreciated this work, having already begun to promote universalist teaching.111 But Darby was also paying attention to the achievements of the Pearsall Smiths—​and worrying about what they might mean.

104  J. N. Darby In 1873, Darby reviewed Robert Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1870). He discovered in the book a theory of sanctification that was “incorrect . . . mischievous . . . a perversion of what I believe to be one of the most imperious necessities of the church of God.”112 The book evidenced “such vagueness, want of knowledge of scriptural truth, and contradiction . . . that it is hard to deal with,” he complained.113 It was full of “unintelligible contradictions” and “inextricable confusion,” as if it were intended to mock readers with “vain words . . . to bewilder, not to teach.”114 So Darby set out to untangle Pearsall Smith’s ideas and to reconstruct their genealogy. He discovered that Pearsall Smith was teaching a mixture of views held by “so-​ called Plymouth Brethren and Wesleyans.”115 By the 1870s, the theme of deliverance from law had become a prominent feature in Darby’s writing. Darby had developed this teaching around his understanding of Romans 7 and 8. Traditionally, evangelical Calvinists argued that the conflicts described in Romans 7 were a normal part of Christian experience. Darby disagreed. Instead, he argued, the chapter described the spiritual difficulties of a “regenerate soul” in the abnormal state of pursuing sanctification “under law.”116 He believed this to be a very common condition. Many Christians were “as persons outside, at best hoping; not inside, entered through the rent veil, abiding in the light of Christ’s countenance and His cross in its own divine perfectness with the eye that the Holy Ghost gives.”117 These unhappy believers needed to be delivered from the experience of failure and condemnation that came with being under the law so that they could enter into the happy condition of being fully conscious of their deliverance from the law’s demands. In other words, they need to move from the condition described in Romans 7 to the condition described in Romans 8. Darby believed that Holiness through faith “falsifies and perverts” this teaching of deliverance.118 Pearsall Smith’s book used unscriptural expressions and arrived at unscriptural conclusions, turning what Darby believed to be an already-​achieved reality into a mystical experience that had to be pursued. Darby understood that Christians, by definition, had already been cleansed by the blood of Christ. So, he argued, Christians were “not called to die,” as Pearsall Smith argued, but to “understand that we have died.”119 This death to sin was not a mystical experience that might happen “at a given moment by a work in us,” as Pearsall Smith claimed, but something that had occurred when the “old man” had been “crucified with Christ” at the crucifixion.120 Pearsall Smith was turning what was once-​for-​ all into something that had still to be achieved. Darby feared that Christ’s

Pneumatology  105 work was being made powerless and its effect lowered to that of “repeated Jewish sacrifices.”121 Pearsall Smith was offering a “remedy of which scripture knows nothing, and which really leaves us where we were.”122 His “hopes and yearnings” were “too low.”123 The effect of Holiness through faith, Darby feared, would actually be to reduce the standard of righteousness.124 But for all that he dismissed it, the “higher life” movement was setting an agenda for Darby’s writing. He repeated his criticisms of Holiness through faith in several items that appeared in The Bible Treasury (1873–​1874). He reiterated his claim to be the main source of Pearsall Smith’s ideas: “The greater part of what is here, even to its terminology, is borrowed from so-​ called ‘Brethren,’ ” he noted.125 He claimed to have been teaching those ideas “now near fifty years, only I trust with increasing clearness.”126 He feared that “higher life” advocates were promising an experience of sanctification that side-​stepped the experience of conviction by the law: “you do not get out of Romans vii. in some shape, till you have got into it, and know not merely guilt, not merely that you have an evil flesh, but, what is harder to learn, and more thoroughly humbling, that you have no power.”127 And he feared that advocates of this new teaching did not take the objective language of the epistles as strongly as they should. God cannot “impute a sin to me as a believer, for Christ has borne them all; nor is it a question of past sins or future sins, inasmuch as for Christians now Christ never bore any but future sins.”128 For, he noted, the teachers of perfectionism promised a life of “quietness and constant triumph” that seemed entirely unfamiliar to those who studied the biography of St. Paul.129 Yet, even as he eviscerated the book’s arguments, Darby felt no individual animosity toward Pearsall Smith. Whatever his other concerns, Darby appreciated the American’s challenge to the “low condition of evangelical Christendom.”130 The two men met in the first few weeks of 1875, while Darby was in Philadelphia. In his correspondence, Darby described Pearsall Smith as a “very good friend,” with whom he had enjoyed spending time. But he was a critical friend: “I told him his doctrine would have to be sifted, and he took it very well.”131 Darby’s critique was candid. The “higher life” movement represented an appeal to “experience and Arminianism.”132 In fact, he concluded, triumphant spiritual experience was not everything: “I would rather see anxiety for holiness and God’s glory in a person who had not got assurance, but who was in earnest, than confidence in one who was careless.”133 Despite his evangelical celebrity status, Pearsall Smith was paying attention to Darbyite critiques. He responded to one set of criticisms that

106  J. N. Darby appeared in Kelly’s journal. In January 1875, a correspondent identified only as “J. E. B.”—​who might have been James Ebenezer Batten—​reported in The Bible Treasury on Robert Pearsall Smith’s farewell meeting, which had taken place in Liverpool, six months before.134 J. E. B. believed that the “higher life” was narcissistic. Pearsall Smith was entirely preoccupied with “one’s own self ” and that the blessings he promised consisted entirely of “expurgation of sin, and bad tempers, and cares.”135 J. E. B. believed that Pearsall Smith had not learned from his many critics, and he worried that this intensively individualistic species of sanctification was promoting ecclesiastical antinomianism: “seldom, if ever, have there been such loud professions and calls to holiness of life and personal consecration . . . and yet only seen to collapse at the very moment when an opportunity for their definite and distinct application against ecclesiastical evil and corruption occurred.”136 Those who experienced the “higher life” stayed in their mixed denominations, however unscriptural those denominations might be. Somehow, Pearsall Smith got hold of this critique. He replied with a letter of protest. J. E. B. published a reply to this letter in The Bible Treasury (1875).137 His condemnation of “higher life” hyper-​individualism grew more pointed: “how can that be called holiness which unsettles nobody in their ecclesiastical and political surroundings?”138 He traced the movement back to its origins in Boardman’s The higher Christian life, a book that promoted “something worse than a turning back to Judaism.”139 As brethren criticism of “higher life” teaching gained momentum, Darby published “Cleansing with water; and what it means to walk in the light” (1875).140 He repeated his appreciation of Pearsall Smith’s good intentions: “all this stir as to a higher life has done good, in awakening souls to the need of something better than current Christianity, and I bless God for it.”141 But he was increasingly worried by the mystical turn that “higher life” advocates promoted. It was certainly true that the “professing church has lost the sense of that which characterizes Christianity—​the present living power of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.”142 But, he argued, “higher life” advocates were mistaken when they separated the Spirit from the word and when they expected that their teaching would bring renewal and restoration to the church.143 “I do not resist faith in the present operation and power of the Holy Ghost, provided scripture has its place, and the present condition of the church in the last days be borne in mind.”144 In particular, Darby objected to the perfectionist teaching that believers should experience continual “cleansing and recleansing in Christ’s blood.”145 For all their talk of

Pneumatology  107 elevated spiritual experience, the advocates of the “higher life” theory were returning to a pre-​Pentecostal experience: “This system brings back into imputable evil, needing blood-​shedding or cleansing by blood, what is a question of holiness, state, of water-​cleansing; and the perfectness of standing, and holy dealing with the state, are both lost.”146 Believers would need to be “redeemed over and over again, justified over and over again!”147 Darby believed this teaching to be spiritually disastrous: “in the long-​run it leaves the soul in a superficial state.”148 In encouraging believers to return continually to the blood of Christ for cleansing, Pearsall Smith’s holiness teaching was pushing believers back onto “Jewish ground.”149 By the time Darby’s article had been published, the Pearsall Smiths had returned to England for the visit that would end their careers as holiness preachers. Robert had crossed the Atlantic in March 1875, and he found himself having to deal with criticism of his wife’s universalism.150 When Hannah joined him, in May, they addressed meetings at Brighton that drew eight thousand listeners.151 Their effective presentation of their distinctive theology soon found them an audience, including members of several European royal families and Gladstone, the former prime minister.152 But, in late June, just as Robert began to prepare for the first holiness conference in Keswick, things began to fall apart. Robert became embroiled in one of the most sensational religious scandals of the century. Evangelical leaders formed an investigating committee and hushed up their discoveries, allowing him to quietly return to the United States in July 1875.153 His forced removal meant that he missed the inaugural Keswick convention—​an annual institution through which his views, or a lightly modified version of them, would become canonical within English evangelical culture.154 But, several months later, details of the scandal were revealed in a newspaper.155 Robert had been discovered in a locked hotel room with his arm around a woman.156 The episode seemed to confirm the real-​world implications of “higher life” teaching and bore out Darby’s concerns about its incipient antinomianism. But brethren writers hardly noticed the scandal. They continued to call attention to the theological issues that were at stake. Kelly, writing in July 1875, worried that higher-​life perfectionism “generates self-​sufficiency, as every degree and form of Pelagianism must.”157 Darby responded to the controversy about “higher life” teaching by developing his discussion of the Spirit’s sealing. Throughout most of his preaching and writing career, he had assumed that the sealing of the Spirit occurred as part of conversion.158 This had been quite clear in his Synopsis of the

108  J. N. Darby Bible (1857–​1867).159 In 1865, he maintained the conventional evangelical Calvinist claim that “we are first regenerated and then sealed and baptized into one body. I speak of no interval of time being necessary.”160 He could “see no reason, now the Comforter is come, why we should not be sealed the instant we believe; but believing must come first . . . for believers only are sealed.”161 But his language became more ambiguous. In 1875, he added, the doctrine had become a distinctive element of the brethren’s testimony: the sealing of the Spirit had “distinguished characteristically the labours of those with whom I am associated.”162 In 1878, he argued that “we get the sealing of God” at the “moment we believe in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . They received the Holy Ghost on believing the forgiveness of their sins.”163 In 1879, he used the analogy of the prodigal son to explain how an individual could be “converted and in the right road” without being certain of his status as a son. “I am very glad the question is before brethren,” he noted, calling attention to his claim that “souls are not Christ’s till they are sealed . . . the authority for it being Romans viii. 9.”164 He continued to reiterate the point: “an unsealed Christian is unknown to Scripture,” he remarked in an undated later from 1880.165 It was only in the last years of his life that this aspect of Darby’s teaching took on its most distinctive form. In November 1880, he was passing through a period of serious ill-​health, unable to sleep through the night, and was sitting up for hours in a doze.166 “When I have a moment,” he noted, “what occupies me now is the sealing of the Spirit . . . not anything new, but brethren were becoming muddy about it, part of the general decline; it has an importance in my mind it never had.”167 But he was understating the novelty of the argument he was about to make—​a novelty so serious as to provoke a backlash from a large number of exclusive brethren in America. For, if Darby’s teaching on deliverance and sanctification was controversial outside the brethren movement, his teaching on the sealing of the Spirit was divisive within it. He published his new teaching in two thematically overlapping articles, “Sanctification” (1878) and “On sealing with the Holy Ghost” (1881). In these works, he described the Spirit as the seal of present faith and the earnest of future redemption.168 He argued that the Spirit’s sealing “gives the intelligence and consciousness” of forgiveness, cleansing, and adoption and displays the “true character” of Christianity.169 This new teaching reinforced the two-​stage theory of Christian life that he had suggested in his teaching on deliverance and sanctification. Citing the examples of the apostles before Pentecost, the baptized believers in Samaria upon whom the apostles laid

Pneumatology  109 their hands, and Paul during the three days of his blindness, he argued that it was “perfectly clear according to scripture” that a person “may be born again, and not have received the Holy Ghost.”170 He worked in an uncomplicated way to establish fixed principles from the transition experience of the Acts of the Apostles, without making much of evidence from the epistles. Darby was not always very good at explaining what sealing was: “If a soul can in truth before God say, Abba, Father, that soul is sealed. If a person really knows that he is in Christ, and Christ in him, he is sealed. If the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, the man is sealed.”171 What kept believers from this experience was a failure to grasp that Christ’s death covered sins they had yet to commit. These future sins would result in an “interruption of communion,” of course, and would require a “gracious washing of the feet with water,” but they would never be imputed to a believer.172 The sealing of the Spirit “gives the intelligence and consciousness of this new position.”173 For the “Christian is always looked at as born again, forgiven, and sealed. That is the Christian state—​till then he is not in it.”174 Again, Darby developed his teaching to distance himself from the conventions of evangelicalism. “Ordinary evangelical ministry” emphasized the need for new birth and self-​examination and warned against “false confidence” in the blood of Christ. “The effect is, that the mass (where the word reaches the soul) remain in the spirit of bondage, and searching their own state to see if God can accept them. . . . A few, in whom the Spirit of God made it a felt need, do realise forgiveness as a present thing, and even that of attainment; consequently, being sealed, they cry to God, Abba, Father.”175 Darby wanted believers to remain realistic in their expectations of what this experience might look like. He wrote “Deliverance from the law of sin” (1881) to follow up his “tract” on the sealing of the Spirit and to remind his readers than even whose who had been sealed had not been “delivered from that law of evil which works in the flesh.”176 As if to prove the point, Darby’s remarks would provoke one of the most serious divisions among the exclusive brethren. While his comments had some historicity, in that there are similarities between his two-​stage view of sealing and that of several Puritan theologians, they were not typical of the Calvinist consensus and were not adopted by those brethren who preferred to maintain it.177 Shortly after Darby’s death, F. W. Grant, one of the most prominent exclusive brethren in America, robustly defended the older Reformed view that sealing occurred at conversion. His tract, Life in Christ and sealing with the Spirit (1884), warned brethren against being subject to an “unwritten creed” and called upon them to test Darby’s teaching by Scripture.178 In the

110  J. N. Darby division that ensued, around half of American exclusives withdrew from their brethren in England. As Darby’s teaching about the church was reinforced by his teaching about the Spirit, disputes about pneumatology were undermining the unity of the Spirit (Ephesians 4:3).

III The spiritual enthusiasms that fed into the formation of the brethren movement were, to a large extent, codified and institutionalized in the doctrinal developments of Darby’s later career. Some brethren retained the almost mystical impulses that had been a feature of the movement’s earlier days. Darby was largely dismissive of these impulses. “Probably a third of the poor people of England are converted through dreams,” he noted in an undated Bible reading. “Only, if people lean on their dreams they never get on.” After all, one man, “who told me he was converted preaching one of his own sermons in a dream,” had recently “left the church.”179 But some of the most prominent brethren did continue to “lean on their dreams.” Several years after Darby’s death, Denny published Dreams, visions, interesting incidents (n.d.) to argue that “dreams are not always . . . unmeaning things.”180 Drawing on Job 33:15–​18, he included accounts of dreams by friends and relatives, including Mary Denny and Bellett, while noting the influence of a dream in his own mother’s conversion.181 He recorded the dream of another woman who imagined herself inappropriately dressed at a fashionable evening gathering. Denny’s account of this dream was rather more self-​regarding. As the party continued, an “invisible hand” unrolled a copy of his prophecy chart, A prophetical stream of time (c 1860), which helped her realize the vanity of her surroundings.182 For all that Darby exercised enormous influence among brethren thinking about the extraordinary interventions of the Spirit, Denny’s promotion of extraordinary revelation through dreams contrasted with the hesitations of his close friend. If Darby’s thinking never dominated brethren, it was widely noticed elsewhere. His pneumatology made an impact in the Calvinist constituencies that he often criticized. Sometimes this was based on misunderstanding. The Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck, for example, understood “Darbyists” as normalizing the expectation of healing through prayer.183 Sometimes Calvinist writers accepted but did not acknowledge their debt

Pneumatology  111 to Darby’s teaching. John Murray, the Westminster Theological Seminary professor and Bible commentator, developed a distinction between definitive and progressive sanctification that had no background in the Reformed confessional or exegetical tradition but appeared to be lifted entirely from Darby’s work.184 But sometimes Calvinist writers did acknowledge their debt. In the 1930s, the reclusive, eccentric, but highly influential devotional writer A. W. Pink admitted in his studies on sanctification that he “found the Plymouth Brethren much more helpful than the Reformers and the Puritans.”185 But perhaps the most influential Calvinist to defend Darby’s ideas and reputation was Martyn Lloyd-​Jones, one of the most significant preachers of the twentieth century, who cited the “great J. N. Darby” in support of his doctrine of the sealing of the Spirit—​even though his strongly experiential two-​stage theory of sealing and sanctification was much closer to that of Pearsall Smith.186 In Lloyd-​Jones, the Calvinist and Keswick traditions combined in ways that did not make sense to all of his followers. Lloyd-​Jones found antecedents for his “theoretical Pentecostalism” in eighteenth-​century Welsh Methodists—​but he also found this combination of Calvinism and “laundered charismaticism” in Darby.187 For all that his work was taken up by the most important advocate of charismatic theology, Darby was emphatically opposed to his teaching being “mysticised.”188 Mysticism is “the enemy’s corruption of these truths,” he believed.189 However he promoted spiritual experience, he wanted his arguments about that experience to be brought to the bar of Scripture. Indeed, he insisted, “the Spirit and the word cannot be separated without falling into fanaticism on the one hand or into rationalism on the other.”190 The evidence of the New Testament was both that believers could have much more significant spiritual experiences than they often expected and that these believers would never achieve perfection on this side of glory. Darby noted that St. Paul had not attained perfection—​“and it is the folly of mysticism to pretend it has apprehended what Paul had not.”191 Darby realized that their understanding of the doctrine of the work of the Spirit distinguished brethren from all other groups of Christians. The “walking in the faith of . . . the Holy Ghost in the Church” was a key element of the teaching that had “characterised the ministry and testimony of those called the brethren.”192 Drawing together strands in his dispensational thinking, he argued that the “whole Christian life and state” is “characterised” by the Spirit’s presence and activity.

112  J. N. Darby That which had been prophesied of in the Old Testament as to the outpouring of the Spirit, was accomplished in the New. The Christians as such were after the Spirit and minded the things of the Spirit. They lived after it, were led by it, were sent out and guided by it in their service. The flesh lusted against it. He made intercession for them in their hearts, with groanings which could not be uttered. . . . They were not to grieve Him in their walk, nor quench Him in His gifts. . . . Collectively, also, they are builded together as a habitation of God through the Spirit, and are thereby the temple of God collectively (1 Cor. iii); as individually (Chap. vi.).193

For Pentecost had represented a step-​change in the history of redemption that dispensational theology marked out. The “laundered charismaticism” that was an outworking of Darby’s dispensational teaching proved that God was dwelling among his people by his Spirit.

4 Eschatology “The times portend great things: the dark and heavy clouds are gathering the air, and hanging over a guilty world, which shall soon be discharged in tremendous judgements.”1

Darby’s innovations in soteriology, ecclesiology, and pneumatology were all driven by his dispensational thinking—​even if that “dispensational” descriptor is most often associated with his eschatological thinking, a version of which has become the most influential end-​times system in global evangelicalism, exercising significant political and cultural clout.2 As a consequence, Darby’s name recurs in analyses of Zionism, American foreign policy, and Islamist apocalyptic theology, just as it does in histories of evangelicalism.3 But Darby’s reputation as the designer of the most significant modern end-​ of-​the-​world view is in many respects ironic. His thinking was always catastrophic. But, when the brethren movement began in the late 1820s, neither he nor any other of its leaders were committed to the system of thought for which he would become best known.4 In fact, his earliest writings included a critique of the futurist interpretation of Revelation upon which his later ideas would come to depend.5 Darby bonded with Newton in the early 1830s, when both men were expecting the rapture (the removal of Christians to heaven) and the tribulation (the seven-​year period of divine wrath foretold in Revelation). In this early period, both men were teaching versions of historic premillennialism, arguing that the rapture should be expected after the tribulation, rather than before it, as Darby would later claim.6 Darby and Newton agreed to such an extent that they were slated to prepare together the notes on Revelation in the multiauthor commentary on the New Testament that brethren proposed in the mid-​1830s.7 By the late 1830s, however, Darby had developed a new understanding of future events, and these arguments were a disruptive innovation in brethren thinking.8

J. N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism. Crawford Gribben, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190932343.003.0005

114  J. N. Darby The fact that Darby’s prophetic convictions developed so long after the brethren movement began may explain why in critical accounts of the new movement they were not always recognized as core components of his broader theological system. Those who supported his ministry were not always persuaded by his most distinctive eschatological claims. Brethren did tend to be premillennialists, but the competing accounts of premillennialism that they defended cut across their most significant divisions. After 1848, advocates of Darbyite teaching among open brethren vied for influence with others, such as George Müller and Dan Crawford, who promoted historic premillennialism, while others, such as Edward Kennaway Groves, suggested the possibility of conditional immortality and a smaller number, including Andrew Jukes, drifted off into universalism.9 Among exclusives, brethren held to a narrower range of eschatological opinions. Darbyite ideas dominated their discussion, even if Hall retained traditional Reformation views of the papal antichrist and denied the existence of a future Jewish remnant until he left the movement in 1866.10 What is notable is the intensity with which these convictions were held. At times, this enthusiasm pushed brethren into the setting of dates. Darby admitted that he had sometimes given in to this temptation.11 Some historians have claimed, without offering much evidence, that he expected the second coming in the mid-​1840s.12 Other examples are more obvious. In late 1844, the evangelist Albert Dentan persuaded many of his French brethren that Christ would return on the last day of the year.13 In England, Philip Henry Gosse spent much of his life expecting the Second Coming in 1881.14 But these were minority claims. Among exclusives, Darby’s chastened expectations for the return of Christ became almost hegemonic, and encouraged the beginnings of the “rapture fiction” genre of didactic fiction.15 But Darby’s end-​times ideas were advanced in a rather small proportion of his published work. Despite his reputation as the most influential eschatological thinker, his writings on the subject occupy only four of the thirty-​four volumes of his Collected writings. If Darby’s end-​times teaching did not always persuade his friends, neither did it always alarm his critics. Those who contested his theology did not always make his eschatology a subject of complaint. Thomas Croskery’s A catechism on the doctrines of the Plymouth Brethren (1868), for example, did not include any discussion of eschatology in its detailed denunciation of Darbyite teaching. In part, this trend reflected the extent to which the evangelical cultures of the period lacked a stable eschatological center against which new proposals could be measured. On both sides of the Atlantic, the cultures of

Eschatology  115 popular Protestantism had long permitted a broad range of millennial belief.16 This allowance of a broad range of eschatological claims continued into the mid-​nineteenth century. In the United Kingdom, established clergy and dissenting ministers defended competing interpretations of the intermediate state, the millennium, and final judgment, while advocates of conditional immortality became prominent in the Evangelical Alliance.17 In the United States, ministers in the larger denominations tracked at various speeds the broader movement from postmillennialism to premillennialism, even as smaller and more experimental religious movements established the millennial theories that shaped the formation of Mormon and other Adventist groups. This toleration of eschatological variety in the evangelical mainstream and on its margins may explain why Darby’s innovations attracted so little critical attention. For, as we have noticed, early critics of his views were much more concerned about his soteriology, ecclesiology, and pneumatology than they were about his end-​times speculation.18 This explains why, from the 1870s, conservative Protestants in the northern and midwestern United States were able to advocate for aspects of his eschatology, as we will see, even if they realized that his views in other theological loci could not be reconciled with their denominational confessions. Believers who sought alternatives to postmillennialism, which looked increasingly incredible in the aftermath of the American Civil War, tinkered with eschatological claims that had already been widely qualified, believing that little of foundational importance was actually at stake.19 Consequently, throughout much of the nineteenth century, and on both sides of the Atlantic, Darbyite theology was less frequently associated with distinctive eschatological arguments than it later came to be. This claim qualifies a great deal of writing about the history of evangelicalism—​and indeed of Christian theology in general. Apocalypticism might well have been the “mother of all Christian theology,” as Ernest Käsemann famously put it, but it might only have been a sibling in the development of brethren thinking.20 Scholars have widely recognized Darby’s responsibility for the formation of dispensationalism but have paid less attention to the ways in which that system was formed. Those who have paid attention to this aspect of Darby’s thinking debate whether he was revising or innovating. Historians from a brethren background tend to emphasize his role as an innovator, arguing that Darby recovered truths that had been forgotten since the time of the apostles. Other historians argue that some dispensational ideas can be traced to the medieval or early modern periods.21 Side-​stepping this discussion, which

116  J. N. Darby sometimes depends upon poorly contextualized readings of antique, medieval, and early modern sources, this chapter argues that Darby combined existing eschatological ideas in a distinctive structure in response to contemporary political and cultural crises as well as his reading of Scripture and that he refined his eschatological thinking throughout his life, often in response to criticism from other brethren. This chapter argues that Darby’s eschatology reinforced dispensational arguments about the relationship between the church and the Holy Spirit, and about the earthly and the heavenly peoples of God, even as it worked toward the redemptive-​historical and eschatological system that would be contained in radically revised, contracted, and simplified form in the notes of the Scofield Reference Bible (1909) and in the popular dispensational eschatology that it inspired. But this chapter also argues that the articulation and defense of dispensational eschatology was only one part of Darby’s end-​times concern and that, throughout the middle period of his life, his publications engaged much more extensively in a debate about the nature of the human soul and the possibility that immortality could be conditional upon salvation. This debate about eternal punishment reached across and beyond evangelical communities on both sides of the Atlantic, but it also marked a frontier with open brethren, among whom, Darby and other exclusive critics claimed, advocates of conditional immortality were finding a home. Across his career, Darby’s eschatological opinions and emphases noticeably developed, but they remained distinct from the formally structured theological system that would be promoted after his death under the descriptor of “dispensationalism.”22 For his eschatology was certainly distinct. Most fundamentally, it differed from later variants of dispensationalism in terms of hermeneutics.23 Unlike many later dispensationalists, Darby did not insist upon a “literal” reading of prophecy, instead working from a prophetic text to determine whether it addressed Israel or the church, and only then to determine the method by which it should be interpreted—​an approach to biblical interpretation that may appear to be circuitous or even “haphazard.”24 Working from these contested readings, Darby took time to develop his definition of dispensations and to work out how these dispensations should relate to his broader scheme of redemptive history.25 Initially, he seems to have following conventional usage, employing the term “dispensation” to refer to a rather simple stadial theory, to the seven consecutive periods of time that made up the totality of redemptive history. But, over time, he moved gradually but never consistently to describe these periods of redemptive history

Eschatology  117 as “ages” or “administrations” and to use “dispensation” to refer to one of several distinct soteriological arrangements (such as prophets, priests, and kings) which operated simultaneously and only through one part of redemptive history.26 This explains why he could claim that John, unlike Paul, “had no dispensation committed to him.”27 This chapter also considers the links between Darby’s eschatology and politics. For all that he has been identified as a key figure in the history of Zionism, this chapter argues that the political intentions of his prophetic teaching have sometimes been seriously misunderstood.28 Darby was profoundly opposed to popular democracy, not just because it was entirely antithetical to his high Tory sensibilities, but also because he correctly anticipated the extent to which it would eviscerate the idea that civil government should submit to divine demands, rather than those of the demos.29 He was profoundly opposed to political activism and democratic reform. And, if it is not helpful to use a political label to describe someone who actively warned against political participation, then we cannot describe Darby as a Zionist.30 Whatever these ironies, however, Darby’s dispensationalism won out among brethren and, in a more developed and less nuanced form, the broader cultures of American evangelicals, through whose advocacy, and as a consequence of whose political action, it would mark in fundamental ways constructions of the future.

I Darby’s thinking was catastrophic long before he developed his signature eschatological system. While a great deal of biographical work on his early life has emphasized his singularity, it is important to recognize that his ideas developed in conversation with others. That said, Darby does not seem to have been subject to especially powerful eschatological influences at Westminster School or at Trinity College Dublin.31 During his student years, fellows of Trinity College adopted a wide range of eschatological positions, none of which seems to have anticipated the distinctive claims that Darby would make.32 Instead, his eschatological thinking seems to have developed after he abandoned his career in law to prepare for Anglican ordination. During his brief curacy, and likely in the years immediately afterward, he mixed with evangelical clergy in the Dublin area, a large number of whom entertained serious eschatological interests. Darby paid close attention to some of these clergy, including Reverend William de Burgh, who later seceded from the

118  J. N. Darby Church of Ireland and identified with brethren before returning to the establishment as an Anglo-​Catholic.33 One of Darby’s earliest publications (1832) was a critique of de Burgh’s argument that Revelation referred principally to events that were still in the future—​an idea that Darby would later appropriate and use as a foundational claim in his own dispensational system.34 When brethren came together as a movement, in the late 1820s and 1830s, their most important leaders were committed to “historic premillennialism”—​the belief that Christ’s return would be a single event that would follow the tribulation and inaugurate his millennial kingdom. Darby’s historic premillennial convictions are evident in the recently discovered notes of debates at the conference that took place at Powerscourt, County Wicklow, in October 1831. These notes, taken by an unknown auditor, suggest that participants routinely linked their prophetic and ecclesiological convictions and that their discussions were robust. In this ecclesiastically mixed company, Reverend Robert Daly and other churchmen insisted upon the integrity of the establishment and denied the need for withdrawal from its communion. Darby, on the other hand, linked his deeply apocalyptic view of the immediate future to his separatist view of the church and, despite his relative inexperience, turned out to be one of the conference’s most dominant voices. But he was arguing for positions some of which he would later abandon. Foremost among these arguments was his claim that prophetic “days” should be understood as years.35 (He argued for this position in print in January 1831, in a letter to the Christian Examiner.)36 Like other historicists, he argued that the fall of Babylon, described at the end of Revelation, occurred at the French Revolution—​a position that he would not for much longer defend.37 In contrast to his later thinking, he did not expect there to be a discrete period of tribulation. For the “Jewish church,” he argued, using language that he would later critique, the tribulation would extend from the Jewish rejection of Christ until his second coming.38 But others of his arguments he continued into later life. He believed that he could see the “development of the western Antichrist and the forming of Gog and Magog’s army,” with England being drawn into a political system that would represent the revival of the western Roman empire.39 He already placed the Jewish people at the center of his prophetic expectation. “The church of God is not now a development of God’s power on earth,” he continued. “The providential arrangements of God move around the Jews.”40 While the “church will be sifted,” the “grand tribulation of the latter days will fall upon the Jews”—​a statement that suggests that he had not yet applied his distinction between

Eschatology  119 Israel and the church eschatologically, in that he had not yet concluded that the church would be raptured before the tribulation began.41 His reading of prophetic texts was made possible by his hermeneutical method, for he already understood that prophetic texts relating to Jews should be understood literally, while those relating to Gentiles should be understood symbolically.42 However he combined these sometimes formative, sometimes disposable ideas, Darby was nothing if not dogmatic, accusing those with whom he disagreed of “absurdity.”43 For his prophetic convictions confirmed his secessionist imperative: “There is no place in which the glory of Christ is so dishonoured as in Christianity.”44 In the 1820s and 1830s, therefore, Darby’s eschatological views were formed in the oral and print cultures of the brethren and their fellow travelers. These believers shared his catastrophic view of the immediate future. Leading brethren defended the historic premillennialism that Darby advocated, including Bellett, at the Powerscourt conference, and Newton, who preached it from his pulpit in Plymouth.45 When the brethren movement formed, in other words, its leaders shared the broad outlines of this historic premillennial faith. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that prophetic interests should have been prominent in early issues of The Christian Witness. One contributor regarded the revival of interest in the study of prophecy as a sign of the times: “The energy of the Holy Ghost has of late been remarkably displayed in Europe, by a renewed interest in the study of the Bible as a whole, and of the prophetic parts in particular.”46 Another argued that WE KNOW whither things are tending—​we know that there is a regeneration for the world . . . in the way of God’s judgements; that all the increase of knowledge, science, and civilization, will be permitted to run its course only to prove its impotence against moral and physical evil, and will issue in . . . the bringing in of a more corrupt state of things on the earth even than that before the flood.47

“All the efforts of Gentile greatness” would only result in divine judgement.48 Consequently, brethren followed Darby’s lead in expecting the formation of a ten-​kingdom confederation that would represent the revival of the western Roman empire.49 They expected that Jews would return to the promised land and that they would later come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah.50 They lamented the influence of “Popery, Mahomedanism, and the pride of democratic self-​will.”51 But none of these signs was as worrying as the “little real

120  J. N. Darby holiness exhibited in the Lord’s people,” who had “lost their proper hope, and realize not their present portion as risen with Christ; and therefore look upon the present state as one of possible enjoyment,” forgetting that there was “no blessing to be had in the place of death, no good to be found in the flesh.”52 In the 1830s, brethren shared a prophetic sensibility, rather than a detailed program of anticipated events. Working from the broad outlines of their millennial theory, they warned against dogmatism on eschatological subjects.53 Brethren eschatological thinking was founded on a redemptive-​ historical model that was developing through this period. Darby’s early writing followed several seventeenth-​and eighteenth-​century theologians in suggesting that redemptive history was stadial and could be divided into a “septarian form.”54 Searching for a seven-​fold meta-​historical structure, brethren agreed that the six thousand years of human history would be followed by a one-​thousand-​year sabbath rest.55 Never in the habit of providing definitions, Darby described the seven dispensations into which he divided the span of redemptive history as periods of time that followed “some strong manifestation of divine glory, followed by a declension from the practical faith of that glory, and then judgements, preceded, however, by testimony, that they which have ears to hear may escape the judgement.”56 But brethren took time to agree upon a technical vocabulary. They contrasted the “present dispensation”—​which they also described as the “Christian dispensation” and the “dispensation of Sonship”—​with the millennial period that they described as the “dispensation of the fulness of times” and which they already expected would be a dispensation for the Jews.57 Before long, Darby would come to deny that the present age—​sometimes described as the “dispensation of grace”—​was actually a dispensation: like so much else in redemptive history, dispensations were for Israel.58 On this basis, his later work on “The dispensation of the fullness of times” (1850) would argue that the millennium should not be described as a dispensation either (which is why his translation of Ephesians 1:10 referred instead to the “administration” of the fullness of times). But if brethren had not agreed upon the optimal language for their redemptive-​historical system, they were, by 1835, beginning to describe the coming of Christ and his removal of believers to heaven as the “rapture.”59 In the 1830s, therefore, Darby’s eschatological views were similar to those of other brethren—​and they were simpler and less structured than has often been realized. The relatively undeveloped character of Darby’s early eschatological writings is not always evident in the texts that were republished in the

Eschatology  121 Collected writings. As we have already noted, Kelly had a habit of “tidying up” material that he republished, and historians of the movement have leaned heavily on his redacted texts when reconstructing early brethren history. Timothy Stunt has noted some particularly significant examples of Kelly’s redaction in the several printings of Darby’s paper on “The dispensation of the kingdom of heaven—​Matt. xiii,” which appeared in the first volume of The Christian Witness (1834) and was reprinted with significant revisions in volume 2 of the Collected writings (1866).60 Kelly edited the text to conceal the fact that, in the mid-​1830s, Darby’s dispensational thinking was less than fully developed. For example, the 1834 text stated that this gospel is properly the Jewish gospel of Messiah, and the saints are therefore called by the term “righteous” or “just.” Saints is more properly speaking, a Gentile name, as separated out of the mass, though both true of either.61

When the text reappeared in the Collected writings (1866), this note was quietly expanded to conform to more recent conclusions: this gospel is properly the Jewish gospel of Messiah, (while consequently shewing the passing away of the present and introduction of a new order of things); saints are therefore called by the term “righteous” or “just.” “Saints” more properly speaking, is a Gentile name, or at least either a Christian one, or applicable to the sanctified remnant of the last days, as separated out of the mass, though both terms are true of either class.62

Similarly, in 1834, Darby described the prophetic office of Jesus Christ as being relevant to the church and was happy to refer to the “Jewish church”: Our Lord as the prophet of Israel, and the kingdom and the Church of God takes two positions in these parables, or rather, string of prophecies, which are the two parts of prophecy filled up in Him in whom every office was fulfilled. The Church in order, Jewish or Gentile, required no prophecy.63

In the Collected writings (1866), this statement was revised to reflect a sharper distinction between Israel and the church and to avoid the implication that Christ’s prophetic office was relevant to the church, which claim brethren had come to deny.

122  J. N. Darby Our Lord (as the prophet of Israel, and the kingdom which now reached out to the world) takes two positions in these parables, or rather, string of prophecies, which are the two parts of prophecy filled up in Him in whom every office was fulfilled. The church in order required no prophecy, nor Israel either.64

These editorial changes are illuminating and suggest that a great deal of the scholarly work that has discovered Darby’s later views in his very early writing may have been based on sources that were edited to create exactly that impression.65 Nevertheless, whatever Kelly’s efforts retrospectively to accelerate the development of theological consensus among brethren, Darby’s mature views did come together with relative speed. His progress toward his mature convictions is evident in The apostasy of the successive dispensations (1836).66 As he often did, Darby preferred to discuss the moral effect rather than the systematic theological implications of biblical prophecy. In 1839, he argued that brethren were men and women whose reading of prophecy had led them to reject the claims and influence of the world. This was because prophecy had a moral importance . . . in separating us from this present evil world. Prophecy is a light which God holds up to the saints, that they may not only see the things which are, but see them as God sees them. Prophecy teaches us, that God will judge the world in power; and it is for us now, knowing this, to judge morally what God will judge judicially.67

For Darby believed that God’s judicial judgment was impending. He had a very strong sense that he was living at the end of a dispensation.68 This was obvious in current affairs. “It is remarkable,” he noted, “that all the nations mentioned in dependence on the Eastern power, are now getting into that state; and those mentioned as connected with antichrist, are connecting themselves with Western Europe. The king of the north, I judge to be Turkish Asia; the king of the south, Egypt.”69 Darby’s prophetic chronology was settling upon a basic structure of expected events while allowing room for fluctuations in specifics as political circumstances changed—​a pattern that would be repeated in dispensational thinking to the present day and that would, to a large extent, protect it from contradiction. But Darby was also moving toward a more technical definition of dispensations. “A dispensation

Eschatology  123 is any arranged dealing of God in which man has been set before his fall, and having been tried, has failed, and therefore God has been obliged to act by other means,” he claimed.70 Working with this definition, he argued that there had been no dispensations before the Flood.71 But, in the post-​diluvial world, “there has always been a dispensation, and always immediate failure, and consequently there has necessarily been a remnant all through.”72 He was not yet ready to claim that there had been no dispensations since the cross. But Darby’s views continued to develop. Around 1835, Darby was recommending the writings of Bernard Lambert and Pierre-​Jean Agier, in which a doctrine of the rapture had already been developed.73 Working among the Swiss dissenting churches in the late 1830s, Darby incorporated this idea into a new reading of the church’s future and the “great events which the unfolding of the drama of this world will bring about.”74 He summarized his thinking in this period in Notes on the book of Revelations [sic] (1839).75 In the following year, he presented new discoveries in lectures that he delivered in Geneva, which were published in French and then in English as The hopes of the church of God (1840).76 For the first time, he was setting out a systematic presentation of his eschatological convictions.77 His lectures presented the elements of the eschatology that he would defend and sometimes refine throughout the rest of his career. Darby was sure that “all the prophecies will have their accomplishment at the expiration of the dispensation in which we are” and suggested that his listeners would see the “termination of all the efforts and all the agitation of the men of the world.”78 That much was evident in current affairs. Prophetic shadows were falling across Europe. For, Darby explained, the principles which are found in the word of God are acting in the midst of the kingdoms where the 10 horns are to appear: that is, we find all western Europe occupied about Jerusalem, and preparing for war; and Russia, on her side, preparing herself, and exercising influence over the country is given to her and the word; and all the thoughts of the politicians of this world concentrate themselves on the scene where their final gathering in the presence of the judgement of God will take place.79

There was a “remarkable coincidence” between the events predicted in Scripture and those taking place in the Middle East. But Darby was less interested in tracing the political dynamics of the end times than in waiting for the return of Jesus Christ. The church had “declined in spirituality exactly

124  J. N. Darby in proportion as this doctrine of the expectation of the Saviour’s return has been lost sight of.”80 For the “expectation of the return of Christ is the exact measure (the thermometer, so to speak) of the life of the Church.”81 The appearing of Jesus Christ should be the center of Christian expectation. Darby’s explanation of the chronology of the end times was extraordinarily influential and would be developed in the Synopsis, which he was also preparing through this time. His prophetic narrative began in ad 70, with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, which represented the “final abolition of even the traces” of God’s government of Israel, “until the Lord shall return.”82 Darby believed that the Jewish people would continue to experience the consequences of their rejection of the messiah until his second coming.83 In the “last days,” they would be restored to the promised land by an unknown nation.84 Meanwhile, Darby argued, the world would become increasingly godless. Believers should “expect a progress of evil. . . . We are to expect evil, until it becomes so flagrant that it will be necessary for the Lord to judge it.”85 The apostasy of Christendom would be evident in the ecclesiastical and civil spheres when, “instead of confessing fealty to God, [civil government] sets itself up against God, who is the source of its authority.”86 For politicians were at fault. Those who “ought to have recalled governments to a sense of their duty towards God” were “themselves in a revolt against Him.”87 And the results would be dramatic: “Christendom has become completely corrupted; the dispensation of the Gentiles has been found unfaithful. . . . As the Jewish dispensation was cut off, the Christian dispensation will be also.”88 But believers should not panic—​for they would not be “involved in the catastrophe” that this apostasy would entail.89 That was because, at some unspecified moment toward the end of the “present dispensation” (which term, despite his reservations, he continued to use) and before the “judgement of God” was poured out “upon the nations,” believers would be removed to heaven.90 After this rapture, all restraint would be “loosed,” men would take the place of God “in His temple under the most advanced form of Jewish apostasy and blasphemy,” and the Jewish remnant would use the imprecatory Psalms to call down judgment upon their enemies.91 During this period of judgment, the Jews would witness the “formation, the fall, and the ruin” of the Antichrist.92 The destruction of Babylon, the episode in Revelation that he understood to represent the collapse of the Roman Catholic Church, would occasion the “great joy of heaven.”93 Answering these prayers, Christ would return to establish his throne in Zion and destroy the enemies of Israel.94

Eschatology  125 Darby argued that Christ’s coming would be personal, a claim that earlier evangelicals had not always accepted.95 Christ would descend to the Mount of Olives, where he would be opposed by “nations that comprise Russia, Asia Minor, Tartary, and Persia (all the people, in short, of which the empire of Russia is composed, or which are under its influence),” as well as by the nations of North Africa and the Middle East.96 Jerusalem would experience catastrophe.97 But Christ would prevail and would establish his millennial kingdom. For, “upon this earth, where the Son of man has been in humiliation, the Son of man will be glorified.”98 He would bring to completion all the Old Testament prophecies.99 The Holy Spirit would be poured out, as on another day of Pentecost.100 The Earth would no longer be a place of chaos and ruin, but “will enjoy the fruits of the victory and of the faithfulness of the Second Adam.”101 Christ will rule from Zion in the company of the 144,000 Jews.102 He will reestablish his relationship with the Jewish remnant, which was represented allegorically in the Song of Solomon.103 He will establish the new covenant with Israel as the temple is rebuilt and human life spans are miraculously extended.104 Temple worship will resume, with sacrifices being presented as memorials of the death of Christ, but with the veil concealing the Most Holy Place no longer being torn open.105 Darby was less sure of the church’s experience of the millennium, other than to know that Christians would be with Christ in heaven.106 From that location, the church will “beam upon the earth in blessing; and the nations of those who are saved will walk in her light.”107 Just as the church had been reconciled to God in the death of Christ, so the rest of creation will experience its own reconciliation when Christ returns.108 In this expansive cosmological vision, Darby was emphasizing the importance of resurrection. He worried that Christians had exchanged the vibrant expectation of the return of Christ for vague notions of dying and being with Christ in the intermediate state, which, he recognized, was a “condition . . . much superior to ours on the earth, but vague, and which at best is a state of waiting” for resurrection.109 Explaining Revelation 20, he identified two kinds of resurrection. The resurrection of the just would precede that of the wicked by one thousand years.110 The resurrection of the just would be made possible by their being in union with Christ and their being indwelt by the Holy Spirit: “the resurrection of the Church is not a resurrection whose object is judgement, but simply the consequence of its union with Christ, who has been judged in its stead.”111 The resurrection of believers would be the “application of the quickening power of Jesus Christ to our bodies. We

126  J. N. Darby shall be raised, because we are already quickened in our souls. The resurrection is the crowning of the whole work,” which brought to completion the work of the Spirit in the believer’s sanctification.112 Consequently, he argued, the “principle of the resurrection of the Church is quite other than that of the resurrection of the wicked.” For his eschatology was pneumatological, too: “our resurrection . . . is the consequence of the abiding of the Holy Ghost in us (Rom. viii. 11)—​a very essential difference. . . . Our body, also, which is the temple of the Holy Ghost, will be raised according to the power of the Holy Ghost who dwells in us; a thing which can never be said of the wicked.”113 The wicked would be raised with bodies that could never be glorified—​and would be ready for eternal punishment. But the righteous would be raised with glorified bodies, ready for the eternal state. They would enjoy the beatific vision—​which, in a striking break from Christian tradition, but in line with some of his Puritan forebears, Darby imagined as a vision not of the divine essence, but of Christ in his glory.114 Darby’s Geneva lectures turned out to be extraordinarily significant—​in Switzerland, in England, and throughout the brethren world. At one level, he had provided premillennialists with a solution to a long-​standing theological problem. Since the second century, theologians had struggled to reconcile the apparently earthly focus of Old Testament eschatology with the heavenly hopes that were described in the New Testament.115 Following Augustine, theologians had tended to assume that these different kinds of promises should all be referred to the same group of people and had attempted to “spiritualize” the Hebrew Bible’s promises of earthly blessing in order to make them relevant to Christians.116 But this solution created as many problems as it addressed. In his Geneva lectures, Darby solved this problem by arguing that prophecy addressed two groups of people: the promises of the Hebrew Bible referred to Jews and would be fulfilled on earth, and the promises of the New Testament referred to Christians and would be fulfilled in heaven. Darby’s teaching was an innovation among evangelicals—​and also among brethren. He was proposing radical revisions to the prophetic narrative on which the movement had been established—​a narrative that continued to find doughty defenders. He was arguing that the difference between Israel and the Church was so fundamental as to constitute two peoples of God with different, but dependent, eternal destinies. He was arguing that the heavenly hopes of the church should be focused on the rapture, which would occur without any signs and before the beginning of the tribulation. He was arguing that Christ would effectively return three times—​once at the rapture,

Eschatology  127 once at the end of the tribulation, and again at the end of the millennium. Darby realized the significance of his proposals and hoped that the movement could survive the introduction of his new ideas: “I trust that a moderate spirit will be given to the brethren as to prophetic questions, that is an enquiring or learning spirit, not a dogmatic.”117 But it was not to be. In 1844, Newton published a substantial commentary on Revelation, Thoughts on the Apocalypse (1844), which refuted some of these new claims. Almost immediately, Darby responded with a longer and hostile review.118 In the mid-​1840s, the tensions between Darby and Newton that flared into division in the Plymouth assembly and elsewhere were too easily framed around the difference between their prophetic systems. Darby insisted that this framing concealed what was really at stake. “It is no difference on prophecy in the least which has caused me to act as I have done,” he explained to Wigram in 1846. “I had known that difference these 10 or 12 years.”119 But the differences between these competing systems were nevertheless important. Darby argued that while those who followed his teaching were waiting for Jesus, those who attended to Newton’s teaching were searching for prophetic signs: “Those who oppose spiritual progress seek at bottom in some shape or other to build up Newton’s system, i.e. events, signs, anything but the Lord himself.”120 Kelly later remembered that “ ‘the blessed hope’ far outweighed ‘unfulfilled prophecy’ in most brethren’s eyes & increasingly, save B. W. N.”121 But it was Darby whose mind had changed. His followers could be vitriolic in their condemnation of Newton—​but they could not deny that their nemesis was maintaining the prophetic views around which their movement had been gathered.

II Unlike his work on the other theological loci, Darby developed most of his most significant eschatological ideas before the division of the brethren. The events of the later 1840s allowed him to escape the need constantly to defend his ideas against internal critics, to work out in principle the implications of his eschatological ideas across a range of other theological loci, and to turn these debating points into dogma. But all of this took time. Initially, exclusive brethren tolerated a degree of eschatological variety. Until 1866, when he left the movement, for example, Hall argued that the antichrist was the papacy and denied the existence of a future Jewish remnant.122 Hall was

128  J. N. Darby always an individualist: in fact, Kelly later observed, “it would be hard to say wherein he agreed, in all the circle of the truth, save in believing on Christ, & the personal presence of the Holy Spirit.”123 Other eschatological variations were less threatening to Darby’s claims. While Denny’s A prophetical stream of time (c. 1860) proposed a reading of Daniel’s seventieth week of which Darby never approved, he never lost his role in the movement.124 Nevertheless, as the range of permitted opinion narrowed, some brethren worried about temptations toward prophetic dogmatism. Writing under a pseudonym, Harris expressed his concern that some younger believers had been encouraged into prophetic study by the “stirring events” of the European revolutions of 1848.125 He worried that prophetic study could become an excuse for political preoccupations: “If that which is the present special testimony of God, viz.: ‘the Church’ and its future destiny, is less engaging to our thoughts than the future dealings with Israel and the earth, we do not see things in their just proportion.”126 Excessive interest in the “final development of evil,” he continued, “often tends to self-​complacency, harshness of judgement or legality.”127 And so, he concluded, “no one really caring for Christ’s sheep, would lead a young convert not established in peace of soul to prophecy as a suitable study.”128 Some of those “not established in peace” adopted prophetic views that were entirely at variance with Christian orthodoxy. The most threatening of these, from Darby’s perspective, was the denial of eternal punishment. Those who defended this position were either universalists or advocates of the doctrine of conditional immortality—​the idea that human beings are born mortal, that they gain immortality only with salvation, and that when non-​Christians die they simply cease to exist. Darby had been paying attention to the denial of eternal punishment since the 1830s. For a substantial danger to brethren came from the doctrine of conditional immortality, which, Darby noted in 1847, was “much in vogue” in England—​and which, though Darby did not mention it, was the reason why its advocates were not initially excluded from the newly formed Evangelical Alliance (1846).129 As it became more popular among evangelicals, conditionalism was discovered among brethren. Initially it appeared only among those on the open side of the movement. In the late 1840s, William Morris, a key supporter of Newton, had promoted conditional immortality in Devon, where he had influenced much of the meeting in Brixham, and then in London, where he was excommunicated.130 Darby addressed the situation in Brief Scriptural evidence on the doctrine of eternal punishment, for plain people (1847). Not all of its readers found the

Eschatology  129 tract convincing. Writing as “Philomath,” William Seabrook, a Devon universalist, noted that the expression “eternal torment” was “no where to be found in the Holy Scriptures,” and highlighted the divisions among brethren in Plymouth as part of his critique of Darby’s claims.131 Darby responded to the pamphlet privately, in a letter to Wigram that was shortly after published (1848).132 But conditionalism made its appearance among exclusives, too. In 1849, Darby wrote to a French correspondent, warning against the doctrine and its broader theological implications.133 He followed this with Scriptural enquiries as to the doctrine of eternal punishment (1852). For advocates of conditional immortality continued to appear among brethren. In 1855, Wigram discovered that John Coleman, an ex-​Moravian missionary in Jamaica and a friend of Philip H. Gosse, had been promoting conditional immortality among exclusive brethren in London. On three occasions, Darby met with Coleman, attempting to convince him of his error.134 But he was not able to do so. If conditional immortality represented a threat to brethren in England, it also offered opportunities for their expansion in North America. In Ontario, New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, washed-​up Adventists, coming to terms with the fact that Christ had not returned by October 1844, as the celebrity Baptist preacher William Miller had claimed, provided open and exclusive brethren networks with many of their earliest adherents and some of their most significant leaders.135 (Curiously, Miller’s expectation that Christ would return by October 1844 corresponded to similar claims made by several brethren, as we have already noticed, including Albert Dentan and possibly Darby himself.) Arthur Wells, the prosperous businessman who hosted the Guelph meetings in the early 1860s, was a recent convert from a Millerite group.136 F. G. Brown had been a leader among Adventists and had taken part in their mission to England in 1846.137 In April 1864, after having identified with exclusive brethren, he informed Darby of the existence in the United States of “many gatherings of those who have left the ‘churches’ in expectation of the Lord’s coming, some of which are not ‘organized churches.’ ” Brown believed that believers in these “gatherings” would be “more ready to listen to the Word” than would be those in traditional denominations.138 Brown had identified a new opportunity for the expansion of the exclusive network, and Darby was not slow to seize upon its possibilities. One year later, having for the first time sailed across the Atlantic, he felt that he had made some progress among conditionalists in New York, where he worked to rescue the “choicest among the souls” who had been “seduced” by this doctrine.139 He believed

130  J. N. Darby that conditionalists were already “loose from systems” and committed to premillennial views.140 This explains why, in his earliest North American travels, Darby spent so much time among individuals who were or had been associated with the Millerite movement and its off-​shoots. It was a move that he felt necessary to defend: “The Millerites or second Adventists . . . picked up a large number of souls weary of the state of things, and pious. Most of these have gone into the denial of the immortality of the soul, very common everywhere, with Boston as a centre, and even the denial of the resurrection of the wicked, and pretty plain infidelity, the Lord’s divinity denied &c.”141 “The work gathers up those who did not let themselves be carried away, who had got out of sects and looked for the Lord’s coming.”142 Some of these individuals, like the Methodist minister turned Millerite whom Darby encountered in 1865, no longer met with any Christian congregation.143 But the similarities between the two movements led Darby to worry about maintaining effective boundaries. In 1866, he described conditionalism as the “pest” of American Christianity.144 He was concerned that some of the American publishers of brethren literature were “avowedly indifferent” to the denial of eternal punishment, which was a “great hinderance” to the distinctiveness of brethren testimony.145 For brethren were losing individuals to conditionalist sects.146 Open brethren were especially susceptible to their influence.147 In Boston, he discovered, the “loose meeting is openly annihilationist.”148 In New York, the leader of the open meeting had publicly supported the doctrine of annihilation.149 But the teaching was impacting upon the exclusive brethren, too. In Boston, in 1866, Darby met a conditionalist who had been in fellowship in Orchard Street, London, and, in the following year, a conditionalist preacher who had been in communion with brethren in Guernsey.150 He might also have encountered William Morris, who had been excommunicated by English brethren before moving to the United States and publishing The question of ages: or, Outlines of testimony in relation to life, death, and immortality (1862). Some of these erring believers Darby was able to recover.151 But he, too, became implicated in their claims. The controversy erupted at the end of the 1860s, when advocates of conditionalism began to draw attention to comments that seemed to support their position in Darby’s Genevan lectures on the “hopes of the church of God.” In one of those discourses, while teaching on the resurrection, Darby had noted that the immortality of the soul was a Platonic rather than a biblical idea:

Eschatology  131 although recognized in Luke xii. 5 and xx. 38, is not in general a gospel topic . . . it comes, on the contrary, from the Platonists . . . it was just when the coming of Christ was denied in the Church, or at least began to be lost sight of, that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul came in to replace that of the resurrection. This was about the time of Origen.152

Of course, he continued in a more recently added note, “it is hardly needful to say that I do not doubt the immortality of the soul.”153 But, as it turned out, this clarification was in fact necessary. In August and September 1868, The Bible Treasury published an anonymous article entitled “Everlasting punishment,” which had been written originally in German to refute an error that was “rampant among the evangelicals of that land.”154 In August 1869, the journal published a letter from Darby that summarized his key etymological and exegetical arguments in defense of the traditional doctrine.155 Kelly printed another article on the subject in October 1869.156 But Edward White, the prominent Congregational pastor and author of Life in Christ: Four discourses upon the Scripture doctrine that immortality is the peculiar privilege of the regenerate (1846), took him to task.157 White’s letters to the Christian World caused a stir among the readers of Kelly’s journal. In March 1871, Kelly noted that “more than one” of his correspondents had drawn attention to White’s letter, which quoted the claim in Darby’s Genevan lectures that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul had Platonic, rather than biblical, origins.158 Kelly worried that readers of the Christian World would be “unlikely to know of or to take the trouble of examining Mr D.’s writings,” to read his comments in the context in which he affirmed his belief in the traditional doctrine.159 But, he added, “I have before me now the latest form in which the work stands”—​the text that he had edited for inclusion in the Collected writings—​which, Kelly continued, had been “modified” to make Darby’s comments no longer useful to advocates of conditional immortality.160 White replied to Kelly’s rebuke in April 1871, in a letter to The Bible Treasury, reminding readers that conditionalists had “often cited” Darby’s claim that the “doctrine of the immortality of the soul has no source in the gospel.”161 He condemned Kelly’s editorial “modification” of Darby’s controversial text: “I call it an express retraction.”162 The letters stopped—​or perhaps were no longer printed—​but controversy dragged on, with Darby’s name making repeated appearances in the second edition of White’s Life in Christ (1876). Darby continued to be haunted by the loose language of his Geneva lectures. In 1879, they were quoted back to him by another conditionalist

132  J. N. Darby correspondent.163 Darby explained something of the textual history of the lectures—​that they had been recorded by a note-​taker and that he had added some additional material to the second edition, which had appeared in the Collected writings. But, he continued, neither he nor his Swiss auditors had any apprehension that his emphasis upon the resurrection of the body rather than the immortality of the soul could have been used to support such a terrible doctrine.164 For brethren remained troubled by the denial of eternal punishment. In 1876, conditionalism remained a threat among exclusives.165 By then, it seemed, the most serious grounds for concern were among open brethren. In 1875, Kelly reported that one of the open meetings in London had begun to tolerate the denial of eternal punishment and that fifty brethren had withdrawn in protest.166 Kelly believed that Anthony Norris Groves had denied eternal punishment.167 That might not have been an accurate assessment—​ but Groves’s son certainly did.168 Discussion continued into the twentieth century. W. T. Chesterman, who had been expelled from an open assembly on account of his support for the controversial doctrine, published a pamphlet, which reached its fourth edition by 1913, that reminded its readers of the proximity that had once existed between brethren and advocates of conditional immortality.169 The issue remained unsettled—​and its history among brethren an embarrassment. Darby was determined to resist the error: “Annihilation seems plausible, because God is merciful,” he admitted, “but I find personal atonement is thereby gone, and I set my face against it like a flint.”170

III As Darby’s eschatological thinking developed, he ironed out some of the ambiguities with which it had earlier been attended. This was particularly obvious in terms of his theological vocabulary. In earlier phases of theological development, as we have seen, Darby used terminology that was familiar to English-​speaking Protestants without highlighting the extent to which he was investing it with new meaning. This was particularly obvious in his use of the term “dispensation.” By the early nineteenth century, the idea that the history of redemption included dispensations had become a theological commonplace across the Christian confessions. English-​speaking Protestants

Eschatology  133 were familiar with the language of dispensations from their reading of the Authorized Version of the Bible, which described the “dispensation of the fullness of times” (Ephesians 1:10), and from creedal statements such as the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), which described the covenant of grace as existing “under various dispensations” (Westminster Confession 7:6). Particularly in his early writing, but also in later work, Darby used the term in this conventional way, referring to distinctive periods in redemptive history. This explains why, in 1831, for example, he was able to refer to the church age as the “present dispensation.”171 But Darby developed a new definition of “dispensation.” Even as he continued to use “dispensation” to refer to a period in redemptive history, he argued that these periods would better be described as “ages” or “administrations” and that the term “dispensation” should be used more accurately to refer to a particular expression of divine grace within these redemptive-​historical periods.172 Within the “age” or “administration” that followed upon the calling of Abraham, for example, he argued that prophets, priests, and kings were “dispensations” of God’s grace.173 His precision and insistence on this point is ironic. Later generations of “dispensationalists,” following the guidance of the Scofield Reference Bible (1909) and other works, have come to assume that their system is distinctive in offering a new account of redemptive history—​that it argues for discontinuity between dispensations against the continuity between covenants that has become a central component of the theological architecture of the Reformed tradition. While this assumption does indeed reflect major emphases in twentieth-​century dispensationalism, it does not describe the arguments out of which that tradition emerged. For, whatever the assumptions made by later generations of dispensationalists, and whatever his own occasional ambiguities, Darby became clear that a dispensation was not a period of time within redemptive history. Redemptive history could be divided up into distinctive periods, Darby recognized. He identified three such “ages,” or “administrations”: the age of the patriarchs, of Israel, and the millennium.174 But these periods should be described as “ages” or “administrations,” not “dispensations.” Within these three redemptive-​ historical “ages” or “administrations,” dispensations were distinctive arrangements of divine grace.175 Darby’s new definition of “dispensation,” and his uneven deployment of the technical vocabulary he was developing, was evident in his translations of the New Testament. In his French translation (1859; revised 1872), he

134  J. N. Darby translated οἰκονομία consistently as administration. His German translation (1855) translated the term consistently as Verwaltung (“administration”). But in his English translation (1867, with subsequent revisions) his practice was more varied. In four of these passages, the Authorized Version had translated οἰκονομία as “dispensation” (1 Corinthians 9:17; Ephesians 1:10 and 3:9; Colossians 1:25), elsewhere preferring “stewardship” (Luke 16:2–​4). In his English New Testament, Darby translated οἰκονομία variously as “stewardship” (Luke 16:2–​4), “administration” (1 Corinthians 9:17; Ephesians 1:10, 3:2, 3:9), and as “dispensation” (Colossians 1:25). In fact, only in Colossians 1:25 did Darby agree with the Authorized Version’s translation of the term. Darby’s translation decisions were significant, in that he removed the term “dispensation” from some of the passages in which the translators of the Authorized Version had most obviously used it to refer to a temporal period. For Darby, redemptive history was not driving toward the “dispensation of the fullness of times,” as the translators of the Authorized Version had put it, but toward the “administration of the fullness of times” (Ephesians 1:10). Darby build upon his definition of “dispensation” by arguing that these special arrangements of divine grace could be discovered in Scripture only between the Flood and the crucifixion. These dispensations did not need to exist consecutively. He argued that, during the period from the Flood to the crucifixion, dispensations existed concurrently, as God tested the Jews as representatives of humanity to expose humanity’s fallen state. When that fallen state was fully exhibited, as it was in the rejection and execution of the Messiah, these dispensations had served their purpose. In his later writing, therefore, he was quite clear that the church age was not a dispensation.176 Even the millennium—​which other premillennialists, drawing on the language of the Authorized Version’s translation of Ephesians 1:10, described as a dispensation—​should not be so described. But Darby’s redemptive-​historical scheme remained resistant to systematization.177 His technical vocabulary did not survive the evolution of his ideas into the theological system known as “dispensationalism.” For he identified three “ages” in redemptive history and argued that none of them should be described as a “dispensation.” It was not Darby, but adherents of the Westminster Confession and the dispensationalists they critiqued, who believed that the church age was a dispensation.

Eschatology  135

IV Darby’s prophetic views had quite striking political implications. These implications were not a major part of his focus, for he generally avoided political discussions. Understanding that Scripture predicted a “progress of evil . . . until it becomes so flagrant that it will be necessary for the Lord to judge it,” he took an interest in contemporary affairs only insofar as they evidenced this decline.178 Anticipating that civil government would participate in the apostasy of the last days and that this governmental apostasy would occur “in the bosom of Christendom,” he remained consistently critical of the advance of popular democracy that was represented by the constitutional revolution of 1832.179 As British imperial power increased, with India becoming crown territory in 1858, he imagined not just the end of empire but also the break-​up of the United Kingdom. His analysis was biblical, rather than political. He was not partisan: “parties are all alike to me; they are all alike guilty, and have all alike had their part in what is going on.”180 For, he believed, the British constitution was collapsing under its own inconsistencies. Sometime around 1869, he published a tract entitled Progress of democratic power, and its effect on the moral state of England. In this work, he criticized Lord Derby, who, by setting up a non-​denominational system of education had “banished the scriptures from the Irish schools” (1831).181 He criticized the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel for passing Catholic emancipation (1829), which admitted to the House of Commons the “sixty or seventy violent democrats” who had supported the Reform Bill (1832).182 “That bill was a revolution,” Darby declared, through which “democracy became ascendant” in British political life and by means of which the “ancient institutions of the country were in principle overturned.”183 But the achievements of the 1832 Reform Act paled beside the ambitions of the second reform bill (1867), which doubled the number of voters, enfranchising huge numbers of working-​class men. Darby lamented that working men had been turned into “masters” and that the “poor have ceased to be so in the scriptural sense of the word.”184 Their revolutionary political culture would impact the church. Their radically democratic sensibility would “exalt man . . . not Christ,” and radical MPs would be found “despising governments” and being “not afraid to speak evil of dignities.”185 While working-​class voters insisted on their “rights,” he feared, the aristocracy, “having lost power, will seek to compensate themselves . . . by

136  J. N. Darby luxury and pleasure.”186 Dissenters and Catholics were working together to pull down the establishment. The prophetic import of the second reform bill was obvious. “The Babylonish or idolatrous power [of the Roman Catholic Church], with which the kings of the earth had committed fornication, will be utterly destroyed, and the popular will in the same sphere will give itself to the beast destroyed, with the false prophet, by the Lord Jesus Himself coming from heaven.”187 Darby’s prophetic analysis warranted his high Tory sensibility and his robust opposition to democratic reform. Two years later, Darby believed that his expectations were being fulfilled. Writing from Barbados, he issued A word to the protestants of Ireland in a letter to the Ven. Archdeacon Stopford (1869). The threat of reform was now acute, for the Church of Ireland was being threatened with disestablishment. Dissenters and Catholics were working together to bring down what remained of Ireland’s ancien régime. Darby’s response to the news was scathing. The Irish Church had received “blows and discouragement from a Liberal Minister” and from a “Conservative Minister levelling-​up Popery.”188 Gladstone was the “vain and weak tool” of dangerous men.189 Dissenters had “forfeited their claims to be accounted a religious body,” had “sold the pass to the devil,” and were “pandering to infidels to gain their favour.”190 Still committed to his view that governments should recognize their duties to God, and still attached, if only sentimentally, to the denomination that he had never formally abandoned, Darby refused to “cast an Edomite stone” at the Irish Church in its hour of danger. But, he insisted, that communion was now “reaping the fruit” of its connection with a state that no longer recognized its religious obligations.191 He exhorted his addressees to be “independent of a semi-​infidel, semi-​Popish state.”192 He reminded them that disendowment and disestablishment would be “far better than compromise with Popery.”193 For the second reform bill and the disestablishment of the Irish Church represented a “full revolution.”194 And this revolution was only a beginning. In an undated meeting, Darby suggested that the revival of the Roman Empire—​which never included Ireland—​would necessitate the break-​up of the United Kingdom.195 Ireland, he predicted, would be “separated” from England.196 The empire, and the nation at its heart, would collapse. Of course, to recognize that Darby anticipated these political changes is not to argue that he advocated them—​and this is why he cannot without qualification be classed as a Zionist.197 As we have seen, from his earliest prophetic writings, Darby anticipated that the Jews would be restored to the Promised Land.198 But his argument that this would happen did not

Eschatology  137 encourage his readers to do anything to bring it about. Darby was fundamentally opposed to democratic politics and constantly advised Christians to lower their political hopes: “instead of claiming the world as His own, Christ repeatedly declared the contrary.”199 Like Kelly, he worried that believers could be drawn into the study of prophecy only to become preoccupied with politics. The moment the view of the glory of Christ is supplanted by researches into providence . . . the temple of prophecy degenerates into a counting-​house of human intellect; and the tables of those who traffic in mere erudition crowd its courts, until, by the just judgement of God, it is left desolate.200

While Darby expected the break-​up of the United Kingdom and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, therefore, he can no more be described as a Zionist than as an Irish nationalist.201 God was working out his judgments. The political implications of providence were not something of which he had to approve and certainly not something for which he ought to cast a vote. Nevertheless, in their theology and piety, Darby and the brethren were often deeply affected by this expectation of Jesus’s return. They wanted to focus on waiting for Christ. They understood, as Darby put it, that church had “declined in spirituality exactly in proportion as this doctrine of expectation of the Saviour’s return has been lost sight of.”202 Prophecy should, he believed, “disentangle us from a world which is to be judged, and at the same time . . . knit us to Him who will come to judge it.”203 For, as he put it in a hymn that was published for the first time in 1881, “The night is far spent, and the day is at hand: /​No sign to be look’d for.”204 But his hopes for the Lord’s return were not hopes for an exclusive experience of blessing. True to their catholic instincts, Darby and those who followed his teaching were expecting blessings that they would share with every other Christian. “What always comforts me,” Darby noted in an undated address, “is that the Lord takes care to wake up in time all the virgins, whether they have refused the rapture much or long.”205 For all his concern about the purity of the church, there was nothing exclusive about the eschatological blessings for which his dispensational thinking encouraged him to hope.

Conclusion: The Roots of Dispensationalism “The Christian has to watch, and closely watch, himself in controversy, particularly if he has any keen sense of the ridiculous.”1

From the late 1820s, Darby developed proposals that significantly modified the tradition of English evangelical theology. While his commentaries required him to interact with every book of the Old and New Testaments, and while his preaching and writing ranged across theological topics, his contribution came to focus on four loci. Darby’s convictions on the doctrine of salvation initially aligned closely with those of the Church of England’s high Calvinists before extending their claim that the moral law played no part in sanctification into his own claim that the moral law played no part in justification, either—​so that believers were declared righteous on the basis of Christ’s vicarious death, rather than on the basis of his sinless life. Darby’s early writing on the doctrine of the church developed an emphasis upon catholicity that sought fellowship with all believers while also supporting an increasingly robust theory of separation. His description of the church emphasized its being a sphere for the special operations of the Holy Spirit: this “laundered charismaticism” warranted his critique of the cessationist arguments that were common among evangelicals, even as he cautiously reviewed the appropriation of brethren teaching by the Pearsall Smiths and other advocates of the so-​called higher life. His writing on personal and cosmic eschatology defended traditional Christian claims about the immortality of the soul while also promoting a new chronology of the end times, in which the dominant political powers of the nineteenth century would come to a catastrophic end during a period of tribulation from which true believers would be removed—​an event that he came to describe as the “rapture.” By the early 1880s, and with the support of a continually expanding J. N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism. Crawford Gribben, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190932343.003.0006

Conclusion  139 set of Collected writings, Bible translations in several languages, and an intellectual and entrepreneurial infrastructure maintained by the thousands of individuals who regarded him as the most important expositor since the apostles, Darby’s work could fairly be described as catholic, Calvinist, charismatic, and catastrophic. By then, of course, Darby’s reading of Scripture had taken on a life of its own. Five decades after he began to make his most distinctive claims, the controversy surrounding his theology was no longer focused on his writing—​or even on writing by brethren. Neither the advocates nor the critics of Darby’s system could decide how it should be compared to the broader confessional tradition. The key features of this debate were evident in articles that appeared simultaneously in the two of the most significant American theological journals in January 1872. In The Princeton Review, which circulated widely in the northern Presbyterian church, and which in 1868 had published a positive review of Darby’s Synopsis, included a report on “The Plymouth Brethren” written by a minister in Ireland. As we have already noticed, Reverend Thomas Croskery was a long-​standing critic of Darby’s movement. He had begun to be concerned about brethren teaching after witnessing its impact in County Londonderry in the aftermath of the 1859 revival.2 He had developed his critique of Darby’s theology in A catechism on the doctrines of the Plymouth Brethren (1865) and would follow his article in The Princeton Review with a longer book-​length study on the same theme (1879).3 Drawing on his rather selective reading of its work, he admitted that the new movement appeared to be “extremely plausible in its statements, apparently opposed to error of every kind, affecting an extreme biblical exactness in its statement of truth, and a concurrent dislike for theological systems, with a very marked contempt for commentators and [conventional theological] usage.”4 Nevertheless, he continued, brethren advocated a “system of pure ecclesiastical communism, with a theology in the main evangelical but spoiled by Antinomian and Socinian elements, and a theory as to the dispensation of truth mainly borrowed from the Millenarians.”5 In fact, he argued, citing Thomas Edwards among other seventeenth-​century heresimachs, “there is hardly a single doctrine in their system of theology . . . that we can not find in the published works of the Antinomian controversialists of the Cromwellian age.”6 The entire project of the brethren was to critique the Protestant churches. Darby, he insisted, was the “most daring,” “if not the ablest,” of the movement’s leaders, who “deserves the reputation he has acquired by

140  J. N. Darby pursuing his theological opponents with a virulence that has no parallel in the history of religious controversy.”7 Despite the strength of this attack, Croskery was not always well informed of brethren opinions. His claim that brethren rejected the baptism of infants, as well as baptism in the name of the Trinity, were certainly wide of the mark.8 So, too, his complaint that brethren “unchurch all existing bodies . . . and assume to themselves the exclusive designation of the Church of Christ” did not take account of the claim that was fundamental to brethren ecclesiology that they met to represent rather than to constitute the church catholic.9 There were resonances of Victorian anti-​cultism in his assertion that those who joined this new religious movement became subject to an “intolerable spiritual despotism.”10 Nevertheless, he continued, the ecclesiological and eschatological errors that he had discovered among brethren were not as significant as their errors concerning the person and work of Christ. Darby had adopted the “old Monophysite heresy of the heavenly humanity of Christ,” he (incorrectly) insisted.11 Darby’s followers “deny the imputation of Adam’s sin to his race” (he failed to notice that Darby did not) and so “are naturally led to deny the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to his people.”12 By undercutting Reformed convictions about the church, the sacraments, and the way of salvation, he continued, “Plymouthism has . . . during its whole history, shown a Romeward tendency.”13 As far as Croskery was concerned, brethren were attacking the doctrinal and political unity of the Irish Protestant churches as prospects for their Catholic neighbors seemed only ever to improve.14 Croskery’s damning review of brethren achievements contrasted with the conclusions of Robert L. Dabney, a Presbyterian minister and theologian who had served as Stonewall Jackson’s chief of staff during the American Civil War, and who, in the month in which Croskery’s article appeared, published his own evaluation of the “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren” in The Southern Presbyterian Review. Still smarting from the defeat of the Confederacy, Dabney was doing what he could to uphold his denomination as the champion of Southern conservatism during the depredations of Reconstruction.15 His defense of Reformed theology, which was sometimes controversial within his own denominational community, was driven by his desire to preserve what remained of Southern culture after the war of northern aggression.16 There was a political flavor to his critical review of the work of brethren and those they had influenced.17 Just as Croskery worried that brethren were weakening the unity of Irish Protestants in the face of an increasingly ambitious Catholic

Conclusion  141 nationalism, so Dabney worried that brethren were undermining the unity of Southern Presbyterians in the face of the cultural revolution that followed upon the end of the war. Despite his article’s title, Dabney was concerned to trace the influence of brethren ideas within his own and other American Presbyterian denominations. To that end, he reviewed work not by Darby but by such widely circulating brethren writers as Mackintosh and Bellett as well as others who had been influenced by brethren ideas, including the Scottish Free Church leader, Reverend Horatius Bonar—​which decision, given Darby’s long-​standing criticism of Bonar, was more than a little ironic.18 Dabney’s selection of texts to review showed how brethren ideas were being disseminated to American readers. Some of the key themes in Darby’s thinking were being promoted by writers who shared nothing of his view of the church. As Bonar’s inclusion suggests, Dabney, like Croskery, was not the best-​informed critic of this new religious movement. He, too, claimed that brethren shared a commitment to “adult baptism” and “absolutely unrestricted lay preaching,” which certainly was not the case with respect to the exclusive writers whose work he reviewed.19 But, unlike Croskery, Dabney wanted to identify the strengths, as well as the weaknesses, of the movement whose literary culture he wished to understand. To that end, Dabney offered a more balanced reading of brethren publications. He represented brethren as rather awkward fellow travelers to the Reformed denominations. He understood that they were promoting in the “Calvinistic churches of Great Britain and America” a “modified phase of the ‘Doctrines of Grace.’ ”20 It was true that brethren condemned the “Reformed denominations for forsaking the true doctrines of faith and justification,” he noted, but “in their better moments,” brethren maintained the “very same views of these truths which we hold and preach.”21 Much of the debate was merely about words, he reflected. Brethren avoided the nomenclature that had become current in historical theology, preferring to “express their peculiarities in terms of their own, less discriminating than the old”—​a tendency that Croskery had also criticized.22 This habit of neologism concealed the fact that the statements of brethren were “(in their better moods) . . . the same with those usually heard in our Reformed pulpits, and set down in our symbols, save that theirs’ have not the symmetry and scriptural accuracy . . . which our church teachers have given to our statements.”23 In contrast to Croskery’s fiery denunciation, therefore, Dabney concluded that brethren were much closer to the Reformed tradition than their leaders or critics were prepared to admit.

142  J. N. Darby That being the case, Dabney believed, there was much about brethren theology that Presbyterians could appreciate. Brethren “profess to hold forth the doctrines of grace with peculiar simplicity, scripturalness, and freeness,” he recognized, “and in many cases we can gladly accord that praise to them, and thank them for the clear light in which they set the sufficiency of Christ, the simplicity of faith, and the privileges of the believer’s adoption, and for the fidelity with which they expose the covert self-​righteousness of a half-​ gospel.”24 In fact, he recognized, brethren were in some respects closer than the Presbyterians to Calvin. But this was a problem. For Calvin—​like the brethren—​taught that assurance was of the “essence of saving faith,” a claim that Presbyterians, following the Westminster Confession, denied.25 This was why Dabney was not altogether persuaded by the brethren modification of the “doctrines of grace.” We especially desire to caution the reader against their tendencies in the following directions: Their wresting of the doctrine of faith and assurance, and entire depreciation of all subjective marks of a state of grace; their denial of the imputation of Christ’s active obedience; their disavowal (in some places) of progressive sanctification, confusion of justification and sanctification, and assertion of a dual nature in the regenerate, suggesting to the incautious the worst results of antinomianism; their partial adoption of a fanatical theory of the warrant for prayer; and the ultraism upon the pre-​ advent theory, resulting in a depreciation of the being, duties, and hopes of the visible church, and of the dispensation of the Holy Ghost.26

But Dabney’s fear that brethren teaching was promoting antinomianism was more than a little myopic. After all, his review appeared in a journal which less than a decade previously had published an article denying that slave marriages should be afforded legal recognition and that compared the sexual activity of African Americans to that of cattle, concluding that the sexual activity of unmarried slaves should not be considered as sin.27 None of the writers whose work Dabney reviewed made remotely comparable claims. It was true that brethren broke with Reformed tradition by arguing that Christians should not look to the Ten Commandments as a “rule of life.” But, in arguing that believers should be like Christ, they never suggested that the moral law should be abandoned—​nor that the defense of slavery as an economic system should trump Christian moral claims. It was Southern Presbyterians—​not brethren—​who had permitted economic systems to

Conclusion  143 override moral obligations and had grown wealthy by treating their slaves as breeding stock. While southern Presbyterians fought to retain slavery, Darby was reading Philemon in favor of emancipation and dealing with the pastoral implications of the demoralization of slavery in his work among freed people in Jamaica in the 1860s, where brethren were welcoming into fellowship the children of these illegitimate slave unions.28 But theology is always culturally situated, and, in the minds of his Southern Presbyterian critics, Darby was the antinomian. In 1872, therefore, the two most important journals circulating within American Presbyterianism could not agree on the dangers that brethren represented. Were brethren wolves in sheep’s clothing, as Croskery suggested, or, as Dabney claimed, sheep in wolves’ clothing? Were brethren subverting the confessional tradition, or borrowing from it? And should the distinctive claims of brethren be traced back to Cromwellian radicals, or to Calvin himself? Perhaps the answers to these questions depended upon knowing whether the claims of brethren were best represented by Darby, as Croskery argued, or, as Dabney implied, by those in the Reformed denominations whom he had come to influence.

I Whatever their differences, Dabney and Croskery understood that Darby’s system had not yet been given a distinctive name. While Darby’s theology was adapted within and appropriated beyond the movement he led, it was not yet being identified as “dispensationalism.”29 By the 1870s, after five decades of controversy, the ideas that had driven the “great recovery” had been refined, nuanced, and connected to other theological claims, in a body of divinity that both confirmed and modified the claims of the evangelical Calvinism that was shared across a wide spectrum of nineteenth-​century Protestantism. Those who abandoned their denominational homes to identify with Darby’s movement shared the view of many of its critics that its significance ranged far beyond eschatological themes. For all that these converts to the brethren were joining a movement with distinctive end-​times views, they were also committing themselves to maintaining a broad-​based set of convictions about salvation, the church, and the work of the Holy Spirit. Like Dabney, some of these converts wanted to minimize differences between the brethren and the wider evangelical world. In 1875, William Reid,

144  J. N. Darby whose movement from the Presbyterian ministry to the brethren would be followed by his editing The Bible Witness and Review (1877–​1881), the most high-​brow of brethren periodicals, responded to accusations against his new community that had been made—​rather confusingly—​by another Presbyterian minister with exactly the same name.30 Now identifying with brethren, Reid insisted that he and his fellow believers hold, as firmly as any set of Christians can, many things they are said not to hold, such as—​(1) The plenary inspiration of Scripture; (2) The proper humanity of Christ; (3) The atoning death of Christ as the ground of our justification; (4) That by the obedience of Christ believers are constituted righteous; (5) Progressive sanctification; (6) That repentance is not a mere change of mind, but hatred of sin and moral judgement of self by the Holy Ghost; (7) That all are bound to pray to God; (8) That believers ought to confess their sins; (9) That faith is not a mere credence of testimony; (10) That the Lord’s-​day is of divine authority; (11) The Christian ministry; (12) They repudiate Perfectionism; (13) They hold the Christian’s obligation to walk according to all that is morally obligatory in God’s Word, “be it the Ten Commandments or anything else.”31

The movement with which Reid had come to identify was, he explained, a “scriptural protest against traditionalism in religion, and a plea for the restoration of the great doctrines, institutions, and practices of primitive Christianity. It aims at having the Holy Scriptures given their rightful place of supremacy, and at recalling all saints to the enjoyment of the unity, fellowship, and privileges of the Church of God.”32 Brethren were, he believed, the “Scriptural religious reformers of our day.”33 Other brethren took the opposite view and presented the movement’s claims as historically and confessionally distinct. They discovered the sources of brethren theology not in mid-​seventeenth-​century sects, as Croskery claimed, nor in Calvin, as Dabney suggested, but in the New Testament itself. In the same year that Reid’s pamphlet appeared, Edward Dennett, a Baptist minister who had published a critique of the brethren before describing his conversion to the movement in The step I have taken (1875), outlined his understanding of their key ideas in a series of letters to his former congregation. These letters, which were published as Recovered truths: Being letters to certain believers (1880), described Darby’s arguments relating to justification by faith, the believer’s standing in Christ, the moral law as rule of

Conclusion  145 life, the church, the unity of the body of Christ, the relationship between believers from the Old and New Testament periods, and the second coming of Christ. Dennett set out to explain to his former congregants “what God in His infinite mercy has taught me,” emphasizing that the “modifications” of his previous commitments did not detract from the “unspeakable value of the precious blood of Christ, the meritorious character of His atoning sacrifice, the dignity of His adorable person, or the result of His finished work.” These “modifications” of evangelical Calvinism had, instead, enhanced his valuation of the “mystery of the incarnation, the wondrous character of the grace of God in redemption, and my estimate of the cross of Christ.”34 While thanking God for using Luther to “recover . . . from the corruptions of Popery” the “precious truth” of justification by faith, Dennett lamented the “rationalism and superstition” that beclouded the presentation of that doctrine in the English establishment and in dissent. He targeted the idea, which had not been codified in the Westminster Confession of Faith but which had become normative in large sections of evangelical Calvinism, that believers are justified by the “active and passive obedience of Christ”—​that is, that, “while the blood of Christ cleanses us from guilt, the obedience of Christ—​His vicarious obedience to the law—​is imputed to us for righteousness.”35 Dennett had preached these claims as a Baptist minister and continued to hold these views after he resigned his pastoral charge. The brethren with whom he first met for worship had not regarded these views as disbarring him from the Lord’s table.36 But Dennett changed his mind after continuing to study Romans and Galatians. Justification could not depend upon the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, he insisted. After all, Abraham had been “justified by faith” four hundred and thirty years before the law was given, and his justification was asserted to be a model for that of New Testament believers (Galatians 3:6–​29; Romans 4). Second, he continued, Gentiles were never under the law (Romans 2:14; 1 Corinthians 9:21–​21), and so the “imputation to a believing Gentile of obedience to the law could not be the ground of his justification before God.”37 Third, neither the idea nor the expression of “the righteousness of Christ” could be found in the New Testament. Instead, whenever Scripture discussed righteousness in relation to justification, it consistently referred to “the righteousness of God.” While Jesus Christ was always obedient to the divine law, “this obedience . . . is never mentioned in connection with the justification of the believer.”38 In fact, Dennett concluded, “God’s righteousness has been manifested altogether apart from law (χωρὶς νόμου).”39 The believer’s justification is based upon his union with

146  J. N. Darby Christ: “what [Christ] is, and not what we are; and what He is, so are we in Him before God.”40 To argue the contrary was to adopt a “theological definition of justification is entirely inconsistent with the Scriptures; and I have little doubt that it has sprung from an imperfect knowledge of the believer’s true standing in Christ, from a false conception, in fact, of Christianity.”41 Similarly, Dennett argued that the Ten Commandments were to be understood as “an inadequate expression of what God now expects from believers,” who have “higher, deeper, and broader obligations” that Old Testament formularies suggested.42 The obligations under which the Christian is placed “go beyond the requirements of law,” for the believer’s “rule of life” is Christ himself.43 Consequently, he insisted, brethren could not be antinomians, for they made “far larger demands upon the believer than if we said he was under law.”44 In the 1870s, therefore, brethren and their critics were debating the very same issue. Croskery, Dabney, Reid, and Dennett all came from an evangelical Calvinist background. But they could not agree whether brethren should be compared with or contrasted to Reformed tradition. The debate cut across denominational differences and membership of the movement: Dabney and Reid argued that brethren were essentially similar to the Reformed churches, while Croskery and Dennett argued that they were essentially distinct. The debate continued, of course, because neither brethren nor their critics represented a fixed position. Reformed critics measured Darby’s developing convictions not against their own fixed body of divinity, but against a tradition that had its own history of development and adaptation.45 For example, Darby argued that his denial of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ in justification was entirely in line with the claims of the Westminster Confession, even if the doctrine was shocking to those nineteenth-​century Presbyterians who identified with that confessional standard. The failure of Darby’s Presbyterian critics to note or contest this point suggests that in some of their communities the Westminster Confession had become more obviously a symbol of identity than a teaching tool. Among critics of the brethren, Dabney was almost alone in paying attention to change and development among the Reformed. Croskery might have been right to argue that the distinctive claims of the brethren could be traced back to the new religious movements of the Cromwellian revolution—​but he could also have found these ideas being advocated by respectable seventeenth-​century scholastic theologians. He might have discovered in the works of Johannes Piscator Darby’s argument that believers were not justified through the imputation of

Conclusion  147 the righteousness of Christ; he might have learned from John Owen Darby’s argument that believers should meet for Bible study without clerical oversight and for the weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper; he might have found in the works of Johannes Cocceius the idea that redemptive history progressed through a sequence of ages, as a consequence of which believers were not bound to keep the Lord’s Day as the Christian Sabbath; and he might have located the idea that Jewish people would be converted to Christianity and restored to the Promised Land in the Geneva Bible and in the works of many English puritans.46 In other words, just as Reformed tradition could be used to critique the distinctive claims of brethren, so it could be used to support them. The fact that brethren writers rarely defended their claims by appealing to this tradition said less about their historical interests than it did about their apologetical modus operandi. Brethren leaders were certainly capable of making historical theological appeals. Darby cited Owen to support his arguments about the suffering of Christ. Kelly drew upon Owen (and the American Presbyterian theologian, Samuel Miller) in support of his claim that Christians should not use the Lord’s Prayer in public worship. Bellett included long extracts from Owen in his defense of orthodox Christology. And William Lincoln did the same in his defense of separation from the Church of England.47 But brethren writers were much less interested in establishing historical theological precedents than they were in working from exegetical first principles. The fact that many of their claims had been defended within the Reformed tradition could have been rhetorically useful, but brethren would not have allowed that circumstance to provide their claims with any additional authority. They would have recognized this coincidence as no more than a providentially governed accident of history. Their goal was never to establish Reformed bona fides, but to throw off the constraints of history and the history of theology in order to recover as completely as possible the teaching of the New Testament. Brethren liked to think of themselves as participating in a “great recovery.” In historical theological terms, as their references to Owen suggested, that “recovery” might have begun several centuries before. But that was not what mattered to most of those who would come to appreciate Darby’s legacy. The most capable thinkers among brethren, like Kelly, worked to elucidate Darby’s ideas while taking to heart his worries about artificially structuring exegetical claims and refusing to turn his insights into a system. Consequently, many of those who remembered Darby’s reading of Scripture increased its appeal by reducing its thematic breadth. This was

148  J. N. Darby especially the case in North America, as Daniel Hummel has shown.48 When William Alexander Parlane published Elements of dispensational truth (1894), for example, he only considered eschatological themes.49 For it was neither Darby nor his advocates among brethren who turned “dispensational truth” into “dispensationalism.”50 In fact, the most common modern use of these terms reflects deep misunderstanding of Darby’s vocabulary and ideas. After all, if the term “dispensation” referred only to the institution of prophets, priests, and kings rather than to the “ages” or “administrations” in which they operated, how could it possibly be a useful descriptor for an entire theological system?

II As the previous chapters have noted, Darby was extremely critical of simplified and reductive readings of his work. The selective appropriation of his work was particularly evident during his earliest travels in North America. In 1868, clergy from mainstream denominations met in New York to debate prophetic insights—​the first of a series of events that grew to become known as the Niagara Bible conferences.51 These events were led by such preachers as Reverend James Hall Brookes, who became the “key bridge between Brethren Bible readings and the dispensational hermeneutics that would develop over the next few decades.”52 These conferences grew in size and significance. Although its speakers taught the elements of his system, Darby condemned it.53 Far from celebrating participants’ grasp of prophetic truth, Darby was worried: these occasions encouraged believers to isolate eschatological hopes from other parts of the body of divinity, he believed, and extinguished the purifying hope of Christ’s coming by encouraging believers to remain within mixed communions. By the late nineteenth century, Darby’s ideas had been simplified, systematized, commodified, and disseminated to become “one of America’s most significant religious exports.”54 Sometimes this work was achieved by brethren, like Mackintosh, whose commentaries had never been copyrighted in the United Kingdom and so were widely reproduced by evangelical publishers in the United States.55 But the most influential statements of dispensational eschatology came from outside the brethren—​as in William E. Blackstone’s book, Jesus is coming (1878), for example, which sold “millions of copies” in its first few decades.56 By the turn of the century, the market for the new end-​times teaching was simply enormous.

Conclusion  149 This explains why C. I. Scofield’s commodification of Darby’s ideas was so extraordinarily successful. Scofield was a scholarly and entrepreneurial lawyer who had experienced an evangelical conversion in 1879, divorce in 1882, ordination into the Congregational ministry in 1883, a second marriage in 1884, and, somewhere along the way, the award of a Doctor of Divinity degree from an unknown institution.57 In 1890, as a protégé of D. L. Moody, he developed the correspondence course that provided the key ideas that were encoded in his Reference Bible (1909).58 Scofield’s Bible, the development of which was partly subsidized by brethren financial support, was a bold experiment.59 It combined in its annotations the key ideas of the prophetic conference circuit, offering “helps at hard places, explanations of seeming discrepancies, and a new system of paragraphs” to confirm the dispensational view.60 The volume’s title page illustrated that, by 1909, this doctrinal system appealed to leaders across American denominations. Scofield listed consulting editors from the staff of Crozer Theological Seminary, a Baptist center of learning and Xenia Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian institution, as well as the non-​denominational Moody Bible Institute and the Toronto Bible Institute. These consulting editors included two preachers with formidable reputations—​A. T. Pierson, the successor to C. H. Spurgeon as minister of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, and Arno C. Gaebelein, a Methodist prophecy writer.61 Inside the text, Scofield made more telling acknowledgments, including Walter Scott, an “eminent Bible teacher,” and Henry Frowde, an Oxford University Press publisher. At the time, both men were among the exclusive brethren.62 But their support for the project was no guarantee that Scofield’s Bible would adhere to Darby’s views. For Scofield’s notes recast Darby’s thinking in foundational ways. Most importantly, they abandoned Darby’s view of redemptive history and dropped his technical vocabulary as well as the ideas it sustained. Reverting to the older and more conventional usage, which used the term to relate to one of a sequence of redemptive-​historical periods, Scofield defined a “dispensation” as a “period of time during which man is tested in respect of obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God” and suggested that a consecutive sequence of seven of these dispensations made up the sum total of redemptive history.63 This reversal of Darby’s definition took the structure of redemptive history back to early modern precedents, to the extent that one critic of Scofield’s system has traced its ideas not to any nineteenth-​ century source but to the work of Isaac Watts.64 Whatever its antecedents, this was the variety of dispensational thinking that came to dominate large

150  J. N. Darby sections of evangelicalism. And this dispensational thinking was becoming a very big business. By the 1910s, Scofield’s name and reputation as a Bible teacher had become “assets, both financial and symbolic.”65 In 1914, he sold his correspondence course to Moody Bible Institute for the eye-​watering sum of $10,000.66 And his prestige continued to grow. A second edition of his Reference Bible was published in 1917. In 1920, Oxford University Press published his biography.67 By 1930, his Bible had become the first publication of the American branch of the press to achieve one million sales.68 More than one century after its first appearance, it has been claimed, the Scofield Reference Bible remains the “best-​selling volume in the history of Oxford University Press.”69 And that was only the beginning. Darby’s nuanced and complex conclusions were being quietly forgotten. But Scofield’s simplification of his ideas was becoming stunningly successful.

III But, it seems, it was only after the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible that this new version of dispensational theology became known as “dispensationalism.”70 In the annotations to his Bible, Scofield himself does not appear to have used the term. But it was developed to describe his teaching. This act of naming was itself significant. As we have already noticed, Darby had resisted any effort to provide his teaching with a distinctive descriptor. After all, he had argued that brethren would cease to represent the church if they adopted a distinctive identity. For the same reason, he did not present his teaching as one “ism” that could be situated among others. What he taught was simply Scripture itself. Those who shared his sensitivities were able to sustain his view for as long as they were able to argue that brethren were no more than the representatives of the catholic church. But when Darby’s ecclesiology dropped out of his legacy, especially in North America, his teaching was circulated throughout the Protestant denominations that he had condemned, to become one of several theological options. Needing to be distinguished from more normative accounts of evangelical Calvinism, his teaching—​or what remained of it—​was given a descriptor of its own. For it was not among brethren, but among in the denominations in which Darby’s legacy was only partly adopted, that “dispensationalism” was born. It is not clear when the term was coined. It appears to have evolved as a pejorative in the conflicting worlds of American Protestant fundamentalism.71

Conclusion  151 In this context, eschatology became a matter of sharp and pointed debate. In 1913, Sir Robert Anderson, Metropolitan Police detective chief, spymaster, and prophetic author, complained of those who reject “what they slightingly call ‘dispensationalism.’ ”72 In 1928, Philip Mauro used the term in this “slighting” way in The gospel of the kingdom, with an examination of modern dispensationalism (1928)—​which is the first use of the term recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary and the first instance of usage recorded by Daniel Hummel.73 Significantly, Mauro used the term not to refer to Darby’s work but rather to the “novel system of doctrine” set out in the Scofield Reference Bible.74 For, he claimed, there were important differences between Darby’s ideas and those of the Scofield Bible. Of course, Darby and other brethren had argued for “dispensational” distinctives. But the “best known and most spiritual” brethren leaders had never argued that the gospel of the kingdom, preached by John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, was “Jewish”; nor that the gospels were “Jewish”; nor that the sermon on the mount was “law, not grace”; nor that the Sermon on the Mount should only be applied in a future “Jewish” kingdom.75 Mauro argued that it was Scofield, not the brethren, who had made these claims. He excused Darby and other brethren from his critique of the system to which their writings had given birth. Darby and the brethren had developed “dispensational” teaching. But, Mauro argued, it was Scofield, not Darby, who turned that teaching into “dispensationalism,” even if Scofield had not given that teaching its new name. As dispensationalism was reduced to a bare skeleton of redemptive history with a distinctive end-​times program, it was taken up by writers and theologians who shared little of Darby’s other interests. A wide variety of theologies were bolted onto this redemptive-​historical scaffolding. As dispensationalism became more various, it continued to corrode traditional orthodoxies. Its diversity was evident in Clarence Larkin’s Dispensational truth, or God’s plan and purpose in the ages (1918), for example, which argued that end-​times calculations had been encoded in the architecture of the Great Pyramid of Giza.76 A more serious challenge to evangelical orthodoxy—​and one that recalled the debates about eternal punishment into which Darby had been drawn in the 1860s and 1870s—​came from Adolph Ernest Knoch (1874–​1965). After being expelled from a brethren assembly in Los Angeles, Knoch developed the theory that the punishment of the wicked would continue only for the duration of the millennium, after which God would effect a universal reconciliation of his creation, a position that he defended in articles in his magazine, Unsearchable riches (established 1909), and in the

152  J. N. Darby publications associated with his translation, the Concordant Version of the New Testament (1926).77 While Knoch’s influence was mostly confined to the United States, his teaching also gained purchase among a small number of brethren in Ireland and Germany.78 As a system of ideas, dispensationalism was institutionalized in the network of Bible colleges and seminaries that sprung up in the aftermath of the fundamentalist controversy. In that environment, it evolved into a body of divinity that was both scholastic in complexity and available for promotion in innovative and sometimes transformative ways.79 Darby’s distinctive contribution was quietly forgotten. For example, in Lewis Sperry Chafer’s eight-​volume Systematic theology, a definitive statement of classical dispensationalism that was published in the same year as the formation of the state of Israel (1948), Darby was hardly mentioned, and then only in passing. A much wider audience consumed the revised Scofield Bible, which appeared in the year in which the Six-​Day War resulted in Israeli forces capturing the old city of Jerusalem (1967). Capitalizing on the prophetic excitement that was encouraged by these events, Hal Lindsey’s The late, great planet earth (1970) sold 19 million copies and became the New York Times best-​selling non-​fiction work of the decade. In this most influential presentation of dispensationalism, Darby’s name was not mentioned at all. And dispensationalism has continued to diversify. Recent accounts of the system have dropped such foundational assumptions of Darby’s system as the distinction between Israel and the church. These “progressive” forms of dispensationalism are moving back to Reformed readings of redemptive history—​and causing a great deal of controversy along the way.80 But the market for lurid pop culture expressions of dispensationalism has not disappeared. The Left behind novels (1995–​2006), which cast dispensational arguments in the form of fiction, have sold over 65 million copies, inspiring products ranging from computer games to feature films, the most recent of which stars Nicholas Cage.81 Ironically, the most successful presentation of dispensationalism encodes assumptions about soteriology, pneumatology, and ecclesiology that Darby could never have countenanced.82 Nevertheless, Left behind’s prophetic narrative is now so ubiquitous in American culture as to have become banal. Even novelists who display no sympathy for evangelical Christianity are able to assume that their audiences know and understand dispensationalism’s end-​times rubric, as Liz Jensen’s The rapture (2010) and Tom Perrotta’s The leftovers (2012) suggest.83 A simplified version of Darby’s eschatology has become the apocalyptic narrative that is taken for granted by tens of millions of

Conclusion  153 Americans—​and by a large section of the world’s half-​a-​billion evangelicals. But as the influence of dispensationalism has expanded, most elements of Darby’s teaching have dropped out of sight.

IV Throughout this book, I have argued that, just as an earlier generation of historical theologians distinguished Calvin’s theology from that of seventeenth-​ century Calvinism, so we must begin to distinguish Darby’s theology from that of dispensationalism. I have suggested that the significance of Darby’s thought may be established not through the focus on early biography that characterizes much of the existing scholarship, but through an examination of the ideas that he published in his mid and later life, when his leadership of the exclusive brethren movement was most assured and when he had greatest freedom to develop ideas in a generally supportive community. I have proposed, despite the claims of his admirers and critics, that Darby is best understood as a theologian working within and modifying the Reformed theological tradition. If that claim can be supported, Darby may be much closer to Reformed tradition than to the cultures of dispensationalism that his end-​times narrative has inspired. Darby would hardly have been happy to see how his teaching has been received. He would have regarded the appropriation, modification, and abandonment of his teaching as further evidence of the failure of the church and as confirmation that those most committed to resisting the ruin of Christendom were, by continuing to associate with denominational networks, actually contributing to it. In fact, had he lived to see it, Darby might well have regarded the extraordinary popularization and commodification of dispensationalism as another instance of religious failure—​for, in the ruins of the church, the misinterpretation of his teaching might have been exactly what he expected. Dying in 1882, John Nelson Darby might never have heard of “dispensationalism.” The term never appears in his printed work. He never created a self-​interpreting Bible, as Scofield did, modifying and marketing brethren theology to a wider audience. He did not support Zionist policy, nor did he encourage any other kind of political intervention, believing that the church, as God’s heavenly people, should have as little as possible to do with the governance of collapsing cultures. At times this heavenly mindedness could look

154  J. N. Darby dangerously myopic, as during the middle 1840s, when despite his close connection with Ireland he made hardly any written references to the famine that would reduce the island’s population by one-​quarter, or when, during the 1860s, he traveled to the front lines of the American Civil War without commenting on the tragedy of its one and a half million casualties.84 Darby did not set out to craft an end-​times narrative that could be commodified within popular culture, as in The late great planet earth or Left behind. He did not try to invent a theological system. In fact, as this book has argued, many of his most distinctive claims have almost entirely been forgotten. Now, when he is recognized as the “father of dispensationalism,” he is being remembered for arguments that he never made and in connection with a model of redemptive history that he abandoned. He might never have wanted to be the fourth most important Protestant theologian. He might have been happier to be forgotten. “The only place of greatness in a world of evil,” he once remarked, “is . . . to be of no esteem in it.”85 For all his innovation, his reputation might be undeserved. Darby contributed some of the system’s key ideas: he saw the roots, but not the birth, of dispensationalism.

Notes Epigraph 1. J. N. Darby, “On Colossians 1:19” (1834), in Collected writings of J. N. Darby, ed. William Kelly, 34 vols. (London: Morrish, 1866–​1881; note that volumes 33 and 34 were not edited by William Kelly) (hereafter CW) 13: 2. 2. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 468–​69. 3. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 498.

Preface 1. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church” (1844), in CW 3: 373. 2. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church” (1844), in CW 3: 452. 3. On the history of dispensationalism, see Crawford Gribben, Evangelical millennialism in the trans-​Atlantic world, 1500–​2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 71–​109; Daniel G. Hummel, The rise and fall of dispensationalism: How evangelical battles over the end times shaped a nation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2023). 4. Donald Harman Akenson, Discovering the end of time: Irish evangelicals in the age of Daniel O’Connell (Montreal and Kingston, Canada: McGill-​Queen’s University Press, 2016), 3. 5. Letters of John Nelson Darby, ed. J. A. Trench, 3 vols. (London: Morrish, 1886–​1888), 1: 129–​30. 6. The Christian Witness (1834–​1841) was the title of the earliest brethren journal. After the division between open and exclusive brethren, the title page of The Present Testimony (1849–​1881) presented itself as the “original Christian Witness revived.” 7. John Rylands University Library, Christian Brethren Archive (hereafter CBA), Box 33, Letters of William Kelly, letter dated 22 February 1901. 8. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American culture: The shaping of twentieth-​ century evangelicalism, 1870–​1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 46. Mark Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place: Calvinistic soteriology in nineteenth-​century brethren thought (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017). See, for example, M. W. Biggs, The presence and activity of the Holy Spirit (London: Morrish, n.d.), 43.

156 Notes 9. George Bellett, Memoir of the Rev. George Bellett (London: Privately published, 1889), 41–​42. 10. P. L. Embley, “The Early Development of the Plymouth Brethren,” in Patterns of sectarianism: Organisation and ideology in social and religious movements, ed. Bryan R. Wilson (London: Heinemann, 1967), 219. 11. Timothy C. F. Stunt, The life and times of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles: A forgotten scholar (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 27. W. H. Dorman questioned Newton’s dependence on Pearson in A review of certain evils & questions that have arisen amongst brethren, 2nd ed. (London: J. K. Campbell, 1849), 27–​29. Darby did the same in his annotated copy of Newton’s Ancient truths respecting the deity and true humanity of the Lord Jesus (1857), CBA 5540[534]; cited in Donald Harman Akenson, Exporting the rapture: John Nelson Darby and the Victorian conquest of North American evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 349 n. 12. Edmund Gosse, Father and son: A study of two temperaments, ed. Peter Abbs (London: Penguin, 1983), 33, 37. See Timothy C. F. Stunt, “Brethren or Philistine?” Brethren Archivists and Historians Network Review 2 (1999): 13–​16. 13. Chapter Two Archive, London, William Kelly’s annotated copy of W. B. Neatby, A history of the brethren movement (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1902), 80. 14. J. N. Darby, Synopsis of the books of the Bible, 3rd ed., 5 vols. (London: Morrish, [1857–​ 1867]), 5: 125. 15. For more on the historiographical point, see Crawford Gribben, “The history of evangelical eschatology: Or, whatever happened to J. N. Darby?” in The Gospel in the past: The historiography of the evangelical movement, ed. David Bebbington (under consideration). See also Mark S. Sweetnam, “Defining dispensationalism: A cultural studies perspective,” Journal of Religious History 34 (2010): 191–​212. 16. See Donald Harman Akenson, The Americanisation of the Apocalypse: Creating America’s own Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), and Hummel, The rise and fall of dispensationalism. 17. William Reid, The literature and mission of the so-​ called Plymouth Brethren (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1875), 8. 18. “To correspondents,” The Bible Treasury 45 (1860): 32. 19. Errors of the Darby and Plymouth sect, 2nd ed. (London: James Nisbet, 1862), 7. 20. William Lincoln, The javelin of Phineas (London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., 1863), 575–​83. 21. William Kelly, “Appendix to the notice of the Achill Herald Recollections,” The Bible Treasury 140 (1868): 14–​15. 22. These citations were removed in later editions of this work. 23. For example, a short letter from Wigram to Darby on 15 August 1846 refers to Wigram preaching “frequently” from the Sermon on the Mount, and especially from the beatitudes; this claim is redacted from the published version. Compare CBA GVW/​1/​ 62 with Letters of J. N. Darby, supplement: Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2 vols. (Chessington, UK: Bible and Gospel Trust, 2019), 1: 125. 24. On these bibliographical concerns, see Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 487–​98.

Notes  157 25. Compare the texts of Darby, “The apostasy of the successive dispensations” (1836) in the Morrish and Stow Hill editions of CW 1. 26. Akenson, The Americanization of the Apocalypse, 74 n 26. 27. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 487–​98. 28. For consideration of women’s voices within the brethren movement, see Neil T. R. Dickson, “Modern prophetesses: Women preachers in the nineteenth-​century Scottish Brethren,” Records of the Scottish Church History Society 25 (1993): 89–​117; Neil T. R. Dickson, “A Darbyite mystic: Frances Bevan (1827–​1909),” in Bible and theology in the brethren, ed. Neil T. R. Dickson and Tom Marinello (Glasgow: Brethren Historians and Archivists Network, 2018), 213–​48. For comment on women’s voices in the history of dispensationalism, see B. M. Pietsch, Dispensational modernism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 5. 29. Gosse, Father and Son, 94.

Introduction 1. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 586. 2. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 264. 3. Catalogue of the library of the late John Nelson Darby, Esq. Comprising important works relating to theology, history, geography, archæology, voyages and travels, &c. Benedictine and best editions of the Fathers of the Church; rare editions of the Scriptures; bibliography, dictionaries, &c. which will be sold by auction, by Messrs Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge . . . on Monday, 25th of November 1889, and following day (London: Dryden Press, 1889). 4. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 263. 5. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 264. On Kelly, see Edwin Cross, The Irish saint and scholar: A biography of William Kelly (London: Chapter Two, 2004). 6. Around 9 February 1839, Wigram addressed a letter to Ιωννης Λαρβευς (the recipient should have been addressed as Ιωαννης); CBA GVW/​1/​4. This feature of the letter is not reproduced in Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 5. 7. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 261. By 1865, the project was estimated to extend to twenty-​one volumes; Letters of J. N. Darby, Supplement: From French, 2 vols. (Chessington, UK: Bible and Gospel Trust, 2016), 2: 127. On Darby’s bibliography, and that of brethren in general, see Arnold D. Ehlert, Brethren writers: A checklist with an introduction to brethren literature and additional lists (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994). 8. Joseph D’Arcy Sirr, Memoir of . . . Power Le Poer Trench (Dublin: William Curry, 1845), 344. On the history of the brethren movement, see Harold H. Rowdon, The origins of the brethren, 1825–​1850 (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1967); F. Roy Coad, A history of the brethren movement (Exeter, UK: Paternoster, 1976); Neil T. R. Dickson, Brethren in Scotland, 1838–​2000: A social study of an evangelical movement (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2002); Tim Grass, Gathering to his name: The story of the Open

158 Notes Brethren in Britain and Ireland (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster 2006). The history of the exclusive brethren has been less well supplied; see Napoleon Noel, The history of the Brethren, 2 vols. (Denver, CO: W. F. Knapp, 1936). 9. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 489. 10. J. N. Darby, Études sur la parole destinées a aider le Chrétien dans la lecture du Saint-​ Livre (Pau: E. Malan, 1854; revised ed., 1857), CBA 10040. 11. Despite widespread assumptions to the contrary, Darby did not pursue his Bible translation work in isolation from other translators. Compare Philip Church, “Separation from the (evil) world: 2 Timothy 2.19–​21 and the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church,” The Bible Translator 73 (2022): 265, with the evidence of Gilles Despins, La Bible Darby et son histiore: Sa rédaction, ses objectifs et ses principes (Trois-​ Rivières, Canada: Éditions Impact, 2019). 12. Darby would also translate the Old Testament into German (1871) and French (1885). His translation of the Old Testament into English was not completed before his death and was completed by others. 13. See, for example, CBA JND/​2/​26; CBA JND/​2/​4; Notes and comments on Scripture from the note books of J. N. Darby, [ed. P. A. Humphery], 7 vols. (London: James Carter, 1884–​1913), 6: 552–​56. 14. CBA JND/​3/​2–​5. For a description of this text, see Crawford Gribben, “John Nelson Darby’s Bible,” in Riches of the Rylands: The Special Collections of the University of Manchester Library (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2015), 166–​67. Darby’s entry at John 15:6 is dated April 1827. I am grateful to Max Weremchuk for this reference. 15. P. A. Humphery turned some of these comments into composite articles that he published in Notes and comments. Annotations in CBA JND/​3/​1 may be dated by references to Codex Sinaiticus, the New Testament part of which was first published in 1862, at Luke 21:19, John 12:7, Acts 13:21, and Revelation 22:14. These are working notes, suggesting textual and linguistic conclusions that were not always included in his Bible translations. For example, at Romans 2:8, Darby suggests a repunctuation of the passage that does not appear in his translation. His references to Bengel, at John 11:22; Tremellius, at 1 Peter 2:24; and Cicero, at Revelation 6:8 are not carried into his English translation. After its use by Humphery, the item was broken into two parts. The section including the frontispiece and pages up to Genesis 11 has recently been discovered by Michael Schneider in the archive of Der Forum Wiedenest. The material from Genesis 11 onward is held as CBA JND/​3/​1. 16. A note in the Stow Hill edition of the Notes and comments vol. 3—​though not, oddly, in the 1886 edition edited by P. A. Humphery—​notes that these comments were taken from Darby’s Hebrew Bible; “The Psalms, part 1,” in J. N. Darby, Notes and comments, 7 vols. (London: Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot, 1959–​1961), 3: 3. 17. CBA/​JND/​3/​1, note on Hebrews 2:1. 18. This calculation is made in Hummel, The rise and fall of dispensationalism, 1: 1. 19. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 370. 20. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 220.

Notes  159 21. On Darby’s journeys, see, variously, A. Christopher Smith, “J. N. Darby in Switzerland: At the crossroads of brethren history and European evangelicalism,” Christian Brethren Review 34 (1983): 53–​94; Timothy C. F. Stunt, From awakening to secession: Radical evangelicals in Switzerland and Britain, 1815–​ 35 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000); Gerhard Jordy, Die Brüderbewegung in Deuschland (Dillenburg, Germany: CV Dillenburg, 2012), vol. 1. 22. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 308, 309, 312. 23. On the global cultures of evangelicalism in this period, see Bebbington, The dominance of evangelicalism, 68–​73. 24. On the distinction between millennial coteries and movements, see D. N. Hempton, “Evangelicals and eschatology,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31, no. 2 (1980): 182. While living in France, Frances Bevan kept in touch with brethren ministry through periodicals; Dickson, “A Darbyite mystic,” 213–​48. 25. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 271, 297. 26. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 282, 296. 27. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 370. 28. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 65. 29. Notes and jottings from various meetings with J. N. Darby, transcribed by E. C. Pressland, 5 vols. (London: Foreign Gospel Tract and Book Depot, [1930–​1932]), 5: 110. 30. Andrew Miller, The Brethren (commonly so-​called): A brief sketch of their origin, progress and testimony (London: Morrish, [1878]), 163. 31. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 271, 297. 32. The Holy Bible, trans. J. N. Darby (London: Morrish, 1890) [hereafter Darby Bible], note on 2 Timothy 1:13. 33. Darby, Letters, 3: 438. 34. Darby, “On the humanity of Christ,” The Bible Treasury 66 (1861): 368; Darby, “On the humanity of Christ,” in CW 10: 290. 35. Berthold Schwarz, Leben im Sieg Christi: Die Bedeutung von Gesetz and Gnade für das Leben des Christen bei John Nelson Darby (Basel: Brunnen, 2008), 18, 20. 36. Darby, “The sabbath: Is the law dead, or am I?” (1866), in CW 10: 424–​77. 37. “The church in Sardis,” The Bible Witness and Review 2 (1878): 344. 38. See the classic account by Ernest Sandeen, The roots of fundamentalism: British and American millenarianism, 1800–​1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), and more recent contributions including Akenson, The Americanisation of the apocalypse, and Hummel, The rise and fall of dispensationalism. R. H. Krapohl describes Darby’s theology even in the early 1830s as “dispensationalism” in “A search for purity: The controversial life of John Nelson Darby” (unpublished PhD thesis, Baylor University, 1988), 149. 39. David Bebbington has offered the most persuasive definition of evangelicalism in Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A history from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman/​Routledge, 1989). For an application of his defining “evangelical quadrilateral” to nineteenth-​century cultures, see David W. Bebbington, The

160 Notes dominance of evangelicalism: The age of Spurgeon and Moody (Leicester, UK: IVP, 2005), 21–​36. 40. Sandeen, The roots of fundamentalism; Gribben, Evangelical millennialism in the trans-​Atlantic world, 92–​109. 41. Cynthia Read, editor at Oxford University Press, confirmed that the Scofield Reference Bible had sold in the “tens of millions”; email to the author, 3 April 2018. 42. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 3. See also the comment of J. Gordon Melton: “probably no Christian thinker in the last 200 years has so affected the way in which English-​speaking Christians view the faith, and yet has received so little recognition of his contribution as John Nelson Darby”; The encyclopaedia of American religions, 6th ed. (London: Gale Research, 1999), 107. 43. Sir Robert Anderson, Forgotten truths (London: James Nisbet, 1913), 74. On Anderson, see ODNB, s.v. In contrast, Akenson, The Americanisation of the apocalypse, 79, and Hummel, The rise and fall of dispensationalism, argue that the term “dispensationalism” was coined by Philip Mauro in the 1920s. 44. OED, s.v. This claim counters that of Krapohl, “A search for purity,” 149. 45. Darby’s early life is most fully documented in Akenson, Discovering the end of time, and in Max Weremchuk, Becoming JND: The early years of John Nelson Darby, 1800–​ 1829 (El Cajon, CA: Southern California Seminary Press, forthcoming). Darby’s later biography is conveniently summarized in W. G. Turner, John Nelson Darby: A biography (1901; reprint London: Chapter Two, 1990); Timothy C. F. Stunt, “Darby, John Nelson,” in The Blackwell dictionary of evangelical biography [hereafter BDEB], ed. Donald M. Lewis (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), s.v.; Harold H. Rowdon, “Darby, John Nelson,” in Dictionary of historical theology, ed. Trevor A. Hart (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000), s.v.; N. T. R. Dickson, “Darby, John Nelson,” in Biographical dictionary of evangelicals, ed. Timothy Larsen et al. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2003), s.v.; Timothy C. F. Stunt, “Darby, John Nelson (1800–​1882),” ODNB, s.v.; Linde Lunney, “Darby, John Nelson,” in Dictionary of Irish Biography [hereafter DIB], ed. James McGuire and James Quinn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), s.v. See also Max Weremchuk and Timothy C. F. Stunt, “John Nelson Darby: Bicentennial reflections,” Brethren Archivists and Historians Network Review 2, no. 2 (2003): 67–​74; Timothy C. F. Stunt, “John Nelson Darby: Contexts and perceptions,” in Protestant millennialism, evangelicalism and Irish society, 1790–​2005, ed. Crawford Gribben and Andrew R. Holmes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 83–​98. James I. Fazio, “John Nelson Darby: The unknown and well-​known nineteenth-​century Irish reformer,” in Forged from reformation: How dispensational thought advances the Reformed legacy, ed. Christopher Cone and James I. Fazio (El Cajon, CA: Southern California Seminary Press, 2017), 81–​108. R. A. Huebner has described the formation of Darby’s ideas in Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 3 vols. (Morganville, NJ: Present Truth Publications, 1991–​1995). 46. Darby, “The notion of a clergyman, dispensationally the sin against the Holy Ghost” (1834), in CW 1: 57; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 5. 47. For Darby’s baptism certificate, which lists his birth date, see CBA JND/​1/​1/​21. For Irish ecclesiastical contexts, see Donald Harman Akenson, The Church of

Notes  161 Ireland: Ecclesiastical reform and revolution, 1800–​ 1885 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971). 48. There is no evidence, despite some claims to the contrary, that Nelson acted as Darby’s godfather; DIB, s.v. 49. For example, Darby’s brother was Member of Parliament (MP) for East Sussex, and Darby’s friend, John Parnell, the second Lord Congleton, sat in the House of Lords. Darby was called upon to address a job reference to the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey; Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 143. For other examples of elite connections, see Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 115–​19. 50. [J. C. Philpot], “Editor’s revew: The Christian Witness,” The Gospel Standard 8, no. 75 (March 1842): 78. 51. Weremchuk, Becoming JND, forthcoming. 52. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 162. 53. CBA JND/​1/​1/​48; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 160–​61. 54. Timothy C. F. Stunt, “The early ecclesiastical identity of John Nelson Darby,” in The brethren and the church, ed. Neil T. R. Dickson and Tom Marinello (Glasgow: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2020), 7–​22. 55. Timothy C. F. Stunt, “Influences in the early development of J. N. Darby,” in Prisoners of hope? Aspects of evangelical millennialism in Britain and Ireland, 1800–​1880, ed. Crawford Gribben and Timothy C. F. Stunt (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2004), 48–​49, n 16. 56. Darby recorded his conversion in CBA JND/​3/​5, note on 2 Timothy 3:8-​9. See also Darby, “The notion of a clergyman” (1834), in CW 1:54–​57; Letters 2: 310, 433; 3: 298. 57. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 151, 203; Peter Nockles, “Church or protestant sect? The Church of Ireland, high churchmanship, and the Oxford movement, 1822–​ 1869,” Historical Journal 41, no. 2 (1998): 463. 58. CBA 7061, 131; CBA 7064, 25; Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Heid. Hs. 677, f. 250–​51. I am grateful to Max Weremchuk for sharing this reference. For further details, see Weremchuk, Becoming JND, forthcoming. 59. Darby, Letters, 2: 434. 60. A copy of this text bearing both signatures was advertised in Antiquates fine & rare books: A selection of books, manuscripts, & broadsides to be exhibited at Firsts London, Saatchi Gallery, 18–​21 May, 2023 (privately printed), 53. 61. Darby, “God for us” (1838), in CW 12: 138. 62. A great deal of attention has been paid to finding the seeds of dispensationalism in the environment of Trinity College Dublin during Darby’s student days; compare Gary L. Nebeker, “John Nelson Darby and Trinity College, Dublin: A study in eschatological contrasts,” Fides et Historia 34, no. 2 (2002): 87–​108; Timothy C. F. Stunt, “The formation of a seceder: John Nelson Darby at Trinity College, 1815–​1819,” in A flight of parsons: The divinity diaspora of Trinity College Dublin, ed. Thomas P. Power (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2018), 41–​59. See also Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 132 n. 104. 63. For Darby’s purchase of a clerical gown, see CBA JND/​1/​1/​31. For Darby’s ordination as deacon, see CBA JND/​1/​1/​34. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 41, 209; DIB, s.v.

162 Notes 64. Calary was not designed as a parish until 1831; Weremchuk, Becoming JND, forthcoming. On the “Second Reformation,” see Desmond Bowen, The Protestant crusade in Ireland, 1800–​70 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1978), 83–​126; Irene Whelan, The Bible war in Ireland: The ‘Second Reformation’ and the polarization of protestant-​Catholic relations, 1800–​1840 (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2005); and Miriam Moffitt, Soupers and jumpers: The protestant missions in Connemara, 1848–​1937 (Dublin: Nonsuch Publishing, 2008). Darby is mentioned in passing in the former two titles and not at all in the latter title. 65. CBA JND/​1/​1/​11; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 209. Akenson shrewdly notes that that, given the pace of population growth in different denominations, the Second Reformation might have left the Anglican population smaller than that of the Catholics; Discovering the end of time, 232. 66. The demographic composition of the parish is described in Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 41. 67. CBA JND/​5/​3. 68. For context, see Nockles, “Church or protestant sect?” 69. Darby, “The presence of the Holy Ghost on earth consequent on Christ’s exaltation to the right hand of God” (1874), in CW 21: 172. 70. “In my case, like thousands of others, before I got forgiveness, I had found out what I was; I learned the seventh [chapter of Romans] before I learned the third”; Darby, “The presence of the Holy Ghost on earth consequent on Christ’s exaltation to the right hand of God” (1874), in CW 21: 174. 71. Crawford Gribben, “Dating Darby’s addresses to his Roman Catholic brethren,” Brethren Historical Review 18 (2022): 1–​14. Darby described his influence on Philpot in Letters, 3: 198. Philpot was more critical of the brethren; “Editor’s review: The Christian Witness,” The Gospel Standard 8 (1842): 77–​84. 72. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 228. I am not here debating whether Darby’s accident occurred in 1826 or 1827. 73. For Darby’s reading of Isaiah 32 during this period, see Darby, “Evidence from Scripture of the passing away of the present dispensation” (1831), in CW 2: 165. 74. Some of these items were printed without being published, such as Considerations addressed to the Archbishop of Dublin, which, Weremchuk has suggested, should be dated to 1827 and not, as Akenson speculated, 1828; Becoming JND, forthcoming. 75. Kelly repeated the claim that “J. N. D.’s letter of demission was in 1827”; CBA, Box 33, Letters of William Kelly, letter dated 19 April 1901. In fact, in mid-​century, it was determined that an Anglican priest was unable to secede; Grayson Carter, Anglican evangelicals: Protestant secessions from the via media, c. 1800–​1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 290. See Huebner, Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 1: 34–​35. 76. Darby, “Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ” (?1834), in CW 1: 51. I have not been able to find a printing of this text prior to its appearance in The Christian Witness 1 (1834), although Dates of J. N. Darby’s Collected writings, 2nd ed. (Chessington, UK: Bible and Gospel Trust, 2019), suggests an initial printing in 1828 (p. 5).

Notes  163 77. Henry Pickering, ed., Chief men among the Brethren, 2nd ed. (London: Pickering & Inglis, n.d.), 187. 78. Chapter Two Archive, London, Kelly’s annotated copy of Neatby, A history of the Brethren movement, 36. 79. For a description of this environment, see Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 195–​248. Other contemporary cultures of dissent are described by Timothy C. F. Stunt, The elusive quest of the spiritual malcontent: Some early nineteenth-​century ecclesiastical malcontents (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015), 18–​20, who notes a possible link with the brethren meeting on Aungier Street, Dublin. 80. Chapter Two Archive, Letters of William Kelly, letter dated 23 January 1901 (a copy of this letter is not preserved in CBA, Box 33, Letters of William Kelly); Miller, The Brethren, 12–​13; Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 70, 197; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 271. 81. Miller, The Brethren, 9–​11; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 271–​73. 82. Darby received an invitation to a meeting for humiliation in Sackville St., Dublin, in 1829; CBA/​JND/​1/​1/​24. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 274–​75. On the location of this residence, see Roger N. Holden, “Are we worshipping at the right shrine? Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin,” Brethren Historical Review 13 (2017): 1–​5. 83. Darby, “Address to his Roman Catholic brethren” (?1827), in CW 18: 21. 84. CBA/​JND/​1/​1/​23. 85. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 187. 86. CBA JND/​5/​2. For context, see James S. Donnelly Jr, Captain Rock: The Irish agrarian rebellion of 1821–​1824 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009). 87. The early history of these brethren is best reconstructed in Peter L. Embley, “The origins and early development of the Plymouth Brethren” (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1967). 88. Huebner, Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 1: 52; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 275. 89. Akenson, Discovering the end of time; Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 32. 90. Darby, Letters, 1: 2. 91. CBA 7049, Newton, “Recollections,” 254, 259; Embley, “The early development of the Plymouth Brethren,” 214; Jonathan D. Burnham, A story of conflict: The controversial relationship between Benjamin Wills Newton and John Nelson Darby (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2005), 76. 92. For the idea of multiple partings of the ways, see James D. G. Dunn, The partings of the ways between Christianity and Judaism (London: SCM, 2006). 93. Timothy C. F. Stunt, “An early forgotten letter by J. N. D.,” Brethren Historical Review 13 (2017): 6–​8. 94. Bellett, Recollections, letter dated 7 June 1858 addressed to James McAllister; cited in Embley, “The early development of the Plymouth Brethren,” 220. 95. Darby, “Reply to the remarks in two leading articles of the Christian Journal, entitled ‘Our separating brethren’ ” (1834), in CW 14: 266; Darby, “The claims of the Church of England considered; being the close of a correspondence between the Rev. James Kelly, of Stillorgan, Ireland, and J. N. Darby” (1842), in CW 14: 291.

164 Notes 96. Questions for eight weeks’ consideration, address to the Church of God (London: Central Tract Depot, 1838), listed the topics addressed at the conferences from 1830 until 1836, and then again in 1838, at “P. H. E. I.” (Powerscourt House, Edenderry, Ireland, 1830–​33), at “E. P. D. I.” (Ely Place, Dublin, Ireland, 1834–​35), and at “S. G. D. I.” (Sandymount Green, Dublin, Ireland). Akenson observes the social decline that the changing location of these conferences suggests: Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 379, 402, 460. 97. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 299 n 49, 435. 98. J. N. Darby, Notes of sermons by Revd J. N. Darby (Dublin: Richard Moore Tims, 1838). 99. Huebner, Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 1: 55. See Burnham, A story of conflict, and Akenson, Exporting the rapture, for details of the tensions between Darby and Newton. 100. Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 241. [J. N. Darby], “On Colossians 1. xix,” The Christian Witness 1 (1834): 88; “On the extended scope of prophecy,” The Christian Witness 1 (1834): 90; “Scriptural criticisms,” The Christian Witness 1 (1834): 320. Curiously, “Scriptural criticisms, No. 2,” The Christian Witness 2 (1834): 424–​34, was not attributed to Darby, though his authorship was implied in its introduction; “An analysis of the book of Daniel,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 232. 101. “Irish chronicle,” The Baptist Magazine 28 (1836): 166. 102. Joseph D’Arcy Sirr, Reasons for abiding in the established church: A letter to the Rev. Charles Hargrove (Dublin: Richard Moore Tims, 1836), 151. 103. Josiah Conder, An analytical and comparative view of all religions now extant among mankind (London: Jackson and Walford, 1838), 481. 104. A full report of the proceedings of the Great Meeting of the Catholics of London (London: Thomas Jones, 1839), 25; The Penny Catholic Magazine 1: 16 (28 December 1839): 1. 105. William Carleton, Valentine M’Clutchy, the Irish agent (Dublin: J. Duffy, 1845), 286. See also “Oxford and Berlin theology,” The Dublin University Magazine 127: 22 (1843): 281. 106. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 314. 107. Timothy Larsen, “‘Living by faith’: A short history of brethren practice,” Brethren Archivists and Historians Network Review 1 (1998): 67–​102. 108. The life and letters of Rev. William Pennefather, BA, ed. Robert Brathwaite (London: J. Shaw and Co, n.d.), 23–​24. The individual who is described in these letters may be identified as Darby by his close link to Lady Powerscourt, his calling for separation from the established church, and his promoting a reading of the Psalms that saw Christ as their speaker. 109. “Letter from John Nelson Darby to his brother Horatio,” 5 October 1835, in Marigold Freeman-​Attwood, Leap Castle: A place and its people (Norwich: Michael Russell, 2001), 175. 110. Darby, Letters, 3: 351–​61. 111. Bière Darbyste is brewed by Brasserie de Blaugies in Blaugies, Belgium. 112. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 1: 27.

Notes  165 113. Kenneth J. Stewart, Restoring the reformation: British evangelicalism and the Francophone ‘réveil’, 1816–​1849 (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2006), 104. 114. “Foreign and colonial intelligence,” The English Review: or, Quarterly Journal of Ecclesiastical and General Literature 1 (1844): 507. 115. Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 129. William Lindsey Alexander, Switzerland and the Swiss churches: Being notes of a short tour, and notices of the principal religious bodies in that country (Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1846), 279. 116. “Congregational union,” The Scottish Congregational Magazine (1845): 236; “The present state of the national church of Geneva,” The Baptist Record and Biblical Repository 4 (1847): 345. 117. Stewart, Restoring the reformation, 199. 118. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 1: 167. 119. Burnham, A story of conflict; Darby claimed that supporters of Newton had refused to shake hands with a shopkeeper; Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 1: 108. 120. On Newton, see George H. Fromow, B. W. Newton and Dr S. P. Tregelles: Teachers of the faith and the future, 2nd ed. (London: Sovereign Grace Advent Testimony, 1969). 121. Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 226. 122. Darbyite discipline: or, A buoy fixed by a friendly hand on a sunken rock (Dublin: J. Robertson & Co., 1865), 9. 123. Dickson, Brethren in Scotland, 47–​49. 124. Dorman, A review of certain evils & questions that have arisen amongst, 32. 125. W. H. Dorman, The close of twenty-​eight years of association with J. N. D., 2nd ed. (London: Houlston & Wright, 1866), 11. 126. Dorman, The close of twenty-​eight years of association with J. N. D., 22. See also P. F. Hall, Grief upon grief: A dialogue (1866). 127. Dorman, The close of twenty-​eight years of association with J. N. D., 28. 128. Christian obedience not ‘ecclesiastical independency’. Letters of J. N. Darby & Mr B. Ellis relating to the refusal of Sheffield brethren to recognise a certain course of ecclesiastical discipline enacted in London, with replies on behalf of Sheffield brethren (Sheffield: S. W. Spurr, 1866), 3. 129. Daniel Seelye Gregory, review of Darby, Synopsis of the Books of the Bible and other titles, in The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 40 no. 4 (1868): 481–​519. 130. Akenson, The Americanization of the Apocalypse, 216. 131. Darby, Notes and jottings, 5: 9. 132. Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, vol. 1, 370. Brown’s publisher submitted his commentary on Romans for review in The Bible Treasury, in which his work had already been criticized; “Books, &c., received,” The Bible Treasury 58 (1860): 240. 133. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 2: 36, 74. 134. On Mackintosh, see Edwin Cross, The life and times of Charles Henry Mackintosh: A biography (London: Chapter Two, 2011). On copyright issues, see Daniel Vaca, Evangelicals incorporated: Books and the business of religion in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 43. Copyright presented major problems for brethren: in 1847, someone who had taken notes on Andrew Jukes’s

166 Notes preaching on the Levitical offerings informed him that he intended to publish the lectures. Without any protection from laws of copyright, Jukes had to purchase the notes for £100; Letters of Andrew Jukes, ed. Hebert H. Jeaffreson (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903), xxvii. 135. See, for example, the extended reading of Bellarmine in [Kelly], “Christ preaching to the spirits in prison,” The Bible Treasury 193 (1872): 89–​94. 136. William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam, “Introduction,” in A critical and exegetical commentary on the epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary series (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1895), cvii. The present author owns a commentary by Kelly that was presented to the library of Mansfield College, Oxford, by its principal, A. M. Fairbairn. 137. Peter J. Lineham, There we found brethren: A history of assemblies of brethren in New Zealand (Palmerston North, NZ: G. P. H. Society, 1977), 53–​55; Weremchuk, John Nelson Darby, 2nd ed., 132. 138. CBA JND/​5/​142. 139. CBA JND/​5/​142. 140. CBA JND/​5/​289. 141. Embley, “The early development of the Plymouth Brethren,” 241. 142. Darby, Letters, 3: 166. 143. Darby, Letters, 3: 191. 144. CBA JND/​1/​1/​50. 145. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 525. 146. Catalogue of the library of the late John Nelson Darby. 147. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 227, 229. 148. Weremchuk, John Nelson Darby, 2nd ed., 32. 149. Neatby, A history of the Plymouth Brethren, 47. 150. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 266. 151. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 266. 152. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 259. 153. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 268; Letters of J. N. Darby . . . from French, 1: 385. 154. CBA JND/​3/​1. 155. It is tempting to suggest that the clarity of the Blank-​paged Bible annotations give way to the less clear handwriting in Darby’s later career; however, it is important to note that some of the Blank-​paged Bible annotations were made after 1862 (the note on CBA/​JND/​3/​1, John 12:7, refers to Codex Sinaiticus, the New Testament portion of which was first published 1862), while some annotations in the Greek New Testament are dated as early as 1827 (the note on CBA/​JND/​3/​3, John 15:6 is dated April 1827). 156. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 4. 157. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 6. 158. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 226. See also 1: 242–​43. 159. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 270.

Notes  167 160. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 311. 161. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 334. 162. Chapter Two Archive, London, Kelly’s annotated copy of Neatby, A history of the Brethren movement, 81. 163. CBA/​JND/​3/​1, at Numbers 24: 3. 164. Darby, Letters, 1: 24. 165. J. N. Darby, Spiritual songs, ed. Henry A. Hammond (Dublin: Privately published, 1883), viii. 166. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 223. 167. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 215. 168. Darby, Letters, 1: 374. 169. William Kelly, as quoted in Turner, John Nelson Darby, 49. 170. William Kelly, as quoted in Turner, John Nelson Darby, 48–​49. 171. Rev. James Kelly made these complaints about Darby’s writing style in letters dated 8 February 1839 and 28 January 1842; The claims of the Church of England considered; being the close of a correspondence between the Rev. James Kelly, of Stillorgan, Ireland, and J. N. Darby (London: W. H. Broom, 1864), v, 7–​8, 20. 172. Errors of the Darby and Plymouth sect, reprinted and revised from the “Record” newspaper; with additions, 2nd ed. (London: James Nisbet, 1862), 48–​49. 173. H. T. D., Darbyism: Its fruit and doctrines, being a review of a tract entitled ‘The Brethren and their reviewers (Dublin: George Herbert, 1863), 11. 174. Neatby, A history of the Brethren movement, 49. 175. Chapter Two Archive, London, Kelly’s annotated copy of Neatby, A history of the Brethren movement, 49. 176. Chapter Two Archive, London, Kelly’s annotated copy of Neatby, A history of the Brethren movement, 332. 177. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 151. 178. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 428, 431. 179. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 74–​75. 180. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 92. 181. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 108. 182. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 133. 183. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 321. 184. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 651. Akenson dates this edition to 1866; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 497. 185. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 369. The first volumes of the Synopsis was advertised for sale in The Bible Treasury for 7/​6; The Bible Treasury 1: 15 (1857): 246. 186. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 369. 187. [J. N. Darby], The Father and prodigal (London: Broom, n.d.), back cover. The list shows that the German New Testament was selling for 2/​0, the French New Testament for 3/​6, and the The Father and prodigal for a penny. 188. CBA JND/​5/​109. 189. CBA JND/​2/​3.

168 Notes 190. Author’s collection. 191. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 371. Kelly gathered most of Darby’s other work in the first 32 volumes of the Collected writings (1866–​ 1881), to which two additional volumes of miscellaneous works were added shortly after the author’s death; Akenson argues that these were published in 1883. They were certainly published by 1902, when their contents were included in Full indexes to the Collected writings of J. N. Darby, vols. I–​XXXIV (London: Morrish, 1902); Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 492. A second edition of the Collected writings appeared with some work revised in volumes 12, 16, and 21; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 496. 192. [Darby], “A letter on a serious question connected with the Irish education measures of 1832,” The Bible Treasury 197 (1872): 155. Very few copies of Darby’s early writing are extant. Only five copies of Considerations addressed to the Archbishop of Dublin are recorded on Worldcat, where, inexplicably, they are attributed to William Magee. Oddly, it was Darby’s brother Christopher who persuaded the archbishop of Armagh, Lord John Geogre de la Poer Beresford, to support the reform; Akenson, The Church of Ireland, 1800–​1885, 167–​68; DIB, s.v. 193. “I have a new tract put out on the Presence of the Holy Ghost, and the Coming of the Lord, being the practical substance of Christian truth where His work is relied on. All this, with meetings every day, you may see is not idleness”; Darby, Letters, 2: 481. Compare J. N. Darby, The presence of the Holy Ghost, etc. (London: Morrish 1875) [Trinity College Library, Dublin, Early Printed Books, Pa420/​2] with “Christ’s Work, the Spirit’s Power; and the Lord’s Coming,” The Bible Treasury 14 (1883), 263–​65, 281–​82, 296–​97, 311–​13, 328–​30. I owe this reference to Andrew Poots. 194. The text appeared in Helps for the poor of the flock 6 (1901): 69–​76, 92–​101, 121–​27, and was reprinted in A new and concise Bible dictionary (London: Morrish,?), s.v.; [J. N. D.], Atonement (London: Morrish, n.d.). I owe this reference to a brother who prefers not to be identified. J. N. Darby, Atonement: Reprinted from A new and concise Bible dictionary (London: Morrish, n.d.). 195. CBA, BAx 33, Letters of William Kelly, letter dated 23 June 1898. 196. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 361. 197. See Gribben, “Dating Darby’s addresses to his Roman Catholic brethren,” 1–​14. 198. Compare Darby’s annotations on Genesis 12, in his “Blank-​paged Bible,” CBA JND/​ 3/​1, with the much more extensive notes on this chapter in “Genesis,” Darby, Notes and comments, 1. 199. Darby owned a copy of Edward O’Reilly, An Irish-​ English dictionary (Dublin: Privately printed, 1821); Catalogue of the library of the late John Nelson Darby, 23. Robert Daly also learned Irish, sufficient to revise a standard lexicon; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 220. 200. Darby, Letters, 3: 207. See also Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 186–​87. I am grateful to Salvador Ryan and Mícheál Ó Mainnín for advice on Darby’s use of Irish. 201. Darby described himself “murdering” the German and Dutch languages; see, for example, Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 1: 298.

Notes  169 202. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 110. 203. Darby, “Brief Scriptural evidence of eternal punishment” (1847), in CW 7: 1. 204. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 56, 60. The less confident Hebrew workings in Darby’s Bagster Bible seem to be those of Humphery, who turned some of the annotations into articles in the Notes and comments; see CBA/​ JND/​3/​1, at Leviticus 3:1, 5:15–​16, Numbers 28:2, and elsewhere. Darby contrasted the English and Hebrew texts in his note on Nehemiah 11:12. 205. Despins, La Bible Darby et son histoire, 21–​22. 206. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 369. 207. CBA JND/​5/​236. 208. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 369; Despins, La Bible Darby et son histoire, 37–​38. 209. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 56. 210. Ian Randall, “Wilfred James Wiseman (1891–​1970): The Bible Society and the Brethren,” in Bible and theology in the Brethren, ed. Neil Dickson and T. J. Marinello (Glasgow: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2018), 117. 211. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 4. 212. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 55. Despins, La Bible Darby et son histoire, 40–​42. 213. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 49; Despins, La Bible Darby et son histiore, 40–​45. 214. This was reprinted as Darby, “An introduction to the Bible” (1882), in CW 34: 1–​66. 215. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 204. 216. Les livres saints connus sous le nom de Noveau Testament, 2nd ed. (Pau, France: 1872). 217. La Sainte Bible, qui comprend l’Ancien et le Nouveau Testament, traduits sur les textes originaux par J. N. Darby (Pau, France: La Haye, 1885). 218. CBA JND/​5/​146. 219. Despins, La Bible Darby et son histiore, 45–​48. 220. J. N. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” in The New Testament: A new translation from a revised text of the Greek original, trans. J. N. Darby, 3rd ed. (London: Morrish, 1884), n.p. 221. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. 222. Note on Romans 11:31. 223. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 394. 224. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. 225. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 318. 226. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 330–​31. 227. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 319. 228. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. 229. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. 230. Note on Matthew 14:23. 231. Note on 1 Corinthians 4:6; note on 2 Corinthians 7:13. 232. Note on Matthew 13:22. 233. Note on Matthew 16:6.

170 Notes 234. Note on 1 Corinthians 8:1; Matthew 14:2, s.v. 235. Note on Luke 17:9, 36; note on Romans 2:1. 236. Note on John 1:1. Darby’s reference is to Alexander Buttman, “Über den gebrauch des Bron. κεῖνος im vierten evangelium,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken (1860): 505–​36. See also note on Mark 14:65, s.v. 237. Note on Matthew 3:10. Darby’s reference is to Matthaei Devarii liber de Græcæ lingue particulus, ed. Reinhold Klotz (Lipseai, 1840), and Henricus Stephanus, Thesaurus Græcæ linguae, 5 vols. (1572). 238. Matthew 4:21, s.v. See T. F. Middleton, The doctrine of the Greek article: Applied to the criticism and illustration of the New Testament (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1808). 239. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. 240. See notes on Titus 2:5; 1 Thessalonians 3:2; Matthew 20:7. 241. Note on Matthew 20:34. 242. Note on Matthew 23:6. 243. Note on Romans 6:5. 244. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. 245. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. 246. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. 247. Note on Mark 16:9; see also notes on Luke 13:2, 24:12; John 13:2, 20:21. 248. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. 249. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. 250. Note on 1 Peter 2:15; 2 Thessalonians 2:14. 251. Note on 1 Timothy 1:18. 252. Note on Romans 3:5. Darby translated this verse as follows: “But if our unrighteousness commend God’s righteousness, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who inflicts wrath?” He was particularly concerned by his rendering of “inflicts wrath.” 253. Note on 2 Corinthians 4:4. 254. Note on 1 John 2:19. 255. Note on Romans 7:18. 256. Despins, La Bible Darby et son histiore, 76–​88. 257. C. H. Spurgeon, “Darbyism and its new Bible,” Sword and Trowel, 1 (December 1872): 561–​65. 258. Darby, “Revised preface to the second edition (1871),” n.p. Darby is referring to Johann J Wetstein, Novum Testamentum Græcum (1751), and Marcus Minucius Felix, Octavius (?second century). 259. D. W. Bebbington, “The place of the Brethren movement in international evangelicalism,” in The growth of the Brethren movement: National and international experiences, ed. Neil T. R. Dickson and Tim Grass (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2006), 249. Grass has observed that “Brethren have not produced systematic theologians; Grass, Gathering to his name, 171. 260. Darby, “Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews” (1862), in CW, 9: 475.

Notes  171 261. Darby, “The doctrine of the Church of England at the time of the Reformation, of the Reformation itself, of Scripture, and of the Church of Rome, briefly compared with the remarks of the Regius Professor of Divinity” (1831), in CW 3: 4, 5, 14, 29–​30, 40. 262. Neatby, A history of the Plymouth Brethren, 171, 331. 263. Darby, “Brief analysis of the book of Daniel” (1835), in CW 11: 55. 264. Darby, “The ‘Notes of Leviticus,’ and the ‘Quarterly Journal of Prophecy” (1862), in CW, 10: 51. 265. The claims of the Church of England considered, 63. 266. Darby, “What do I learn from Scripture?” (1871), in CW 23: 191–​200. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 381. 267. Darby, “Law” (1861), in CW, 10: 1–​2. 268. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 202. 269. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 26. 270. J. P. Callahan, Primitivist piety: The ecclesiology of the early brethren (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996), 214. 271. In the 1851 census, for example, brethren were not especially significant, either in terms of numbers or influence, being represented in only around 130 meetings; Embley, “The early development of the Plymouth Brethren,” 242; Brethren are not mentioned in such works as Dale A. Johnson, The changing shape of English nonconformity, 1825–​1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 272. For the impact of Romanticism on nineteenth-​century evangelicals, see Bebbington, The dominance of evangelicalism, 139–​72. 273. Darby, “The new birth” (1863), in CW 10: 309. 274. Darby, “Evidence from Scripture of the passing away of the present dispensation” (1831), in CW 2: 148 n. Schwarz, Leben im Sieg Christi, 155, cautions that Darby did not present a fully worked-​out system of hermeneutics. For the “haphazard” charge, see Clarke, “A critical examination of the ecclesiology of John Nelson Darby,” 133. 275. Crawford Gribben, “‘The worst sect a Christian man can meet’: Opposition to the Plymouth Brethren in Ireland and Scotland, 1859–​1900,” Scottish Studies Review 3, no. 2 (2002): 34–​53. 276. J. H. Goddard, “The contribution of John Nelson Darby to soteriology, ecclesiology, and eschatology” (unpublished PhD thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1948). 277. The claims of the Church of England considered, 69. 278. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 383. 279. [J. B. Stoney], “Introduction,” A Voice to the Faithful 1 (1867): 1. 280. Compare Darby, The presence of the Holy Ghost, etc. with “Christ’s work, the Spirit’s power; and the Lord’s coming,” The Bible Treasury 14 (1883), 263–​65, 281–​82, 296–​ 97, 311–​13, 328–​30. I owe this reference to Andrew Poots. 281. Miller, The Brethren, 20. 282. Edward Dennett, Recovered truths (London: Morrish, 1880). 283. William Kelly, God’s principle of unity, in a reply to the Rev. O. Dobree (London: Morrish, n.d.), 19.

172 Notes

Chapter 1 1. Darby, “The dispensation of the fullness of times” (1850), in CW 13: 250–​51. 2. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 22 February 1901; Berthold Schwarz, “J. N. Darby as theologian, with special reference to his understanding of the relation of law and grace,” in Witness in many lands: Leadership and outreach among the brethren, ed. Tim Grass (Troon, UK: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2013), 45–​58. For Darby’s soteriology, see R. A. Huebner, The work of Christ on the cross and some of its results (Morganville, NJ: Present Truth Publishers, 2002); R. A. Huebner, God’s sovereignty and glory in the election and salvation of men (Morganville, NJ: Present Truth Publishers, 2003). 3. Nockles, “Church or protestant sect?,” 457–​93. 4. Darby, “Analysis of Dr Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua” (1866), in CW, 18: 222. 5. Darby, Notes and jottings, 5: 107. 6. Chief men among the brethren, 10; DEB, s.v. 7. DEB, s.v. 8. [Sir Edward Denny], Some of the firstfruits of the harvest, by one who has sown in tears (privately printed, 1861), 7. 9. George Bellett, Memoir of the Rev. George Bellett (London: Privately published, 1889), 41–​42. Early brethren were “Calvinists to a man”; Harold H. Rowdon, Who are the brethren and does it matter? (Exeter: Paternoster, 1986), 35. Mark R. Stevenson, “Early brethren leaders and the question of Calvinism,” Brethren Historical Review 6 (2010): 2–​33; Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place. 10. DEB, s.v. On the development of high Calvinism, see Ian J. Shaw, High Calvinists in action: Calvinism and the city: Manchester and London, c1810–​1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 10–​36. 11. Christopher Darby wrote a testimonial for the ordination of J. C. Philpot, who had been converted through John Nelson Darby’s influence before he, too, seceded from the establishment, becoming leader of a connection of Strict and Particular Baptists; an earlier generation of scholars claimed that John Nelson Darby had written this testimonial. See Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 232; Stunt, From awakening to secession, 205. On Philpot, see Robert W. Oliver, A history of the English Calvinistic Baptists, 1771–​1892 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2006), 288–​ 311; Oxfordshire History Centre, Ordination Candidates’ Papers Dioc/​c/​226 (DIOC/​1/​B/​1/​B/​40). I owe this point to Max Weremchuk. 12. DEB, s.v. Neil Summerton, “The theology of George Muller,” in Bible and theology in the Brethren, ed. Neil Dickson and T.J. Marinello (Glasgow, UK: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2018), 177; Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 108–​09. 13. Darby, “Correspondence,” The Bible Treasury 68 (1862): 5; Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 461. For context, see Grass, Gathering to his name, 34. The later brethren meeting place, on Ebrington Street, Plymouth, was just yards from Charles Church. For more on brethren buildings, see Tim Grass, Brethren

Notes  173 and their buildings (Glasgow, UK: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2021); Weremchuk, John Nelson Darby, 2nd ed., 76. 14. Carter, Anglican evangelicals, passim, but especially 121–​32. 15. James Hews Bransby, Evans’s sketch of the various denominations of the Christian world, and of atheism, deism, Mahometanism, &c., 18th ed. (London: Longman & Co., 1841), 305, cited in Douglas Wertheimer, “The truth about 1843, and why it’s important: Gosse, brethren, Jamaica, and the scorpion,” Brethren Historical Review 18 (2022): 37 n149. 16. Daniel MacAfee, The final perseverance of the saints anatomised (1838), 70. 17. In the eighteenth century, premillennialism was defended by high Calvinists such as Augustus Toplady, while a more idiosyncratic millennial theory was promoted among Strict and Particular Baptists. Under the influence of evangelicalism, “lower” Calvinists were more likely to favor postmillennial theories; see Crawford Gribben, “Introduction,” in Andrew Fuller, Expository discourses on the Apocalypse, ed. Crawford Gribben, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller (2022), 1–​46. Joseph Cottle, Strictures on the Plymouth antinomians (London: T. Cadell, 1823), 79–​80. 18. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 13, 285. 19. Darby, Letters, 3: 388–​89. 20. Darby, “Correspondence,” The Bible Treasury 68 (1862): 5; Darby, “Freewill as to inclination and choice,” Notes and comments, 1: 390–​400. As Hawker died in 1827, it is unlikely that he and Darby ever met. 21. See, for example, his exposition of election to salvation and particular redemption in his comments on Romans 9, in Darby, Synopsis, 4: 209–​15, and Ephesians 1, in Synopsis, 4: 439–​40, and Hebrews 2, in Synopsis, 5: 347. See his distinction between θέλω and βούλομαι in Notes and jottings, 4: 47. Huebner, J. N. Darby’s teaching regarding dispensations, 137–​ 58; Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place. 22. Darby, “Letter on free will” (1861), in CW 10: 292; Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 2: 316. 23. Darby, Synopsis, 1: 369. 24. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 486–​87; Darby, “The dispensation of the fullness of times” (1850), in CW 13: 245. 25. Harold H. Rowdon, “The early brethren and baptism,” Vox Evangelica 11 (1979): 55–​64. 26. Huebner, Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 3: 13. 27. Darby was accused of teaching salvation by law in the Old Testament and by grace in the New Testament; William B. Evans, Imputation and impartation: Union with Christ in American Reformed theology (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2008), 256. 28. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 463–​70; Darby, “The Pauline doctrine of the righteousness of faith” (1862), in CW 7: 575–​76. On the debate about justification and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness at the Westminster Assembly, see Chad B. Van Dixhoorn, A day at the Westminster Assembly: Justification and the minutes of a post-​Reformation synod (London: The Congregational Memorial Hall Trust, 2005).

174 Notes 29. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in modern Britain, 77–​78. 30. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 22 February 1901. 31. Darby, “Analysis of Dr Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua” (1866), in CW 18: 222. This book was published just after Newman published his second edition, in 1865; CW 18: 225n. 32. Darby, “Analysis of Dr Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua” (1866), in CW 18: 222. 33. Darby, “Analysis of Dr Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua” (1866), in CW 18: 222. 34. Darby, “Analysis of Dr Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua” (1866), in CW 18: 222. 35. Darby, “Analysis of Dr Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua” (1866), in CW 18: 238. 36. Stunt, “Influences in the early development of J. N. Darby,” 48 n16. 37. Darby, “Analysis of Dr Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua” (1866), in CW 18: 222. 38. CBA 7061, 131; CBA 7064, 25; Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Heid. Hs. 677, f. 250–​51. I am grateful to Max Weremchuk for sharing this reference. For further details, see Weremchuk, Becoming JND, forthcoming. 39. Darby, “Analysis of Dr Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua” (1866), in CW 18: 239, 282. 40. CBA JND/​3/​5. 41. “Present prospects,” The Christian Witness 2 (1834): 42. 42. Gribben, “Dating Darby’s addresses to his Roman Catholic brethren,” 1–​14. 43. Darby, “Reply to the defence of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration by the bishop of Ossory, Leighlin and Ferns” (1874), in CW 20: 412. 44. Gribben, “Dating Darby’s addresses to his Roman Catholic brethren,” 1–​14. 45. Darby, “Address to his Roman Catholic brethren” (?1827), in CW 18: 1. 46. Darby, “Address to his Roman Catholic brethren” (?1827), in CW 18: 14. 47. Darby, “Address to his Roman Catholic brethren” (?1827), in CW 18: 7. 48. Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 42. 49. Darby, “Second address to his Roman Catholic brethren” (?1828), in CW 18: 39. 50. Darby, “Second address to his Roman Catholic brethren” (?1828), in CW 18: 36. The Bible Treasury 1 (1856, second edition, 1868), 341 n1. 51. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 186–​87. Earlier “a whole host of Leap people found [Darby] out with the utmost affection, but only one at present who presents any hope of interest in Christ”; Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 164. 52. Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 261–​65. 53. Darby, “The doctrine of the Church of England at the time of the reformation, of the reformation itself, of Scripture, and of the Church of Rome, briefly compared with the remarks of the Regius Professor of Divinity” (1831), in CW 3: 4, 5, 14, 29–​30, 40. 54. Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place, 53–​58. 55. Darby, “The covenants” (1835), in CW 3: 68; By 1852, he would be prepared to qualify this doctrine; Letters, 3: 322. 56. Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Heid. Hs. 689, f. 191. I owe this reference to Max Weremchuk. 57. J. J. Herzog, Les frères de Plymouth et John Darby, leur doctrine et leur histoire, en particulier dans le Canton de Vaud (Lausanne: Georges Bridel, 1845). 58. Darby, “Life in resurrection” (1838), in CW 12: 105–​06.

Notes  175 59. Darby, “Parable of the sower” (1838), in CW 12: 199. 60. James Bennett, The history of dissenters during the last thirty years (from 1808 to 1838) (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1839), 31. 61. [Philpot], “Editor’s review: The Christian Witness,” 78. 62. [Philpot], “Editor’s review: The Christian Witness,” 80. 63. Strict Baptists continued to notice brethren in a competing publication, The Earthen Vessel; see Timothy C. F. Stunt, “An early account of the brethren in 1838,” Brethren Historical Review 8 (2012): 1–​9. 64. Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place, 130 n. 109. 65. For example, doctrine had hardly been mentioned in the notes on Darby’s evangelistic preaching that had been published in 1838. See CW vol. 12. 66. See, for example, B. W. Newton, Is salvation by the obedience of a divine substitute a fiction? 2nd ed. (London: Houlston & Sons, 1898). 67. For contrasting readings of the history of the doctrine of the active obedience of Christ, see Daniel Kirk, “The sufficiency of the cross (1): The crucifixion as Jesus’ act of obedience,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 24, no. 1 (2006): 36–​64; “The sufficiency of the cross (2): the law the cross and justification,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 24, no. 2 (2006): 133–​54; Alan D. Strange, Imputation of the active obedience of Christ in the Westminster Standards (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019). 68. For his appreciation of the eleventh article, see Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW, 10: 85; Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 575; and for the seventeenth article, see Darby, “The doctrine of the church of England” (1831), CW 3: 4; and Darby, “Reply to the defence of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration by the bishop of Ossory, Leighlin and Ferns” (1874), in CW 20: 424. For Darby’s reference to the ninth article, on original sin, see [Darby], “A letter on original sin,” The Bible Treasury 216 (1874): 80. See also Darby, Letters, 3: 84–​85. 69. Presbutes, “Righteousness without works,” The Present Testimony 1, no. 2 (1849): 161. Kelly confirmed that Harris wrote under the pseudonym “Presbutes”; CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 5 May 1898. 70. The Present Testimony 1:1 (December, 1848), 1. 71. Presbutes, “Righteousness without works,” 147. 72. [Darby], “Thoughts on Romans IX,” The Bible Treasury 2, no. 1 (1858): 9–​11 [this text was not included in the Collected writings]; Darby, Notes and jottings, 4: 105. 73. “To correspondents,” The Bible Treasury 45 (1860): 32. 74. Darby, “Propitiation and substitution” (1873), in CW 27: 473–​76; Darby, “Propitiation and substitution” (1873), in CW 29: 434–​37. 75. [Philpot], “Editor’s review: The Christian Witness,” 80. 76. [Darby], “The sufferings of Christ,” The Bible Treasury 2, no. 3 (1858): 33–​36; 27 (1858): 113–​16; 28 (1858): 129–​34; 29 (1858): 145–​48; 30 (1858): 161–​67; 31 (1858): 177–​79. Brethren remembered that Hawker had taught that Christ had suffered in an atoning way before the crucifixion; Huebner, Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 2: 59, 64.

176 Notes 77. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 125. 78. [Darby], “The righteousness of God,” The Bible Treasury 32 (1859): 193–​95; 38 (1859): 209–​11; 34 (1859): 225–​27; 35 (1859): 241–​44; “The righteousness of God. Fragments of a discourse, October, 1860,” The Bible Treasury 54 (1860): 168–​69. 79. Presbus, “The ‘Record,’” The Bible Treasury 80 (1863): 204–​08; Presbus, “The ‘Record.’ No. 2,” The Bible Treasury 81 (1863): 219–​24. 80. “The sympathies of Christ; or, The Spirit of Christ in the remnant,” The Bible Treasury 33 (1859): 222–​24; [Darby], “Supplement to the sufferings of Christ,” The Bible Treasury 36 (1859): 257–​62. 81. “The righteousness of God. Fragments of a discourse, October, 1860,” 168. 82. Darby, “Pauline righteousness,” The Bible Treasury 73 (1862): 88, editor’s footnote. At the same time, Kelly was fielding correspondence relating to Darby’s articles on Christ’s suffering; “Scripture queries and answers,” The Bible Treasury 74 (1862): pp. 111–​12; “Scripture queries and answers,” The Bible Treasury 75 (1862): 126–​27. 83. Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 68. 84. Capel Molyneux, The prodigal son: A sermon preached at the special services at Exeter Hall, on Sunday evening, July 18, 1858 (London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1858). 85. “To correspondents,” The Bible Treasury 1, no. 11 (1857): 182. 86. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 406. 87. Molyneux, The prodigal son, 18. 88. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 407. 89. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 428. 90. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 419. 91. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 430. 92. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 414. 93. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 432. 94. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 415. 95. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 424. 96. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 422. 97. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 411. 98. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 411. 99. Darby, “The righteousness of Christ” (1859), in CW 7: 440. 100. J. N. Darby, “Correspondence,” The Bible Treasury 68 (1862): 6–​16; The Bible Treasury 69 (1862): 25–​32. Darby’s letter to The Record was being advertised as an individually published tract in The Bible Treasury 73 (1862): 96. 101. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 459. 102. Darby, “Correspondence,” The Bible Treasury 68 (1862): 5; Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 460. 103. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 462. 104. Darby, “Correspondence,” The Bible Treasury 68 (1862): 5; Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 460. 105. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 466. 106. Catalogue of the library of the late John Nelson Darby, 10. 107. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 470.

Notes  177 108. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 466. 109. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 137. 110. John Cox, Test before you trust; or, The new doctrine and the old divinity compared (London: Nisbet, [1862]). 111. Bell, Cease ye from man, 23. 112. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 138. 113. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 138. 114. Darby, “Pauline righteousness,” The Bible Treasury 72 (1862): 73–​80; The Bible Treasury 73 (1862): 88–​96. Published as Darby, “The Pauline doctrine of righteousness of faith” (1862), in CW 7 (1862). 115. Darby, “The Pauline doctrine of righteousness of faith” (1862), in CW 7: 551. 116. Darby, “The Pauline doctrine of righteousness of faith” (1862), in CW 7: 535. 117. Darby, “A letter on the righteousness of God” (1862), in CW 7: 576. 118. Presbus, “The ‘Record.’ No. 2,” 224. 119. James C. L. Carson, The heresies of the Plymouth Brethren, 13th ed. (London: Houlston, 1870), iii. 120. Carson, The heresies of the Plymouth Brethren, iv–​v. 121. Carson, The heresies of the Plymouth Brethren, 8. 122. Carson, The heresies of the Plymouth Brethren, 27. 123. Carson, The heresies of the Plymouth Brethren, iii. 124. Carson, The heresies of the Plymouth Brethren, 52. 125. Coleraine Chronicle, 7 January 1871, 4. 126. Crawford Gribben, “Baptist or Brethren? Primitivism, restorationism, and the legacies of Alexander Carson,” Irish Baptist Historical Society Journal 29 (2022): 5–​22. 127. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 158; Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 107. 128. Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 112. 129. Darby, “Further remarks upon righteousness and law” (1864), in CW 10: 149. 130. Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 92. 131. Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 92. 132. Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 104. 133. Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 86. 134. Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 87. 135. Darby, “The ‘Notes of Leviticus,’ and the ‘Quarterly Journal of Prophecy” (1862), in CW 10: 65. 136. Darby, “The ‘Notes of Leviticus,’ and the ‘Quarterly Journal of Prophecy” (1862), in CW 10: 65. 137. Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 81. 138. Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 83. 139. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 142. 140. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 141. 141. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 141. 142. H. T. D., Darbyism: Its fruit and doctrines, 26. 143. Darby, “Divine righteousness” (1865), in CW 10: 231–​347.

178 Notes 144. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 223. 145. CBA JND/​2/​3. 146. [Kelly], “Mr A. Moody Stuart on ‘Brethren’,” The Bible Treasury 209 (1873): 351. 147. Edward Dennet, Recovered truths: Being letters to certain believers (London: W. H. Broom, 1890), 9. 148. Dennet, Recovered truths, 10. 149. William Kelly remembered that Darby thought his work on justification to be his most important; CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 22 February 1901. 150. Miller, The Brethren, 120. 151. CBA JDL/​1, 31. 152. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 15. 153. Catalogue of the library of the late John Nelson Darby, 19, suggests that while he owned only a small number of contemporary theological works he did own several of Smeaton’s works, several of which were critical of Darby’s work. 154. George Smeaton, The doctrine of the atonement, as taught by Christ himself, 2nd ed. (1868; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1871), 124 n. Referring to Darby’s Synopsis, 3: 454, and The Girdle of Truth, 298. 155. Smeaton, The doctrine of the atonement, as taught by Christ himself, 184. 156. Smeaton, The doctrine of the atonement, as taught by Christ himself, 183 n. 157. George Smeaton, The doctrine of the atonement, as taught by the apostles (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1870), 171. 158. Smeaton, The doctrine of the atonement, as taught by the apostles, 171 n. 159. Smeaton, The doctrine of the atonement, as taught by the apostles, 382; see also 340–​41. Smeaton claimed to have discovered this view in Witsius and other Dutch divines; Smeaton, The doctrine of the atonement, as taught by the apostles, 382 n. 1. See Michael Kibbe, “Is it finished? When did it start? Hebrews, priesthood, and atonement in Biblical, systematic, and historical perspective,” Journal of Theological Studies 65, no. 1 (2014): 37 n. 50. 160. Huebner, The work of Christ, 171–​74. 161. George Smeaton, The doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1882), 179. 162. CBA JDL/​1, 31. 163. [J. N. Darby], “Atonement,” in A new and concise Bible dictionary (London: Morrish, [1897]), 87–​90. 164. Darby, Atonement. 165. “The judgement of the Synod of the Reformed Belgic Churches assembled at Dort” (1618–​19), in The harmony of the protestant confessions, ed. Peter Hall (London: John F. Shaw, 1842), 570. 166. “The judgement of the Synod of the Reformed Belgic Churches assembled at Dort” (1618–​19), 543, 545; Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place, 122. William Lincoln, however, argued for a supra-​lapsarian account of the decrees; Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place, 148. See also Huebner, God’s sovereignty and glory, 229–​53.

Notes  179 167. “The judgement of the Synod of the Reformed Belgic Churches assembled at Dort” (1618–​ 1619), 161. CBA/​ JND/​ 3/​ 1, note at Matthew 18:11. This comment was reprinted in Notes and Comments vol. 4. 168. “The judgement of the Synod of the Reformed Belgic Churches assembled at Dort” (1618–​1619), 554. For Darby’s comments on Adam as being “innocent,” see among other instances Darby, “Connection of the cross with the entire development of God’s ways with man” (1854), in CW 22: 552. 169. “The judgement of the Synod of the Reformed Belgic Churches assembled at Dort” (1618–​1619), 550–​51. Darby, “Propitiation and substitution” (1873), in CW 27: 473, repeated in 29: 434; Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place, 176–​81. 170. Oliver D. Crisp, An American Augustinian: Sin and salvation in the dogmatic theology of William G. T. Shedd (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2018); Oliver D. Crisp, Deviant Calvinism: Broadening Reformed theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014). On Fuller, see Michael A. G. Haykin, “Particular redemption in the writings of Andrew Fuller,” in The Gospel in the world, ed. D. W. Bebbington (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2002), 107–​28; Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place, 199. 171. God’s sovereign, electing grace, and man’s so-​called free will (London: Morrish, 1868). But see Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place, 75 n. 42. 172. For Darby’s views on the relationship between the work of the Spirit, new birth, and conversion, see Letters, 3: 121, 164–​66; CW 13: 325, 15: 505; 20: 422; 33: 80–​81, 228–​29. 173. Kelly insisted that the “argument about the new nature before believing is Calvinism, not Scripture”; CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 6 December 1894; see also William Kelly, Lectures on the New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit (London: Morrish, n.d.), 1–​26. 174. See, for example, M. W. Biggs, The presence and activity of the Holy Spirit (London: Morrish, 1925), 40–​46. 175. Stevenson, The doctrines of grace in an unexpected place. 176. CBA/​JND/​3/​1, note at John 5:24; Darby, Synopsis, 1: 275.

Chapter 2 1. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 544. 2. Pontis, likely in the early 1890s, recalled that the early brethren in Plymouth were sometimes known as “Hallites,” reflecting the local prominence of the preaching of Captain P. F. Hall; Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, vol. 1, 245. Pontis may have been thinking of the reference to Newtonites, Hallites, and Darbyites in “Quakerism and Quakers,” The Monthly Magazine (1839): 431. 3. Bennett, The history of dissenters during the last thirty years, 31. For more on Bennett, see Callahan, Primitivist piety, 76.

180 Notes 4. A list of names of those attending the Plymouth assembly in the 1830s was compiled by Sir Charles Brenton and collected by Henry William Pontis in his two-​volume scrapbook of brethren memorabilia; Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, vol. 1, 205–​07. A description of assembly life in Plymouth in the 1840s is available in A. N. Harris, “The Plymouth Brethren: Reminiscences of over fifty years ago by A. N. Harris F. R. A. S., November 1911,” Brethren Historical Review 5 (2009): 88–​101. For the democratization of Christianity, see Nathan O. Hatch, The democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989); Dickson, Brethren in Scotland, 27. 5. Darby, “The claims of the Church of England considered; being the close of a correspondence between the Rev. James Kelly, of Stillorgan, Ireland, and J. N. Darby” (1842), in CW 14: 278. 6. J. G. Bellett, “A letter on the person and deity of the Holy Ghost,” The Christian Witness 4 (1837): 34, 40. 7. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 30–​31. 8. Darby, “The claims of the Church of England considered; being the close of a correspondence between the Rev. James Kelly, of Stillorgan, Ireland, and J. N. Darby” (1842), in CW 14: 328. 9. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 176. 10. Edward Irving described the Plymouth assembly as a “slough of love”; Darby, Letters, 3: 281. 11. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 69. John Wolffe, “The Evangelical Alliance in the 1840s: An attempt to institutionalise Christian unity,” in Voluntary religion: papers read at the 1985 summer meeting and the 1986 winter meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 333–​46. 12. G. P., “The church the habitation of God,” The Present Testimony 1, no. 1 (December, 1848): 45. 13. “The sin of Zipporah,” The Present Testimony 1, no. 2 (March 1849): 167. 14. “Reflections on ministry, in connexion with the legation of Moses,” The Present Testimony 1, no. 2 (1849): 194. 15. Akenson, Exporting the rapture. 16. Miller, The Brethren, 42; Stunt, The elusive quest of the spiritual malcontent, 202; Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 94, 206. 17. CBA 7049, Newton, “Recollections,” 306. 18. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 61, 83, 99–​100. 19. Leon Festinger et al., When prophecy fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world (New York: Harper, 1956). 20. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 83. 21. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 85. 22. Burnham, A story of conflict; Akenson, Exporting the rapture. 23. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 83. 24. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 117.

Notes  181 25. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 132. Darby would come to very firm conclusions about the merits of Newton’s argument; Darby, “An examination of the statements made in the ‘Thoughts on the Apocalypse’ by B. W. Newton” (1846/​1847), in CW 8: 1–​490. 26. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 117. 27. Darby, Letters, 3: 282. 28. Darby, Letters, 3: 284. 29. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 133. Huebner notes that the Christological controversy occurred after the controversy about ecclesiology; Huebner, Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 2: 2. 30. Miller, The Brethren, 47. In 1847, Darby commented: “I like small gatherings”; Letters, 3: 290. Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 126. 31. Burnham, A story of conflict. 32. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 3. 33. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 136. 34. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 229. 35. W[igram?], “Remarks on the living God, and His church,” The Present Testimony 1, no. 1 (December, 1848): 67. 36. This point is contradicted in Callahan, Primitivist piety, but is established in Nigel Pibworth, “Benjamin Wills Newton (1807–​1899): A theological biography” (unpublished manuscript). Tregelles remained in the “Evangelical Protestant Church” in Compton St., Plymouth, until 1866, when after a dispute between the pastor and deacons it broke up. Tregelles subsequently worshipped with the town’s Presbyterian congregation or in Charles Church, the Church of England congregation that had been served by Robert Hawker; Stunt, The life and times of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, 177–​82. Newton moved to London and established a Strict Baptist congregation in Bayswater; Pibworth, “Benjamin Wills Newton,” 104. 37. Darby and his correspondents kept an eye on developments within Newton’s circle; Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram 1: 409, 2: 223: “Compton St. [has] gone down in the big waters of dissent.” 38. Embley, “The early development of the Plymouth Brethren,” 217. 39. Darby, “The apostasy of the successive dispensations” (1836), in CW 1: 192–​202; Darby, “The hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 487–​505. 40. Darby, “The character of office in the present dispensation” (1835), in CW 1: 159–​60. “Ichabod” means “the glory has departed”; 1 Samuel 4:21–​22. 41. See, for example, Darby, Synopsis, 5: 184–​85. 42. Darby, “Christianity not Christendom” (1874), in CW 18: 411. 43. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 24. 44. “Obedience,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 9. 45. Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 4. 46. Darby, Notes and jottings, 2: 42. See also Callahan, Primitivist piety, 102. 47. Gribben, Evangelical millennialism in the trans-​Atlantic world, 51–​70. 48. Nebeker, “John Nelson Darby and Trinity College, Dublin,” 87–​108; Stunt, “The formation of a seceder,” 41–​59.

182 Notes 49. [J. L. Harris], “On the increase of popery,” The Christian Witness 4 (1837): 12. 50. Darby, Letters, 2: 254. 51. Letters and papers of the late Theodosia A. Viscountess Powerscourt, ed. Robert Daly, 13th ed. (London: A. R. Rouse, 1892), 142. 52. Darby, Letters, 2: 254; Darby, “Considerations addressed to the Archbishop of Dublin and the Clergy who signed the petition to the House of Commons for Protection” (1827), in CW 1: 1. For the most illuminating recent discussion of the second reformation contexts, which critiques this estimate of the number of conversions, see Akenson, Discovering the end of time. 53. Matthew Austin Clarke, “A critical examination of the ecclesiology of John Nelson Darby” (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Gloucestershire, 2009), abstract. 54. W. J. McCormack, “The ‘Plymouth’ Brethren? Prolegomena to the re-​writing of J. M. Synge’s biography,” Religion and Literature 28 (1996): 89. 55. Callahan, Primitivist piety, 210. 56. Callahan, Primitivist piety, 192–​93. 57. Crawford Gribben, “Brethren and the reformation,” in The brethren and the church, ed. Neil T. R. Dickson and Tom Marinello (Glasgow, UK: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2020), 117–​38. 58. For Darby’s ordination as deacon, see CBA JND/​ 1/​ 1/​ 34; DIB, s.v.; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 41, 209. 59. The works of the Most Reverend William Magee, D. D., Lord Archbishop of Dublin . . . with a memoir of his life by the Rev. A. H. Kenney, D. D., 2 vols. (London: T. Cadell, 1842), 2: 461–​98. 60. The works of the Most Reverend William Magee, 2: 465–​66. 61. The works of the Most Reverend William Magee, 2: 487. 62. Darby, “Considerations addressed to the archbishop of Dublin” (1827), in CW 1: 22. 63. The works of the Most Reverend William Magee, 2: 475; Darby, “Considerations addressed to the archbishop of Dublin” (1827), in CW 1: 7. 64. Darby, “Considerations addressed to the archbishop of Dublin” (1827), in CW 1: 27; Theo Balderstone, “On re-​reading some early tracts by J. N. Darby,” Scripture Truth 47 (1982): 234–​40. 65. 19 & 20 George III c.6. Akenson argues that Darby entirely misunderstood Magee’s charge, which “at no point” suggested the introduction of oaths or other legal tests for converts to the established church; Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 250. 66. Akenson argues that this might have been printed in 1828; Discovering the end of time, 248. 67. A reply by J. K. L. to the late charge of the Most Rev. Doctor Magee (Dublin: Richard Coyne, 1827), xxi–​xxxvi. 68. For Doyle, see Thomas McGrath, Politics, interdenominational relations and education in the public ministry of Bishop James Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin, 1786–​1834 (Dublin: Four Courts, 1999); DIB, s.v. 69. Charles R. Elrington, Remarks upon the reply of J. K. L. to the charge of His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin (Dublin: Richard Milliken, 1827). 70. Elrington, Remarks upon the reply of J. K. L., 87, 101.

Notes  183 71. In the prefatory note that he added to the text in 1866, when the first volume of Collected writings was published, Darby claimed that the oath had been “imposed” upon converts; Darby, “Considerations addressed to the archbishop of Dublin” (1827), in CW 1: 1. See Weremchuk, Becoming JND, *. 72. Darby, “Considerations addressed to the archbishop of Dublin” (1827), in CW 1: 1. 73. Darby, “Considerations addressed to the archbishop of Dublin” (1827), in CW 1: 28. 74. Darby, “Considerations addressed to the archbishop of Dublin” (1827), in CW 1: 1. 75. Nockles, “Church or protestant sect?” 76. Darby, “The notion of a clergyman dispensationally the sin against the Holy Ghost” (1834), in CW 1:55. Darby would later recognize that Pusey “loves Christ” and that this was what had prevented his conversion to Rome; Notes and jottings, 4: 122. 77. Huebner, Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 1: 7. 78. National Library of Ireland Pamphlets 540 (7) /​BB7628; Queen’s University Belfast, hBX5535 MAGE. 79. Editing this work in 1868, when the second address may have appeared in print for the first time, Kelly registered his disagreement with Darby’s statement and added a footnote: “The author would now say, no doubt,” that believers are incorporated into the mystical body of Christ “by the baptism of the Spirit.” Darby, “Second address to his Roman Catholic brethren, by a minister of the Gospel,” The Bible Treasury, 2nd ed., 1 (1868): 341. See Gribben, “Dating Darby’s addresses to his Roman Catholic brethren,” 1–​18. 80. “The voluntary system and an establishment,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 273. 81. Darby, “On the character of office in the present dispensation” (1835), in CW 1: 148. 82. Callahan, Primitivist piety, 94, 98. 83. Charles Stanley would later suggest that “it would be just as fair for [critics] to call the primitive Christians Plymouth Brethren, as to call those Christians who have given up Romanism and Protestantism, and have been gathered to Christ, as at the beginning, though in great weakness”; a printed note to this effect is pasted into Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, vol. 1, 238. 84. This text was widely circulated. It was printed in Dublin in 1828, and it reappeared with significant emendations in the first issue of The Christian Witness (1834), being subsequently edited by Kelly, with further editorial changes, for inclusion in Collected writings 1 (1866). 85. Darby, “Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ” (1834), in CW 1: 48–​49. 86. Darby, “Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ” (1834), in CW 1: 31. 87. Darby, “Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ” (1834), in CW 1: 32. 88. Darby, “Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ” (1834), in CW 1: 33. 89. Darby, “Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ” (1834), in CW 1: 37.

184 Notes 90. [Darby], “On the nature and unity of the Church of Christ,” The Christian Witness 1 (1834): 25. The edition in Darby, “Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ” (1834), in CW 1: 47, added “Baptist” to this original list of denominational identities, doubtless to reflect the significance of baptism for divisions among brethren in the mid-​1860s. 91. Darby, “Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ” (1834), in CW 1: 38. 92. Darby, “Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ” (1834), in CW 1: 42. 93. On liturgical patterns within evangelicalism, see Bebbington, The dominance of evangelicalism, 83–​90. 94. Darby, Letters, 3: 271. 95. Darby, “The claims of the Church of England considered; being the close of a correspondence between the Rev. James Kelly, of Stillorgan, Ireland, and J. N. Darby” (1842), in CW 14: 329. 96. Darby, “Separation from evil God’s principle of unity” (1834), in CW 1: 539; Darby, “Reply to the remarks in two leading articles of the Christian Journal, entitled ‘Our separating brethren’ ” (1834), in CW 14: 265. 97. Darby, “Evidence from Scripture of the passing away of the present dispensation” (1831), in CW 2: 183. 98. Darby, “On ministry” (1843), in CW 1: 350. 99. Darby, “The claims of the Church of England considered; being the close of a correspondence between the Rev. James Kelly, of Stillorgan, Ireland, and J. N. Darby” (1842), in CW 14: 307. 100. Darby, “Reply to the remarks in two leading articles of the Christian Journal, entitled ‘Our separating brethren’ ” (1834), in CW 14: 224. 101. Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 42. 102. Darby, “Reply to the remarks in two leading articles of the Christian Journal, entitled ‘Our separating brethren’ ” (1834), in CW 14: 231. 103. Darby, “Reply to the remarks in two leading articles of the Christian Journal, entitled ‘Our separating brethren’ ” (1834), in CW 14: 232–​33, 238. 104. Tom Chantry Archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 1: 14. 105. Darby, “On the character of office in the present dispensation” (1835), in CW 1: 163. 106. Darby, “On the character of office in the present dispensation” (1835), in CW 1: 168. 107. Darby, “Reply to the remarks in two leading articles of the Christian Journal, entitled ‘Our separating brethren’ ” (1834), in CW 14: 229. 108. Darby, “Reply to the remarks in two leading articles of the Christian Journal, entitled ‘Our separating brethren’ ” (1834), in CW 14: 214. 109. Darby, “Parochial arrangement destructive of order in the church” (1834), in CW 1:138–​39. On Dodsworth, see ODNB, s.v.; Richard Palmer, “William Dodsworth: An autobiographical memoir,” in From the reformation to the permissive society: A miscellany in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Lambeth Palace Library, ed. Melanie Barber et al. (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2010), 414–​53. In the mid-​1830s, brethren began to notice the “Tracts for the Times,” and immediately recognized their threat;

Notes  185 [Harris], “On the increase of popery,” 7. For more on Darby and Dodsworth, see Timothy C. F. Stunt, “J. N. Darby and tongues at Row: A recent manuscript discovery,” Brethren Historical Review 12 (2016): 1–​22. 110. Carter, Anglican evangelicals. 111. [J. N. Darby], The connexion of the term clergy with the penal guilt of the present dispensation, and the sin against the Holy Ghost (Dublin: Richard Moore Tims, 1834); see the uncatalogued letter from Morrish to Darby, dated 17 November 1865, in the archive at Der Forum Wiedenest; I am grateful to Michael Schneider for sharing a copy of this letter. 112. Darby, “The notion of a clergyman dispensationally the sin against the Holy Ghost” (1834), in CW 1: 54. 113. Perhaps this was because Darby, like later brethren, accepted that the episcopal theory had better Biblical warrant than the dissenting custom of electing pastors, for the New Testament only recorded instances of bishops being appointed by apostles, and the idea of apostolic succession at least recognized this fact and looked to the apostles rather than to congregations as the ground for pastoral authority; CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 18 April 1896. 114. Trinity College Dublin, Gall. 0. 8. 61 (5). 115. In 1836, Joseph D’Arcy Sirr, Reasons for abiding in the established church: A letter to the Rev. Charles Hargrove (Dublin: Richard Moore Tims, 1836), 163; Joseph Baylee, The institutions of the Church of England are of divine authority. . . An answer to a tract entitled “Are the institutions of the Church of England human or divine?” 3rd ed. (Dublin: W. Curry Jun. & Company, 1838), 16, 100–​08; John Venn, The Christian ministry and church-​membership according to Scripture and the Church of England, with a more special reference to the views of certain Christians generally known as the Plymouth Brethren (London: Hatchard and Son, 1842), 10. I owe these references to Max Weremchuk. 116. Darby, “Reply to the remarks in two leading articles of the Christian Journal, entitled ‘Our separating brethren’ ” (1834), in CW 14: 266. 117. Darby, “The claims of the Church of England considered; being the close of a correspondence between the Rev. James Kelly, of Stillorgan, Ireland, and J. N. Darby” (1842), in CW 14: 291. 118. Darby, “Reply to the remarks in two leading articles of the Christian Journal, entitled ‘Our separating brethren’ ” (1834), in CW 14: 249. 119. Darby, “Separation from evil, God’s principle of unity” (1834), in CW 1: 538. 120. Originally published in French as Sur la formation des Eglises (Lausanne: Marc Ducloux, 1841), this pamphlet appeared in English as Reflections on the ruined condition of the church, and on the efforts made by churchmen and dissenters to restore it to its primitive order (London: D. Walther, 1841). It reappeared as “On the formation of churches” in Collected writings 1 (1866), which was a better reflection of its title in French. I am grateful to Andrew Poots for this reference. 121. Darby, “On the formation of churches” (1841), in CW 1: 212. 122. Darby, “On the formation of churches” (1841), in CW 1: 215.

186 Notes 123. Darby, “Some further developments of the principles set forth in the pamphlet, entitled, ‘On the formation of churches,’ and reply to some objections made to those principles” (1841), in CW 1: 255, 289. 124. Darby, “On the formation of churches” (1841), in CW 1: 228. 125. Darby, “On the formation of churches” (1841), in CW 1: 225. 126. “Obedience,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 13. 127. Darby, “Separation from evil, God’s principle of unity” (1834), in CW 1: 545. 128. Darby, “On the formation of churches” (1841), in CW 1: 230. 129. Darby, “On the formation of churches” (1841), in CW 1: 231. 130. Darby, “Reply to the remarks in two leading articles of the Christian Journal, entitled ‘Our separating brethren’ ” (1834), in CW 14: 184–​85, 192. 131. “Irish chronicle,” The Baptist Magazine 28 (1836): 166. 132. Darby, “On the formation of churches” (1841), in CW 1: 214. 133. Darby, “Some further developments of the principles set forth in the pamphlet, entitled, ‘On the formation of churches,’ and reply to some objections made to those principles” (1841), in CW 1: 281. 134. Darby, “The claims of the Church of England considered; being the close of a correspondence between the Rev. James Kelly, of Stillorgan, Ireland, and J. N. Darby” (1842), in CW 14: 336. 135. Darby, “The claims of the Church of England considered; being the close of a correspondence between the Rev. James Kelly, of Stillorgan, Ireland, and J. N. Darby” (1842), in CW 14: 269. 136. Darby, “Some further developments of the principles set forth in the pamphlet, entitled, ‘On the formation of churches,’ and reply to some objections made to those principles” (1841), in CW 1: 258. 137. Darby, “On the apostacy” (1840), in CW 1: 180. 138. Darby, “On the apostacy” (1840), in CW 1: 176, 180. 139. Darby, “On the formation of churches” (1841), in CW 1: 217. 140. Darby, “On the formation of churches” (1841), in CW 1: 220. 141. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church: in answer to the work of Mr P. Wolff, entitled ‘Ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism’ ” (1845), in CW 3:418. 142. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church: in answer to the work of Mr P. Wolff, entitled ‘Ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism’ ” (1845), in CW 3: 417. 143. Darby, “A letter to the saints in London as to the presence of the Holy Ghost in the church” (1846), in CW 3: 526. 144. Dorman, A review of certain evils & questions that have arisen amongst brethren, 22. 145. Darby, Letters, 3: 303. 146. Miller, The Brethren, 67. 147. Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 313–​14. 148. Gerald T. West, “Early brethren assemblies in London,” Christian Brethren Review 41 (1990), themed issue, Harold H. Rowdon (ed.), Scottish Brethren, 1838–​1916, and other papers (Exeter: Paternoster, 1990), 73.

Notes  187 149. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 89. 150. Darby, Letters, 1: 129–​30. 151. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 269–​70. 152. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 8 January 1884. 153. Chapter Two Archive, Letters of William Kelly, letter dated 23 January 1901; this item is not contained in CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33. 154. Chapter Two Archive, Letters of William Kelly, undated letter c. 1875; this item is not contained in CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33. 155. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 121. 156. Chapter Two Archives, Letters of William Kelly, letter dated 31 August 1875; this item is not contained in CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33. 157. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 311–​12. 158. Darby, Letters, 3: 75. 159. Darby, Letters, 2: 269 160. James Grant, The Plymouth Brethren: Their history and heresies (London: William Macintosh, 1875), 96–​97, cited in Alexander Murdoch, Life among the Close Brethren (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1890), 72. For the origins of the brethren in Orkney, see Neil T. R. Dickson, “Revivalism and the limits of cooperation: Brethren origins in Orkney in the 1860s,” in The growth of the brethren movement: National and international perspectves: Essays in honour of Harold H Rowdon, ed. Neil T. R. Dickson and Tim Grass (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2006), 80–​91. 161. Miller, The brethren, 61. 162. Places and times of meetings in and near London, 1857 (privately printed, 1857); Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, vol. 1, 367. I owe this reference to Doug Engle. The earlier history of brethren assemblies in London is described in West, “Early brethren assemblies in London,” 67–​76, which notes the reports of these assemblies in the 1851 census. 163. Miller, The Brethren, 27. 164. West, “Early brethren assemblies in London,” 71, 75. 165. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 386. 166. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated March 1861. 167. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 3 January 1896. See also Timothy C. F. Stunt, “Some very early Plymouth Brethren,” Brethren Historical Review 5, no. 2 (2009): 105. 168. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 88. 169. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 3 January 1896. 170. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 90. 171. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 3 January 1896. 172. Darby, Letters, 1: 448; Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 175. 173. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 1 April 1875. 174. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 1 April 1875. 175. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 89, 93.

188 Notes 176. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 93; Darby, Letters, 3: 451. Darby connected the push for a single London assembly to the new call for the autonomy of the individual meetings; Darby, Letters, 2: 479–​81. 177. For Hall’s several movements between the open and exclusive communities, see Michael Schneider, “‘The extravagant side of Brethrenism’: The life of Percy Francis Hall (1801–​84),” in Witness in many lands: Leadership and outreach among the Brethren, ed. Tim Grass (Troon, UK: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2013), 17–​44. 178. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 94. 179. Darby, Letters, 3: 88. 180. Darby, Letters, 3: 510. 181. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 94. 182. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated March 1861. 183. Places of meeting (privately printed, late 1860s), in Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, vol. 1, pasted onto p. 117. I am grateful to Tim Grass for alerting me to this list and to Doug Engle for sharing his scans of its content. 184. Places of meeting (privately published, late 1860s), 21. 185. Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, vol. 1, 211. 186. C. E. B. Brett, Buildings of County Antrim (Belfast, UK: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1996), 189. Brethren opposition to total abstinence was sometimes criticized; letter from C. E. Greenwood, The British Weekly (July 1890), responding to Life among the Close Brethren (1890), excerpted in Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, vol. 1, 244. 187. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 1: 363; July 1884 (privately printed), 67. 188. H. T. D., Darbyism, 7. 189. H. T. D., Darbyism, 8. 190. Dorman, The close of twenty-​eight years of association with J. N. D., 37. 191. Dorman, The close of twenty-​eight years of association with J. N. D., 19, 28. 192. Dorman, The close of twenty-​eight years of association with J. N. D., 42. 193. Dorman, The close of twenty-​eight years of association with J. N. D., 44. 194. Pontis, likely in the early 1890s, recalled that the early brethren in Plymouth were sometimes known as “Hallites,” reflecting the local prominence of the preaching of Captain P. F. Hall; Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, vol. 1, 245. Pontis may have been thinking of the reference to Newtonites, Hallites, and Darbyites in “Quakerism and Quakers,” 431. 195. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 405. 196. List of meetings, January 1873, available at https://​www.bret​hren​arch​ive.org/​arch​ive/​ exclus​ive-​sect​ion/​addr​ess-​lists/​1873-​addr​ess-​list/​pdf/​, accessed 23 June 2022. This list proposed the drawing up of a registry of servants in fellowship among brethren. 197. List of meetings, September 1874, available at https://​www.bret​hren​arch​ive.org/​arch​ ive/​exclus​ive-​sect​ion/​addr​ess-​lists/​1874-​addr​ess-​list/​pdf/​, accessed 23 June 2022. 198. Miller, The Brethren, 163. 199. References: March 1880 (privately published, 1880), 1, 21–​22.

Notes  189 200. Darby, Letters, 3: 1. 201. Darby, Letters, 3: 58. 202. Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 407. 203. This paragraph summarizes the very detailed discussion in Noel, The history of the brethren, 1: 286–​321. 204. Darby, Letters, 3: 4. 205. Darby, Letters, 3: 88, 131. 206. CBA JND/​5/​90. For context, see Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 411. 207. Darby, Letters, 3: 5. 208. Darby, Letters, 3: 9. 209. This paragraph summarizes the very detailed discussion in Noel, The history of the brethren, 1: 286–​321. 210. This paragraph summarizes the very detailed discussion in Noel, The history of the brethren, 1: 286–​321. 211. Darby, Letters, 3: 12. 212. Darby, Letters, 3: 32. 213. Darby, Letters, 3: 32. 214. Darby, Letters, 3: 29. 215. Darby, Letters, 3: 31. 216. Darby, Letters, 3: 36. 217. Darby, Letters, 3: 63. 218. Andrew Miller, The Brethren (commonly so-​called): A brief sketch of their origin, progress and testimony (London: Morrish, [1878]); Darby, Letters, 3: 58. 219. Darby, Letters, 3: 35. 220. Miller, The Brethren (commonly so-​called). 221. [A. P. Cecil], “The Brethren:” Their origin, progress and testimony (Privately published, n.d.), 1. 222. [Cecil], “The Brethren,” 3. 223. Darby, Letters, 3: 73. 224. Darby, Letters, 3: 37. 225. Darby, Letters, 3: 32, 67, 88, 131, 137. 226. CBA JND/​5/​238. 227. A copy of this letter is preserved in Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, vol. 1, 369. 228. William Reid, “The Church in Sardis,” The Bible Witness and Review 2 (1878): 342. 229. Reid, “The Church in Sardis,” 342–​43. 230. Frances Bevan, The Life of William Farel (5th ed., 1869, London, n.d.), 318. 231. C. H. Mackintosh, “The remnant: Past and present,” in The miscellaneous writings of C. H. M., 7 vols. (London: Morrish, n.d.), 7: 152. 232. Darby, Letters, 3: 59. 233. Darby also distinguished between the moral law as a rule of life for the unbeliever and the life of Jesus Christ as the rule of life for the believer; Darby, Synopsis, 5: 194 n. 234. Murdoch, Life among the Close Brethren, 14.

190 Notes 235. Murdoch, Life among the Close Brethren, 15–​16. 236. Murdoch, Life among the Close Brethren, 33. 237. Review of Murdoch, Life among the Close Brethren (1890), in Sword and Trowel (May 1891). 238. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 214. 239. Later exclusives identified the house and the body; see for example E. W., The assembly as the special interest of Christ on earth (London: Morrish, n.d.). 240. Darby, Synopsis, 1: 206. 241. CBA/​JND/​3/​1, note at John 1:37. While the annotations from Genesis to Luke were recycled in articles in Notes and comments, the material from John does not appear to have been published. 242. Darby, Synopsis, 1: 279.

Chapter 3 1. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 160. 2. For a detailed reconstruction of these events, see Stunt, From awakening to secession, 221–​38. 3. Columba G. Flegg, Gathered under apostles: A study of the Catholic Apostolic Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); Tim Grass, The Lord’s work: A history of the Catholic Apostolic Church (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017). 4. Stunt, “J. N. Darby and tongues at Row,” 1–​22. 5. Tom Chantry Archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 2: 23. 6. Tom Chantry Archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 2: 25. Darby repeated in a manuscript account of his experience this claim that he heard “Latin with words of Greek description intermixed, and then returned to English”; Lambeth Palace Library, MS 4727, fol. 3v, as presented in Stunt, “J. N. Darby and tongues at Row,” 1–​22. 7. Ralph Brown, “Victorian Anglican Evangelicalism: The radical legacy of Edward Irving,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 58:4 (2007): 675–​704. 8. [B. W. Newton], “Doctrine of the Church in Newman-​Street,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 114. 9. Akenson, Discovering the end of time. 10. “Mormonism in America,” The Christian Witness 5 (1838): 37. Darby later collected some Mormon books; Notes and jottings, 3: 41. 11. Exporting the rapture, 151. Bebbington, The dominance of evangelicalism, 188–​97. 12. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian religion, trans. John T. McNeill (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), IV. iii. 4; Jon Ruthven, On the cessation of the charismata: The Protestant polemic on postbiblical miracles (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 34. 13. Richard A. Muller, Post-​reformation Reformed dogmatics: The rise and development of Reformed orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2003), vol. 2.

Notes  191 14. Geoffrey N. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in puritan faith and experience (1947; reprinted Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Crawford Gribben, “John Owen’s Milton,” Milton Quarterly 54 (2020): 184–​90. 15. Darby, “Notes of a reading on 1 Corinthians” (1871), in CW 26: 412–​22. 16. John Brencher uses this expression in Martyn Lloyd-​Jones (1899–​1981) and twentieth-​ century evangelicalism (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2002), 204. 17. Darby, “On ministry” (1843), in CW 1: 343. Note that the pagination of the first printings of the first edition of CW 1 and CW 21 does not correspond to Morrish’s subsequent printings of the same edition. 18. Darby, “On ministry” (1843), in CW 1: 344. 19. Darby, “A letter to the saints in London as to the presence of the Holy Ghost in the church” (1846), in CW 3: 535. 20. Smeaton, The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 355. 21. Smeaton, The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 356. 22. Smeaton, The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 356. 23. Smeaton, The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 356. 24. The term was coined by Ian Rennie, “Aspects of Christian Brethren spirituality,” in Alive to God: Studies in spirituality, ed. J. I. Packer and Loren Wilkinson (Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP, 1992), 190–​209. I am grateful to Neil Dickson for supplying this reference. 25. Embley, “The early development of the Plymouth Brethren,” 218. On Newton and the Beaconite controversy, see Stunt, The elusive quest of the spiritual malcontent, 29–​58. 26. “Quakerism and Quakers,” 431; Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church: in answer to the work of Mr P. Wolff, entitled ‘Ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism’ ” (1845), in CW 3: 480–​81. 27. Miller, The Brethren, 47. 28. [Denny], Some of the firstfruits of the harvest, by one who has sown in tears, 71–​72. Denny repeated this experience in [Sir Edward Denny], Dreams, visions, interesting incidents etc. etc., compiled by Edward Denny (London: Morrish, n.d.), 15–​17. 29. “The verity of the revival of the apostolic church in Newman-​Street and elsewhere examined: or, The responsibility of the true Church to be ready to meet her Lord,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 154, 165–​66, 185–​87. 30. CBA Newton memoirs, Fry MS, 252, 257, cited in Embley, “The early development of the Plymouth Brethren,” 216. Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 221. Darby, Notes and jottings, 1: 40. 31. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 422; Darby, Letters, 3: 249. 32. Darby, Notes and jottings, 1: 104. 33. Darby, “Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles” (1877), in CW 25: 543. 34. Darby, Notes and jottings, 4: 120. 35. Darby, Letters, 3: 247–​48. 36. J. G. Bellett, “A letter on the person and deity of the Holy Ghost,” The Christian Witness 4 (1837): 34. 37. Bellett, “A letter on the person and deity of the Holy Ghost,” 34.

192 Notes 38. Bellett, “A letter on the person and deity of the Holy Ghost,” 34–​42. 39. J. N. Darby, “The operations of the Spirit of God,” The Christian Witness 4 (1837): 42–​ 52; 201–​20. 40. Darby, “Operations of the Spirit of God” (1837), in CW 3: 129. 41. Darby, “Operations of the Spirit of God” (1837), in CW 3: 111. 42. Darby, “Operations of the Spirit of God” (1837), in CW 3: 114. 43. Darby, “Operations of the Spirit of God” (1837), in CW 3: 160–​61. 44. Darby, “Operations of the Spirit of God” (1837), in CW 3: 163. 45. Darby, “Operations of the Spirit of God” (1837), in CW 3: 212. 46. Darby, “Operations of the Spirit of God” (1837), in CW 3: 216. 47. Darby, “Operations of the Spirit of God” (1837), in CW 3: 217–​18. 48. Darby, “Operations of the Spirit of God” (1837), in CW 3: 158, 194. 49. Darby, “A few remarks connected with the presence and operation of the Spirit of God in the body, the church” (1845), in CW 3: 491. 50. Carter, Anglican evangelicals. 51. [Harris], “On the increase of popery,” 15. 52. [Harris], “On the increase of popery,” 15–​16. 53. W. H. Dorman, Principles of truth on the present state of the church (London: Central Tract Depot, 1838), 5–​6. 54. Dorman, Principles of truth on the present state of the church, 46–​47. 55. Dorman, Principles of truth on the present state of the church, 17. 56. Dorman, Principles of truth on the present state of the church, 47–​49, 110. 57. Dorman, Principles of truth on the present state of the church, 12, 14. (The capitalization of divine pronouns is inconsistent in Dorman’s text.) 58. Dorman, Principles of truth on the present state of the church, 16. 59. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church: in answer to the work of Mr P. Wolff, entitled ‘Ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism’ ” (1845), in CW 3: 316. 60. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church: in answer to the work of Mr P. Wolff, entitled ‘Ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism’ ” (1845), in CW 3: 459. 61. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church: in answer to the work of Mr P. Wolff, entitled ‘Ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism’ ” (1845), in CW 3: 460. 62. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church: in answer to the work of Mr P. Wolff, entitled ‘Ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism’ ” (1845), in CW 3: 398. 63. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church: in answer to the work of Mr P. Wolff, entitled ‘Ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism’ ” (1845), in CW 3: 442. 64. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church: in answer to the work of Mr P. Wolff, entitled ‘Ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism’ ” (1845), in CW 3: 448.

Notes  193 65. See, for example, Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church: in answer to the work of Mr P. Wolff, entitled ‘Ministry as opposed to hierarchism and chiefly to religious radicalism’ ” (1845), in CW 3: 435. 66. Darby, “A letter to the saints in London as to the presence of the Holy Ghost in the church” (1846), in CW 3: 534. 67. Darby, “A letter to the saints in London as to the presence of the Holy Ghost in the church” (1846), in CW 3: 529. 68. Andrew Jukes, Thoughts on the ruin of the church. Two letters (London: J. K. Campbell, 1848), 12. 69. Dorman, A review of certain evils & questions that have arisen amongst brethren, 14. 70. Dorman, A review of certain evils & questions that have arisen amongst brethren, 21. 71. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 368. 72. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 369. 73. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 372. 74. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 367–​68. 75. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 370. 76. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 378. 77. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 382. 78. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 381. 79. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 378. 80. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 378. 81. [Darby], The presence of the Holy Ghost, &c., 24. 82. [Darby], The presence of the Holy Ghost, &c., 7. 83. [Darby], The presence of the Holy Ghost, &c., 1. 84. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 403. 85. Darby, “Christ in heaven and the Holy Spirit sent down” (1878), in CW 31: 375. 86. Darby, “Christ in heaven and the Holy Spirit sent down” (1878), in CW 31: 372. 87. Darby, “The basis of deliverance” (1879), in Additional writings of J. N. Darby, ed. R. A. Huebner (Jackson, NJ: Present Truth Publishers, 2005), 1: 58. 88. Darby, “Christ in heaven and the Holy Spirit sent down” (1878), in CW 31: 376–​77. 89. Darby, “Christ in heaven and the Holy Spirit sent down” (1878), in CW 31: 372. 90. Darby, “Christ the hope, and the Holy Ghost, with our responsibility” (1867), in CW 21: 225. 91. Darby, “The Christian position as to life and the Spirit” (1856), in CW 10: 360. 92. Darby, “The new birth” (1863), in CW 10: 309. 93. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 311. 94. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 403. 95. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 374. 96. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 375. 97. Darby, “Christ on high, and the Holy Ghost here below” (1864), in CW 21: 234. 98. Darby, “Christ the hope, and the Holy Ghost, with our responsibility” (1867), in CW 21: 226. 99. For the reception of Darby’s teaching in Scotland see Dickson, Brethren in Scotland, 266–​71.

194 Notes 100. David W. Bebbington, Holiness in nineteenth-​ century England (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2000). 101. M. J. D. Roberts, “Evangelicalism and scandal in Victorian England: The case of the Pearsall Smiths,” History 95:4 (2010): 437–​57. 102. Meg A. Meneghel, “Becoming a heretic: Hannah Whitall Smith, Quakerism, and the nineteenth-​century holiness movement” (unpublished PhD thesis, Indiana University, 2000), 140. 103. Meneghel, “Becoming a heretic,” 148. 104. Meneghel, “Becoming a heretic,” 176. 105. Meneghel, “Becoming a heretic,” 174. 106. Meneghel, “Becoming a heretic,” 217. 107. Meneghel, “Becoming a heretic,” 201–​09. 108. Meneghel, “Becoming a heretic,” 212. 109. Letters of Andrew Jukes, xxxvi. This claims that Jukes met the Pearsall Smiths “about 1870,” but they made their first joint trip to England in 1875. 110. Ian Randall, “‘I felt bound to receive all true Christians as brethren’: The expansive ecclesiology of Andrew Jukes (1815–​1901),” in The brethren and the church, ed. Neil T. R. Dickson and Tom Marinello (Glasgow: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2020), 47–​62. 111. Roberts, “Evangelicalism and scandal in Victorian England,” 442. 112. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 277. 113. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 277. 114. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 298, 300, 303. 115. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 289. 116. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 277. 117. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 278–​79. 118. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 279. 119. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 305. 120. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 316; Darby, “Letter on Mr J. P. S.’s ‘Holiness through faith’ ” (1873), in CW 23: 322–​23. 121. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 300–​301. 122. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 297. 123. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 290, 316. 124. Darby, review of J. Pearsall Smith’s Holiness through faith (1873), in CW 23: 288. 125. Darby, “Letter on Mr J. P. S.’s ‘Holiness through faith’ ” (1873), in CW 23: 320. 126. Darby, “Letter on Mr J. P. S.’s ‘Holiness through faith’ ” (1873), in CW 23: 320. 127. Darby, “Cleansing and deliverance” (1873), in CW 23: 417. 128. Darby, “Cleansing and deliverance” (1873), in CW 23: 413. 129. Darby, “The effect spiritually of ‘Holiness through faith’ ” (1874), in CW 23: 341. See also The Bible Treasury 213 (February 1874), 31. 130. Darby, “Letter on Mr J. P. S.’s ‘Holiness through faith’ ” (1873), in CW 23: 324. 131. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 2: 320–​21. 132. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 2: 320–​21.

Notes  195 133. Darby, “The presence of the Holy Ghost on earth consequent on Christ’s exaltation to the right hand of God” (1874), in CW 21: 171. 134. [J. E. B.], “Mr R. P. Smith’s ‘Farewell,’” The Bible Treasury 224 (January 1875): 205–​8. 135. [J. E. B.], “Mr R. P. Smith’s ‘Farewell,’ ” 207. 136. [J. E. B.], “Mr R. P. Smith’s ‘Farewell,’ ” 206. 137. [J. E. B.], “To Mr R. P. Smith on ‘Consecration’, &c,” The Bible Treasury 228 (May 1875): 271–​72. 138. [J. E. B.], “To Mr R. P. Smith on ‘Consecration’, &c,” 272. 139. [J. E. B.], “To Mr R. P. Smith on ‘Consecration’, &c,” 272. 140. This first appeared in The Bible Treasury 229 (1875), 282–​84. 141. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 444. 142. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 422. 143. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 422–​23. 144. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 424. 145. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 425. 146. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 427. 147. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 432. 148. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 439. 149. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 429. 150. Meneghel, “Becoming a heretic,” 224. 151. Meneghel, “Becoming a heretic,” 225. 152. Roberts, “Evangelicalism and scandal in Victorian England,” 443. 153. Roberts, “Evangelicalism and scandal in Victorian England,” 443. 154. Roberts, “Evangelicalism and scandal in Victorian England,” 453. 155. Roberts, “Evangelicalism and scandal in Victorian England,” 443. 156. Roberts, “Evangelicalism and scandal in Victorian England,” 445. 157. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated July 1875. 158. Darby, “On the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the church” (1844), in CW 3: 386. 159. Darby, Synopsis, 1: 155, 4: 447. 160. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 400. 161. Darby, “Is the Comforter come? And is he gone?” (1865), in CW 10: 388. 162. Darby, “Cleansing by water; and what it is to walk in the light” (1875), in CW 23: 421–​22. 163. Darby, “Christ in heaven and the Holy Spirit sent down” (1878), in CW 31: 379. 164. Darby, Letters, 3: 47. 165. Darby, Letters, 3: 106. 166. Darby, Letters, 3: 155. 167. Darby, Letters, 3: 150–​51. 168. Darby, “On sealing with the Holy Ghost” (1881), in CW 31: 398. 169. Darby, “On sealing with the Holy Ghost” (1881), in CW 31: 394, 406. 170. Darby, “Sanctification” (1878), in CW 31: 399. 171. Darby, “Sanctification” (1878), in CW 31: 417.

196 Notes 172. Darby, “Sanctification” (1878), in CW 31: 418. 173. Darby, “Sanctification” (1878), in CW 31: 394–​95 174. Darby, “Sanctification” (1878), in CW 31: 419. 175. Darby, “Sanctification” (1878), in CW 31: 424. 176. Darby, “Deliverance from the law of sin” (1881), in CW 32: 491. 177. Larry Edwards Dixon, “The pneumatology of John Nelson Darby” (unpublished PhD thesis, Drew University, 1985), 36–​41. 178. F. W. Grant, Life in Christ and sealing with the Spirit (New York: Loizeaux, 1884), 5, 6. 179. Darby, Notes and jottings, 5: 108. 180. [Denny], Dreams, visions, interesting incidents etc. etc., 5, 103–​04. 181. [Denny], Some of the firstfruits of the harvest, by one who has sown in tears, 7, 12. Denny repeated his mother’s experience in [Denny], Dreams, visions, interesting incidents, 13–​14, 21–​22, 25–​27. 182. [Denny], Dreams, visions, interesting incidents, 18–​19. 183. Herman Bavinck, Reformed ethics, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2018), 2: 308. I am grateful to David Shedden for this reference. For more on Dutch reception of brethren ideas, see Mirjam Hofman, “From sectarians to apocalyptics: Descriptions of the brethren by Dutch theologians and church historians,” Brethren Historical Review 11 (2015): 1–​34. 184. John Murray, “Definitive sanctification,” Calvin Theological Journal 2, no. 1 (1967), as reprinted in Collected writings of John Murray (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977), 277–​93. 185. A. W. Pink, “The doctrine of sanctification: 1. Introduction,” Studies in the Scriptures 14, no. 1 (January 1935): 21; A. W. Pink, Sanctification (Fearn, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 1998), 7. 186. D. Martyn Lloyd-​Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1959–​60), 1: 81; D. Martyn Lloyd-​Jones, Romans: Sons of God: Exposition of ­chapter 8:5–​17 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975), 356–​57. 187. Michael A. Eaton, Baptism with the Spirit: The teaching of Martyn Lloyd-​Jones (Leicester, UK: IVP, 1989); Tony Sargent, The sacred anointing: The preaching od Dr Martyn Lloyd-​Jones (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1994), 38; Brencher, Martyn Lloyd-​Jones (1899–​1981) and twentieth-​century evangelicalism, 204. 188. Darby, “Brief remarks on ‘An address for the promotion of Scriptural holiness’ ” (1875), in CW 23: 353. 189. Darby, “Remarks on the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Christian” (1850), in CW 3: 486. 190. Darby, Synopsis, 1: 336. 191. Darby, “Brief remarks on ‘An address for the promotion of Scriptural holiness’ ” (1875), in CW 23: 354. 192. Darby, “A letter to the saints in London as to the presence of the Holy Ghost in the church” (1846), in CW 3: 528. 193. [Darby], The presence of the Holy Ghost, &c., 22–​23.

Notes  197

Chapter 4 1. Darby, “The parables” (1838), in CW 12: 176. 2. Larry V. Crutchfield, The origins of dispensationalism: The Darby factor (London: University Press of America, 1992). 3. See, for example, Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The story of American Christian Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 13–​ 21; Shalom Goldman, Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the idea of the Promised Land (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 33–​38. 4. For a discussion of variety within nineteenth-​century premillennialism, see Martin Spence, Heaven on earth: Reimagining time and eternity in nineteenth-​century British evangelicalism (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2015). 5. Darby, “Review of ‘Lectures on the second advent’ and ‘The Apocalypse unfulfilled’ ” (1832), in CW 33: 1–​19; Burnham, A story of conflict, 118. 6. Newton’s essay in The Christian Witness (1834) on “The world to come” did not teach a secret rapture; Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 122. Newton claimed that Wigram left the Plymouth assembly and moved to London because he disagreed with Hall’s teaching of a secret rapture in the early 1840s; West, “Early brethren assemblies in London,” 67–​68. 7. Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 151. 8. For the revival of premillennialism, see Bebbington, The dominance of evangelicalism, 179–​88. 9. John Owen, “Edward Kennaway Groves (1836–​1917): A brief biography,” Brethren Historical Review 7 (2011): 17–​42; Randall, “ ‘I felt bound to receive all true Christians as brethren,’ ” 47–​62. 10. Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, 2: 3. 11. Darby, “Studies in the book of Daniel” (1847), in CW 5: 245–​46, 316. 12. See, for example, Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 215. 13. Stunt, The elusive quest of the spiritual malcontent, 140. 14. P. H. Gosse to George Pearse, 12 December 1880, quoted in Anne Thwaite, Glimpses of the wonderful: The life of Philip Henry Gosse (London: Faber, 2002), 286. 15. Crawford Gribben, “Rethinking the rise of rapture fiction: H. R. K.’s Life in the future (?1879),” Brethren Historical Review 7 (2011): 68–​80. 16. W. R. Ward, Early evangelicalism: A global intellectual history, 1670–​ 1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 17. Wolffe, “The Evangelical Alliance in the 1840s,” 333–​46; Ian Randall and David Hilborn, One body in Christ: The history and significance of the Evangelical Alliance (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2001), 122–​32. 18. For contemporary statement regarding an acceptable range of opinion on millennial questions, see Robert J. Breckinridge, The knowledge of God, objectively considered. Being the first part of theology considered as a science of positive truth, both inductive and deductive (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1858), 86. 19. Gribben, Evangelical millennialism in the trans-​Atlantic world, 93–​98.

198 Notes 20. Ernst Käsemann, “The beginnings of Christian theology,” New Testament questions of today, trans. W. J. Montague (London: SCM, 1969), 102. 21. Compare the work of David Malcolm Bennett, The origins of Left Behind eschatology (Maitland, FL: Xulon Press, 2010), and William C. Watson, Dispensationalism before Darby: Seventeenth-​century and eighteenth-​century English apocalypticism (Silverton, OR: Lampion Press, 2015). 22. The tendency of historians to describe Darby’s ideas as “dispensationalism” is anachronistic; see, for example, Clarence Bass, Backgrounds to dispensationalism: Its historical genesis and ecclesiastical implications (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1960). The tendency among other historians to systematize Darby’s thought conceals the extent to which it changed over time; see, for example, the otherwise valuable work by Crutchfield, The origins of dispensationalism. R. A. Huebner, J. N. Darby’s teaching regarding dispensations, ages, administrations and the two parentheses (Morganville, NJ: Present Truth Publishers, 1993), is the most careful analysis of Darby’s views, but even it may underplay the developmental nature of Darby’s thought. 23. Schwarz, Leben im Sieg Christi, 155, cautions that Darby did not present a fully worked-​out system of hermeneutics. 24. Darby, “Evidence from Scripture of the passing away of the present dispensation” (1831), in CW 2: 148 n. Clarke, “A critical examination of the ecclesiology of John Nelson Darby,” 133. 25. Darby’s definition of “covenant”: “some order established by God and announced to man, according to the terms of which He enters into relationship with man, or according to which man is to approach Him”; Darby, Synopsis, 1: 24 n. 26. This is summarized in Huebner, J. N. Darby’s teaching regarding dispensations, ages, administrations and the two parentheses, 21. For an alternative view, which argues that Darby discerned two, rather than three, redemptive-​historical ages, see Max S. Weremchuk, “John Nelson Darby (1800–​1882),” in Discovering dispensationalism: Tracing the development of dispensational thought from the first to the twenty-​ first century, ed. Cory M. Marsh and James I. Fazio (El Cajon, CA: Southern California Seminary Press, 2022), 207–​45. 27. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 561. 28. Darby’s importance in the history of Zionism is explained in Paul R. Wilkinson, For Zion’s sake: Christian Zionism and the role of John Nelson Darby (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2007). 29. “All kings are summoned to submit themselves to Him”; Darby, Synopsis, 5: 279. 30. Clarke, “A critical examination of the ecclesiology of John Nelson Darby,” 44; Akenson, The Americanization of the Apocalypse, 435. 31. Hempton, “Evangelicals and eschatology,” 179–​94; Nebeker, “John Nelson Darby and Trinity College, Dublin,” 87–​108; Stunt, “The formation of a seceder,” 41–​59. See also Akenson, Discovering the end of time, 132 n104; Timothy C. F. Stunt, “Trinity College, John Darby, and the Powerscourt milieu,” in Beyond the end: The future of millennial studies, ed. Joshua Searle and Kenneth Newport (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012), 47–​74; Weremchuk, Becoming JND, forthcoming. 32. Stunt, “Trinity College, John Darby and the Powerscourt milieu,” 47–​74.

Notes  199 33. Stunt, “Trinity College, John Darby and the Powerscourt milieu,” 64–​65. 34. Darby, “Review of ‘Lectures on the Second Advent’ and ‘The Apocalypse unfulfilled’ ” (1832), in CW 33: 1–​19. 35. Tom Chantry Archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 1: 2, 37. 36. Darby, “On ‘days’ signifying ‘years’ in prophetic language” (1831), in CW 2: 48–​64. 37. Tom Chantry archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 2: 31. 38. Tom Chantry archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 2: 30. 39. Tom Chantry archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 2: 6. Later, some of Newton’s adherents would move as a group to Australia to escape the territorial boundaries of this revived Roman empire; Guy Featherstone, “‘Holy city’: The brethren community at Kyneton, 1900–​1911,” Brethren Historical Review 5 (2008): 2–​24. 40. Tom Chantry archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 2: 2. 41. Tom Chantry archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 2: 4–​5. 42. Tom Chantry archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 1: 38. 43. Tom Chantry archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 1: 37. 44. Tom Chantry archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 1: 14–​15. 45. Tom Chantry archive, “Powerscourt discussion” (1831), 2: 13, 38. 46. “Value of prophecy,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 47. 47. “The first resurrection,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 222. 48. “Letter to a friend,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 343. 49. “Jerusalem,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 29. 50. “The first resurrection,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 208; “Jerusalem,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 28. Robert O. Smith claims that Darby did not expect the Jews to be restored to the land prior to the rapture; More desired than our owne salvation: The roots of Christian Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 154. 51. “Jerusalem,” 29. 52. “The first resurrection,” 205. 53. “The voluntary system and an establishment,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 288. For example, in the early 1830s, Lady Powerscourt suggested both the idea of a partial rapture and the possibility that the rapture would occur after the tribulation; Huebner, Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 1: 89. 54. Darby, “Evidence from Scripture of the passing away of the present dispensation” (1831), in CW 2: 180. 55. “Types—​No. 1,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 259–​60. 56. Darby, “Evidence from Scripture of the passing away of the present dispensation” (1831), in CW 2: 146. 57. “The whole family in heaven and on earth,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 74; [J. N. Darby], “On the character of office in the present dispensation,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 91; “Doctrine of the Church in Newman-​Street,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 112; [Darby], “On the character of office in the present dispensation,” 92; Darby, “Evidence from Scripture of the passing away of the present dispensation” (1831), in CW 2: 150. 58. Huebner, J. N. Darby’s teaching regarding dispensations, iv.

200 Notes 59. “The whole family in heaven and on earth,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 81. 60. Compare the texts of “The dispensation of the kingdom of heaven—​Matt. xiii” in The Christian Witness 1 (1834): 125–​36, and in CW 2: 53–​63. I owe this reference to Timothy Stunt. 61. Darby, “The dispensation of the kingdom of heaven—​Matt. xiii,” The Christian Witness 1 (1834): 129 note. 62. Darby, “The dispensation of the kingdom of heaven” (1834), in CW 2: 86 note. 63. Darby, “The dispensation of the kingdom of heaven—​Matt. xiii,” The Christian Witness 1 (1834): 130. 64. Darby, “The dispensation of the kingdom of heaven” (1834), in CW 2: 88 note. 65. This habit of depending on Kelly’s edition of the Collected writings may explain how Crutchfield reached his conclusions about the basic similarity of Darby’s views across time and why Huebner argued that Darby’s end-​times ideas were formed by the late 1820s. 66. Huebner, J. N. Darby’s teaching regarding dispensations, 14. 67. [Darby], “Revelation i–​xx,” in Collectanea: Being some of the subjects considered at Leamington, on 3rd June and four following days in the year 1839 (Edinburgh: J. S. Robertson, 1882), 29. 68. [Darby], “The dispensations and the remnants,” in Collectanea: Being some of the subjects considered at Leamington, on 3rd June and four following days in the year 1839 (Edinburgh: J. S. Robertson, 1882), 41. 69. [Darby], “The heavenly and the earthly Jerusalem,” in Collectanea: Being some of the subjects considered at Leamington, on 3d June and four following days in the year 1839 (Edinburgh: J. S. Robertson, 1882), 12. 70. [Darby], “The dispensations and the remnants,” in Collectanea, 41. 71. [Darby], “The dispensations and the remnants,” 42; Darby, Synopsis, 1: 32. 72. [Darby], “The dispensations and the remnants,” 41. 73. Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 224; Stunt, The elusive quest of the spiritual malcontent, 137–​39. It is not clear that Darby ever taught that the rapture would be secret; Huebner, Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 1: 99. 74. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 1: 35. 75. This book was edited to conform to later convictions in the Collected writings and then again when it was republished as an individual title in 1876; Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 151. 76. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 34–​35. 77. Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 132. 78. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 423, 429. 79. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 519–​20. 80. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 440. 81. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 442. 82. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 453. 83. Darby, Synopsis, 2: 23. 84. Darby, Synopsis, 1: 511; 2: 327, 333. 85. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 471.

Notes  201 86. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 489–​90. 87. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 491. 88. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 486. 89. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 502. 90. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 424, 428, 432. 91. Darby, Synopsis, 2: 71; 5: 134, 140, 142. 92. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 471. 93. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 628, 630. 94. Darby, Synopsis, 1: 479. 95. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 441. On the question of the personal appearance of Christ, compare David W. Bebbington, “The advent hope in British evangelicalism since 1800,” Scottish Journal of Religious Studies 9, no. 2 (1988): 103; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in modern Britain, 83; and David W. Bebbington, The dominance of evangelicalism: The age of Spurgeon and Moody, History of Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: IVP, 2005), 91; with Kenneth J. Stewart, “The visible, glorious return of Christ: A late Georgian novelty?” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 39 (2021): 98–​114. 96. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 517. 97. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 514. 98. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 438. 99. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 446. 100. Darby, “On sealing with the Holy Ghost” (1881), in CW 31: 387 n. 101. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 437. 102. Darby, Synopsis, 1: 482. 103. Darby, Synopsis, 2: 289. 104. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 326–​27; Darby, Synopsis, 2: 354. 105. Darby, Letters, 3: 384. Darby, Synopsis, 1: 86 n., 125 n. 106. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 100–​01; Darby, “The dispensation of the fullness of times” (1850), in CW 13: 251. 107. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 437. 108. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 434–​35. 109. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 450. 110. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 456. 111. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 461. 112. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 467. 113. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 462. 114. Darby, Notes and jottings, 2: 23. For a discussion of Darby’s understanding of the beatific vision, see Gary L. Nebeker, “‘The ecstasy of perfected love’: The eschatological mysticism of J. N. Darby,” in Prisoners of hope? Aspects of evangelical millennialism in Britain and Ireland, 1800–​1880, ed. Crawford Gribben and Timothy C. F. Stunt (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2004), 69–​94. 115. These contexts are described in Charles E. Hill, Regnum caelorum: Patterns of millennial thought in early Christianity, second edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001). 116. Gribben, Evangelical millennialism in the trans-​Atlantic world, 22–​25.

202 Notes 117. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 82. 118. Akenson, Exporting the rapture, 168–​69. 119. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 117. 120. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 214. 121. Chapter Two Archive, London, Kelly’s annotated copy of Neatby, A history of the Brethren movement, 39. 122. Emmaus College, Henry William Pontis, Notices of the Brethren MS, 2: 3. 123. Chapter Two Archive, London, Kelly’s annotated copy of Neatby, A history of the Brethren movement, 199. I am grateful to Michael Schneider for advice on Hall’s eschatology. 124. [Sir Edward Denny], Companion to a chart . . . entitled “A prophetical stream of time,” etc. (London: W. H. Broom, [c.1860]); [Sir Edward Denny], Companion to a Scripture chart, entitled “The elect church”. . . By the author of “The prophetical stream of time” etc. (London, G. Morrish, [n.d.]); [Sir Edward Denny], Companion to two prophetical charts, the first of which illustrates the seventy weeks of Daniel . . . the second . . . to show that seventy weeks is a dispensational cycle, etc. (London, J. Nisbet, n.d.). 125. Presbutes, “The difficulties and dangers of prophetic study,” The Present Testimony 1, no. 3 (June 1849): 197. 126. Presbutes, “The difficulties and dangers of prophetic study,” 206. 127. Presbutes, “The difficulties and dangers of prophetic study,” 212. 128. Presbutes, “The difficulties and dangers of prophetic study,” 208. 129. Darby, “Brief Scriptural evidence of the doctrine of eternal punishment, for plain people” (1847), in CW 7: 8. 130. Darby, Letters, 3: 293, 407. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 69, 137, 138, 155, 161. For Morris, see Huebner, Precious truths revived and defended through J. N. Darby, 2: 168; Stunt, The elusive quest of the spiritual malcontent, 200–​201. 131. Philomath, A few brief comments on a nameless tract recently published, entitled, Brief Scriptural evidence of the doctrine of eternal punishment, for plain people, with answers to some objections, by J. N. D. (London: H. K. Lewis, 1848), 6, 13. 132. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1:179. Darby, A letter to G. V. Wigram, containing brief comments on “The reply of Philomath to the Brief Scriptural evidence of the doctrine of eternal punishment for plain people” (1848). 133. Darby, Letters, 3: 298–​300. 134. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 1: 431, 2: 309. For more on the universalist circle that gathered around Coleman, see Wertheimer, “The truth about 1843, and why it’s important,” 15–​63. 135. Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler, The disappointed: Millerism and millenarianism in the nineteenth century (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987). 136. Akenson, The Americanisation of the apocalypse, 87–​88. 137. Sandeen, The roots of fundamentalism, 77. 138. CBA JDL/​1, 91. 139. CBA JDL/​1, 121.

Notes  203 140. CBA JDL/​1, 121. 141. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 231. 142. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 230–​31. 143. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 2: 117. 144. CBA JDL/​1, 128. 145. CBA JDL/​1, 127. 146. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 251. 147. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 260. 148. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 274. 149. Darby, Letters, 3: 455. 150. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2:251, 272–​73. 151. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 2: 179. 152. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 463. 153. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 463. 154. “Everlasting punishment,” The Bible Treasury 147 (1868): 125. 155. J. N. Darby, “Letter on immortality and everlasting punishment,” The Bible Treasury 159 (1869): 317–​20. This appeared as Darby, “Letter on immortality and everlasting punishment” (1869), in CW 33: 103–​15. 156. S. P., “A few words on the punishment of sin,” The Bible Treasury 161 (1869): 346–​47. 157. Edward White, “Correspondence. To the editor of the Bible Treasury,” The Bible Treasury 179 (1871): 255–​56. 158. [William Kelly], “To correspondents,” The Bible Treasury 178 (1871): 240. 159. [Kelly], “To correspondents,” 240. 160. [Kelly], “To correspondents,” 240. 161. White, “Correspondence. To the editor of the Bible Treasury,” 255. 162. White, “Correspondence. To the editor of the Bible Treasury,” 256. 163. Darby, Letters, 3: 21. 164. Darby, Letters, 3: 22. 165. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram, 2: 406. 166. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 3 February 1875. 167. CBA, Letters of William Kelly, Box 33, letter dated 7 January 1902. 168. Owen, “Edward Kennaway Groves (1836–​1917),” 17–​42 169. W. T. Chesterman, Immortality; or, Eternal life and the second death. A testimony and appeal to the Christians commonly known as “Open Brethren,” 4th ed. (Glasgow: Colin Grieg, 1913), 14. 170. Darby, Notes and jottings, 4: 64. 171. See, for example, Darby, “Evidence from Scripture of the passing away of the present dispensation” (1831), in CW 2: 136. 172. Darby, “The dispensation of the fullness of times” (1850), in CW 13: 235. 173. For expansion of this point, see Huebner, J. N. Darby’s teaching regarding dispensations, ages, administrations and the two parentheses, 7–​22. 174. Huebner, J. N. Darby’s teaching regarding dispensations, 21. As noted above, Weremchuk argues that Darby identified only two ages; Weremchuk, “John Nelson Darby (1800–​1882),” 207–​45.

204 Notes 175. Darby, “The dispensation of the fullness of times” (1850), in CW 13: 234–​35. 176. Darby, “The dispensation of the fullness of times,” in CW 13: 236. 177. Akenson, The Americanization of the Apocalypse, 220. 178. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 471. 179. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 490. 180. Darby, “Progress of democratic power, and its effect on the moral state of England” (1867–​1868?), in CW 32: 506. 181. Darby, “Progress of democratic power, and its effect on the moral state of England” (1867), in CW 32: 506. 182. Darby, “Progress of democratic power, and its effect on the moral state of England” (1867), in CW 32: 507. 183. Darby, “Progress of democratic power, and its effect on the moral state of England” (1867), in CW 32: 507. 184. Darby, “Progress of democratic power, and its effect on the moral state of England” (1867), in CW 32: 508. 185. Darby, “Progress of democratic power, and its effect on the moral state of England” (1867), in CW 32: 509. 186. Darby, “Progress of democratic power, and its effect on the moral state of England” (1867), in CW 32: 509. 187. Darby, “Progress of democratic power, and its effect on the moral state of England” (1867), in CW 32: 510. 188. Darby, “Disendowment—​disestablishment: A word to the protestants of Ireland” (1869), in CW 20: 438. 189. Darby, “Disendowment—​disestablishment: A word to the protestants of Ireland” (1869), in CW 20: 436. 190. Darby, “Disendowment—​disestablishment: A word to the protestants of Ireland” (1869), in CW 20: 437–​38. 191. Darby, “Disendowment—​disestablishment: A word to the protestants of Ireland” (1869), in CW 20: 437. 192. Darby, “Disendowment—​disestablishment: A word to the protestants of Ireland” (1869), in CW 20: 437. 193. Darby, “Disendowment—​disestablishment: A word to the protestants of Ireland” (1869), in CW 20: 436. 194. Darby, “Disendowment—​disestablishment: A word to the protestants of Ireland” (1869), in CW 20: 436. 195. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 1: 282; Darby, “Further notes on the Revelation,” Notes and jottings 2: 69; Carter, Anglican evangelicals, 227. 196. Darby, “Disendowment—​disestablishment: A word to the protestants of Ireland” (1869), in CW 20: 440. 197. Smith, More desired than our owne salvation, 160; Akenson, The Americanization of the Apocalypse, 435. 198. Darby, “The living water” (1838), in CW 12: 32. 199. Darby, “The dispensation of the fullness of times” (1850), in CW 13: 253.

Notes  205 200. William Kelly, “The administration of the fulness of times,” The Present Testimony 2 (1850): 267. 201. Compare the contrasting arguments of Wilkinson, For Zion’s sake, and Smith, More desired than our owne salvation. 202. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 440. 203. Darby, “Hopes of the church of God” (1840), in CW 2: 455. 204. Hymn 168, A few hymns and some spiritual songs. Selected 1856, for the little flock. Revised 1881, ed. J. N. Darby (London: Morrish, 1881), 132. 205. Darby, Notes and Jottings, 5: 28.

Conclusion 1. Darby, “Brethren and their reviewers” (1862), in CW 10: 67. 2. Gribben, “ ‘The worst sect a Christian man can meet,’ ” 34–​53. 3. Thomas Croskery, A catechism on the doctrines of the Plymouth Brethren (1865; reprinted London: James Nisbet, 1866); Thomas Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” The Princeton Review, n.s. 1, no. 1 (January 1872): 48–​77; Thomas Croskery, Plymouth-​ Brethrenism: A Refutation of Its Principles and Doctrines (London: William Mullan & Son, 1879). 4. Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” 48. 5. Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” 48. 6. Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” 49. 7. Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” 53. 8. Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” 73. 9. Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” 56. 10. Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” 75. 11. Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” 68. 12. Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” 67. 13. Croskery, “The Plymouth Brethren,” 75. 14. Crawford Gribben, The rise and fall of Christian Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 122–​62. 15. Sean Michael Lucas, Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian life (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2005), 165–​92. 16. See, for example, the criticism of Dabney’s view of imputation, made by an anonymous critic: “one can scarcely believe these lines were penned by a champion of orthodoxy”; “Dr Dabney on immediate imputation,” The Southern Presbyterian Review 24 (1873): 39. Dabney defended his statements in an article in The South-​ western Presbyterian. 17. See, for example, Dabney’s claim that “Yankee philanthropy” was bringing “temporal and eternal ruin” to thousands of “little negroes”; R. L. Dabney, “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren,” The Southern Presbyterian Review 23, no. 1 (1872): 42. 18. Letters of J. N. Darby . . . Correspondence with G. V. Wigram,1: 209; 2: 113.

206 Notes 19. Dabney, “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren,” 2–​3. While Mackintosh seems to have adhered to believers baptism, he does not appear to have argued for it and remained content within the Darbyite connection of excusive brethren as its leaders copper-​ fastened their commitment to “household baptism,” their preferred term for the practice that included the baptism of the infants of Christian parents; Cross, The life and times of Charles Henry Mackintosh, 41, 150–​51, 173. 20. Dabney, “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren,” 1. 21. Dabney, “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren,” 4. 22. Dabney, “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren,” 6. 23. Dabney, “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren,” 9–​10. 24. Dabney, “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren,” 3. 25. Dabney, “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren,” 5–​6. 26. Dabney, “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren,” 4. It is worth noting that Dabney was making this claim in a theological journal that had very recently published an anonymous article attacking proposals that slave marriages should be afforded legal recognition on the basis that it would make as much sense to give marriage rights to cattle and that the Presbyterian church should not understand the cohabitation and consequent sexual activity of slaves as sin; “A slave marriage law,” Southern Presbyterian Review 16 (1863): 145–​62. 27. “A slave marriage law,” 145–​62. 28. Darby, Synopsis, 5: 260–​61; Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 2: 215. 29. Sweetnam, “Defining dispensationalism,” 191–​212. 30. The coincidence of names concerned both authors. “The Rev. Wm. Reid . . . a namesake of mine—​formerly of the English Presbyterian Church, but who has now gone over to the Brethren, to whom he regularly ministers in Edinburgh—​fearing apparently lest the book might be regarded by some as a recantation of views he was suspected of holding, published a disclaimer, and an apology for Brethrenism, which has been circulated gratuitously far and wide”; William Reid, Plymouth Brethrenism unveiled and refuted, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: William Oliphant, 1876), iv. 31. William Reid, Accusers of the brethren: A reprint of the English edition (Guelph, Canada: Bible Truth Depot, [c.1880]), 2. 32. Reid, Accusers of the brethren, 17. 33. Reid, Accusers of the brethren, 17. 34. Dennett, Recovered truths, 5–​6. 35. Dennett, Recovered truths, 8–​9. 36. Dennett, Recovered truths, 9. 37. Dennett, Recovered truths, 10. 38. Dennett, Recovered truths, 13. 39. Dennett, Recovered truths, 14. 40. Dennett, Recovered truths, 25. 41. Dennett, Recovered truths, 15. 42. Dennett, Recovered truths, 29. 43. Dennett, Recovered truths, 32–​33. 44. Dennett, Recovered truths, 33.

Notes  207 45. See the essays in Matthew Bingham et al., On being Reformed: Debates over a trans-​ Atlantic identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2018). 46. On Piscator, see Heber Carlos de Campos, Doctrine in development: Johannes Piscator and debates over Christ’s active obedience (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017); on Owen, see John Owen, “To the reader,” in Philolaoclerus: The private Christians non ultra, or, A plea for the lay-​man’s interpreting the Scriptures (Oxford, 1656), n.p.; Crawford Gribben, John Owen and English puritanism: Experiences of defeat (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 229; on Cocceius, see W. J. van Asselt, “Structural elements in the eschatology of Johannes Cocceius,” Calvin Theological Journal 35 (1999): 76–​104, and W. J. van Asselt, “Chiliasm and Reformed eschatology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” in Christian hope in context, ed. A. van Egmond and D. van Keulen (Zoetermeer, the Netherlands: Meinema, 2001), 11–​29; on puritan eschatology in general, see Crawford Gribben, The puritan millennium: Literature and theology, 1550–​1682 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000). 47. For Kelly’s comments on Samuel Miller, see “The Lord’s prayer,” The Bible Treasury 150 (1868): 175. 48. Hummel, The rise and fall of dispensationalism. 49. W. A. Parlane, Elements of dispensational truth (Collingwood, Canada: n.p., 1894). 50. OED, s.v. In contrast to this claim, Sweetnam uses Darby’s work to establish the boundaries of a normative dispensationalism; Sweetnam, “Defining dispensationalism,” 191–​212. 51. Pietsch, Dispensational modernism, 46–​47. 52. Pietsch, Dispensational modernism, 103. 53. Pietsch, Dispensational modernism, 50. 54. Pietsch, Dispensational modernism, 2. 55. Vaca, Evangelicals incorporated, 43; Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 2: 289. 56. Pietsch, Dispensational modernism, 113. 57. R. Todd Mangum and Mark S. Sweetnam, The Scofield Bible: Its history and impact on the evangelical church (Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster, 2009), 27–​31, 46. For a more critical review of Scofield’s biography, see Akenson, The Americanization of the Apocalypse, 326–​46. 58. Pietsch, Dispensational modernism, 173–​212. 59. Akenson, The Americanization of the Apocalypse, 366, 394. 60. Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1909), title page. 61. See Mangum and Sweetnam, The Scofield Bible. 62. On Scott, see David J. MacLeod, “Walter Scott, a link in dispensationalism between Darby and Scofield?” Bibliotheca Sacra 153 (1996): 155–​78. Dickson notes that Scott provided key terminology in the development of dispensationalism; Dickson, Brethren in Scotland, 261. On Frowde, see Pickering, Chief men among the brethren, 181–​83; ODNB, s.v.; Akenson, The Americanization of the Apocalypse, 372–​93. 63. Scofield Reference Bible (1909), 5 fn. 4. 64. Crutchfield, The origins of dispensationalism, 206. 65. Pietsch, Dispensational modernism, 195. 66. Pietsch, Dispensational modernism, 195.

208 Notes 67. Charles Trumbull, The life story of C. I. Scofield (London: Oxford University Press, 1920). See also Joseph Canfield, The incredible Scofield and his book (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1988), and Mangum and Sweetnam, The Scofield Bible. 68. Mangum and Sweetnam, The Scofield Bible, 7; Pietsch, Dispensational modernism, 193. 69. Pietsch, Dispensational modernism, 4, 249 n. 31. 70. Sweetnam, “Defining dispensationalism,” 191–​212; Hummel, The rise and fall of dispensationalism, 1. 71. Brethren were generally sympathetic to, but distant from, the cultures of fundamentalism; Tim Grass, “How fundamentalist were British brethren during the 1920s?” in Evangelicalism and fundamentalism in the United Kingdom during the twentieth century, ed. David Bebbington and David Ceri Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 115–​31. 72. Sir Robert Anderson, Forgotten truths (London: James Nisbet, 1913), 74. On Anderson, see ODNB, s.v. 73. OED, s.v. Hummel, The rise and fall of dispensationalism, 1, claims that the term was coined by Mauro. See the corresponding claim by Akenson, The Americanisation of the apocalypse, 79. 74. Philip Mauro, The gospel of the kingdom, with an examination of modern dispensationalism (Swengel, PA: Bible Truth Depot, 1928), 5. 75. Mauro, The gospel of the kingdom, 20. 76. Clarence Larkin, Dispensational truth, or God’s plan and purpose in the ages, 3rd ed. (1918; reprinted Philadelphia, PA: Clarence Larkin Estate, n.d.), 165–​66. 77. See Ernest O. Knoch, “My father—​As I remember him,” Unsearchable Riches 56, no. 3 (1965): 101–​16. 78. I am grateful to the late Alexander Gribben and Michael Schneider for advice on this point. 79. Stephen J. Nichols, “A brief exchange between Lewis Sperry Chafer and J. Gresham Machen,” Westminster Theological Journal 62 (2000): 281–​ 91; Jeffrey Khoo, “Dispensational premillennialism in Reformed theology: The contribution of J. O. Buswell to the millennial debate,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44 (2001): 697–​717; R. Todd Mangum, The dispensational-​covenantal rift: The fissuring of American evangelical theology from 1936 to 1944 (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2007); Michael G. Borgert, “Harry Bultema and the Maranatha controversy in the Christian Reformed Church,” Calvin Theological Journal 42, no. 1 (2007): 90–​109; Wilkinson, For Zion’s sake, 222–​61. 80. Craig A. Blaising and Darrell L. Bock, Progressive dispensationalism (Wheaton, IL: Bridgepoint, 1993). 81. For a survey of this literary culture, see Crawford Gribben, Writing the rapture: Prophecy fiction in evangelical America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For a broader discussion of evangelical prophecy culture, see Gribben, Evangelical millennialism in the trans-​Atlantic world. 82. See Crawford Gribben, Rapture fiction and the evangelical crisis (Webster, NY: Emmaus, 2006).

Notes  209 83. Crawford Gribben, “John N. Darby, dispensational eschatology, and the formation of trans-​Atlantic evangelicalism,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions-​and Kulturgeschichte 110 (2016): 99–​109. 84. On the Irish famine, see Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 2: 17. On the American Civil War, see Letters of J. N. Darby . . . From French, 2: 70, where Darby blames the churches for stoking up the tensions that led to conflict. 85. “The promise of the Lord,” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 131.

Bibliography Manuscripts John Rylands University Library, Manchester, Christian Brethren Archive CBA 7049, Benjamin Wills Newton, Copies of letters and recollections. CBA JDL/​1, John Nelson Darby letterbook. CBA JND/​1/​1/​21, Copy of certificate of baptism. CBA JND/​1/​1/​24, Handwritten note. CBA JND/​1/​1/​31, Handwritten note. CBA JND/​1/​1/​34, License. CBA JND/​1/​1/​48, Admission bond. CBA JND/​1/​1/​50, Copy of will. CBA JND/​2/​3, Notebook. CBA JND/​3/​1, Bible. CBA JND/​3/​3, Greek New Testament. CBA JND/​5/​90, Letter. CBA JND/​5/​109, Letter. CBA JND/​5/​142, Letter. CBA JND/​5/​142, Letter. CBA JND/​5/​146, Letter. CBA JND/​5/​236, Letter. CBA JND/​5/​289, Letter. CBA, Box 33, Letters of William Kelly.

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Bibliography  213 Darby, J. N. Letters of John Nelson Darby, edited by J. A. Trench, 3 vols. London: Morrish, 1886–​1888. Darby, J. N. “Letter on immortality and everlasting punishment.” The Bible Treasury 159 (1869): 317–​20. Darby, J. N. Notes and comments on Scripture from the note books of J. N. Darby, edited by P. A. Humphrey, 7 vols. London: James Carter, 1884–​1913. Darby, J. N. Notes and comments, 7 vols. London: Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot, 1959–​1961. Darby, J. N. Notes and jottings from various meetings with J. N. Darby, transcribed by E. C. Pressland, 5 vols. London: Foreign Gospel Tract and Book Depot, 1930–​1932. Darby, J. N. Notes of sermons by Revd J. N. Darby. Dublin: Richard Moore Tims, 1838. Darby, J. N. Notes on the Apocalypse, gleaned at lectures in 1842. London: J. K. Campbell, 1849. Darby, J. N. Notes on the epistles of John, from notes of lectures. London: Morrish, n.d. [Darby, J. N.] “On Colossians xix.” The Christian Witness 1 (1834): 87–​88. [Darby, J. N.] “On the character of office in the present dispensation.” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 90–​110. Darby, J. N. “On the humanity of Christ.” The Bible Treasury 66 (1861): 367–​68. Darby, J. N. “Pauline righteousness.” The Bible Treasury 72 (1862): 73–​80. Darby, J. N. Reflections on the ruined condition of the church, and on the efforts made by churchmen and dissenters to restore it to its primitive order. London: D. Walther, 1841. Darby, J. N. “Revised preface to the second edition (1871).” In The New Testament: A new translation from a revised text of the Greek original, translated by J. N. Darby, 3rd ed. London: Morrish, 1884, n.p. Darby, J. N. “Second address to his Roman Catholic brethren, by a minister of the Gospel.” The Bible Treasury, 2nd ed., 1 (1868): 335–​37, 341. Darby, J. N. Spiritual songs, edited by Henry A. Hammond. Dublin: Privately published, 1883. [Darby, J. N.] “Supplement to the sufferings of Christ.” The Bible Treasury 36 (1859): 257–​62. Darby, J. N. Sur la formation des Eglises. Lausanne: Marc Ducloux, 1841. Darby, J. N. Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, 5 vols, 3rd ed. London: Morrish, 1857–​1867. [Darby, J. N.] The connexion of the term clergy with the penal guilt of the present dispensation, and the sin against the Holy Ghost. Dublin: Richard Moore Tims, 1834. Darby, J. N. “The dispensation of the kingdom of heaven –​Matt. xiii.” The Christian Witness 1 (1834): 125–​36. Darby, J. N. “The operations of the Spirit of God.” The Christian Witness 4 (1837): 42–​52, 201–​20. Darby, J. N. The presence of the Holy Ghost, etc. London: Morrish 1875. [Darby, J. N.] “The sufferings of Christ.” The Bible Treasury 2, no. 3 (1858): 33–​36; no. 27 (1858), 113–​16; no. 28 (1858), 129–​34; no. 29 (1858), 145–​48; no. 30 (1858), 161–​67; no. 31 (1858), 177–​79. [Darby, J. N.] The Father and prodigal. London: Broom, n.d. [Darby, J. N.] “Thoughts on Romans IX.” The Bible Treasury 2, no. 1 (1858), 9–​11. The Holy Bible, translated by J. N. Darby. London: Morrish, 1890.

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216 Bibliography [Denny, Sir Edward.] Some of the firstfruits of the harvest, by one who has sown in tears. Privately printed, 1861. Dorman, W. H. A review of certain evils & questions that have arisen amongst brethren, 2nd ed. London: J. K. Campbell, 1849. Dorman, W. H. Principles of truth on the present state of the church. London: Central Tract Depot, 1838. Dorman, W. H. The close of twenty-​eight years of association with J. N. D., 2nd ed. London: Houlston & Wright, 1866. [Doyle, James.] A reply by J. K. L. to the late charge of the Most Rev. Doctor Magee. Dublin: Richard Coyne, 1827. Elrington, Charles R. Remarks upon the reply of J. K. L. to the charge of His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin. Dublin: Richard Milliken, 1827. Errors of the Darby and Plymouth sect, 2nd ed. London: James Nisbet, 1862. Errors of the Darby and Plymouth sect, reprinted and revised from the “Record” newspaper; with additions, 2nd ed. London: James Nisbet, 1862. E. W. The assembly as the special interest of Christ on earth. London: Morrish, n.d. Full indexes to the Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, vols. I–​XXXIV. London: Morrish, 1902. God’s sovereign, electing grace, and man’s so-​called free will. London: Morrish, 1868. Gosse, Edmund. Father and son: A study of two temperaments, edited by Peter Abbs. London: Penguin, 1983. G. P. “The church the habitation of God.” The Present Testimony 1, no. 1 (December, 1848): 32–​45. Grant, F. W. Life in Christ and sealing with the Spirit. New York: Loizeaux, 1884. Gregory, Daniel Seelye. “Review of Darby, Synopsis of the Books of the Bible and other titles.” The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 40, no. 4 (1868): 481–​519. [Harris, J. L.] “On the increase of popery.” The Christian Witness 4 (1837): 1–​15. [Harris, J. L. writing as Presbutes.] “Righteousness without works.” The Present Testimony 1, no. 2 (1849): 132–​63. [Harris, J. L. writing as Presbutes.] “The difficulties and dangers of prophetic study.” The Present Testimony 1, no. 3 (June 1849): 197–​214. Henricus, Stephanus. Thesaurus Græcæ linguae, 5 vols. (Geneva, 1572). Herzog, J. J. Les frères de Plymouth et John Darby, leur doctrine et leur histoire, en particulier dans le Canton de Vaud. Lausanne: Georges Bridel, 1845. H. T. D. Darbyism: Its fruit and doctrines, being a review of a tract entitled “The Brethren and their reviewers.” Dublin: George Herbert, 1863. Jukes, Andrew. Thoughts on the ruin of the church. Two letters. London: J. K. Campbell, 1848. Kelly, William. “Appendix to the notice of the Achill Herald recollections.” The Bible Treasury 140 (1868): 14–​15. Kelly, William. God’s principle of unity, in a reply to the Rev. O. Dobree. London: Morrish, n.d. [Kelly, William.] “Christ preaching to the spirits in prison.” The Bible Treasury 193 (1872): 89–​94. [Kelly, William.] “Mr A. Moody Stuart on ‘Brethren.’” The Bible Treasury 209 (1873): 351. [Kelly, William.] “Scripture queries and answers.” The Bible Treasury 74 (1862): 111–​12. [Kelly, William.] “Scripture queries and answers.” The Bible Treasury 75 (1862): 126–​27. Kelly, William. “The Lord’s prayer.” The Bible Treasury 150 (1868): 175. [Kelly, William.] “To correspondents.” The Bible Treasury 178 (1871): 240. Letters and papers of the late Theodosia A. Viscountess Powerscourt, ed. Robert Daly, 13th ed. London: A. R. Rouse, 1892.

Bibliography  217 Letters of Andrew Jukes, ed. Hebert H. Jeaffreson. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903. Lincoln, William. The javelin of Phineas. London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., 1863. List of meetings, January 1873. Privately published. List of meetings, September 1874. Privately published. MacAfee, Daniel. The final perseverance of the saints anatomized. Cork, Ireland: Samuel M. Thompson, 1838. Mackintosh, C. H. “The remnant: Past and present.” In The miscellaneous writings of C. H. M. 7 vols. London: Morrish, n.d. Matthaei Devarii liber de Græcæ lingue particulus, edited by Reinhold Klotz. Lipseai: Baumgärtner, 1840. Middleton, T. F. The doctrine of the Greek article: Applied to the criticism and illustration of the New Testament. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1808. Miller, Andrew. The Brethren (commonly so-​called): A brief sketch of their origin, progress and testimony. London: Morrish, 1878. Molyneux, Capel. The prodigal son: A sermon preached at the special services at Exeter Hall, on Sunday evening, July 18, 1858. London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1858. [Newton, B. W.] “Doctrine of the Church in Newman-​Street.” The Christian Witness 2 (1835): 111–​27. Newton, B. W. Is salvation by the obedience of a divine substitute a fiction? 2nd ed. London: Houlston & Sons, 1898. Owen, John. “To the reader.” In Philolaoclerus, The private Christians non ultra, or, A plea for the lay-​man’s interpreting the Scriptures. Oxford, 1656. Parlane, W. A. Elements of dispensational truth. Collingwood, Canada: n.p. 1894. [Philpot, J. C.] “Editor’s review: The Christian Witness.” The Gospel Standard 8, no. 75 (March 1842): 77–​84. Philomath. A few brief comments on a nameless tract recently published, entitled, Brief Scriptural evidence of the doctrine of eternal punishment, for plain people, with answers to some objections, by J. N. D. London: H. K. Lewis, 1848. Places and times of meetings in and near London, 1857. Privately printed, 1857. Places of meeting. Privately printed, late 1860s. Presbus. “The ‘Record.’” The Bible Treasury 80 (1863): 204–​08. Presbus. “The ‘Record.’ No. 2.” The Bible Treasury 81 (1863): 219–​24. Questions for eight weeks’ consideration, address to the Church of God. London: Central Tract Depot, 1838. References: March, 1880. Privately published, 1880. Reid, William. Accusers of the brethren: A reprint of the English edition. Guelph, Canada: Bible Truth Depot, c.1880. Reid, William. Plymouth Brethrenism unveiled and refuted, 2nd ed. Edinburgh: William Oliphant, 1876. Reid, William. “The church in Sardis.” The Bible Witness and Review 2 (1878): 317–​50. Reid, William. The literature and mission of the so-​called Plymouth Brethren. London: James Nisbet & Co. 1875. Sanday, William, and Arthur C. Headlam. A critical and exegetical commentary on the epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary series. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1895. Scofield Reference Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1909.

218 Bibliography Sirr, Joseph D’Arcy. Reasons for abiding in the established church: A letter to the Rev. Charles Hargrove. Dublin: Richard Moore Tims, 1836. Smith, Hamilton. The breaches in the wall. Sutton, UK: Privately printed, 1922. S. P. “A few words on the punishment of sin.” The Bible Treasury 161 (1869): 346–​47. Spurgeon, C. H. “Darbyism and its new Bible.” Sword and Trowel, 1 (December 1872): 561–​65. [Stoney, J. B.] “Introduction.” A voice to the faithful 1 (1867): 1. The claims of the Church of England considered; being the close of a correspondence between the Rev. James Kelly, of Stillorgan, Ireland, and J. N. Darby. London: W. H. Broom, 1864. The life and letters of Rev. William Pennefather, BA, edited by Robert Brathwaite. London: J. Shaw and Co., n.d. The works of the Most Reverend William Magee, D. D. Lord Archbishop of Dublin . . . with a memoir of his life by the Rev. A. H. Kenney, D. D. 2 vols. London: T. Cadell, 1842. Venn, John. The Christian ministry and church-​membership according to Scripture and the Church of England, with a more special reference to the views of certain Christians generally known as the Plymouth Brethren. London: Hatchard and Son, 1842. W[igram, G. V.] “Remarks on the living God, and His church.” The Present Testimony 1, no. 1 (December 1848): 52–​72. White, Edward. “Correspondence. To the editor of the Bible Treasury.” The Bible Treasury 179 (1871): 255–​56.

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220 Bibliography Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian religion, translated by John T. McNeill. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960. Canfield, Joseph. The incredible Scofield and his book. Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1988. Carleton, William. Valentine M’Clutchy, the Irish agent. Dublin: J. Duffy, 1845. Carpenter, Joel A. Revive us again: The reawakening of American Fundamentalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Carpenter, M. W., and George Landow. “Ambiguous revelations: The Apocalypse and Victorian literature.” In The Apocalypse in English Renaissance thought and literature, edited by C. A. Patrides and J. A. Wittreich. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984, 299–​322. Carter, Grayson. Anglican evangelicals: Protestant secessions from the via media, c. 1800–​ 1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Chadwick, W. Owen. The Victorian church, 2 vols. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1966–​1970. Chafer, Lewis Sperry. Systematic theology, 8 vols. 1948; reprinted Dallas: Dallas Theological Seminary, 1975. Church, Philip. “Separation from the (evil) world: 2 Timothy 2:19–​21 and the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church.” The Bible Translator 73 (2022): 252–​67. Clarke, Matthew Austin. “A critical examination of the ecclesiology of John Nelson Darby.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Gloucestershire, 2009. Coad, F. Roy. A history of the brethren movement. Exeter, UK: Paternoster, 1976. Conder, Josiah. An analytical and comparative view of all religions now extant among mankind. London: Jackson and Walford, 1838. Connolly, Sean. Priests and people in pre-​famine Ireland, 1780–​1845. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1982. Crisp, Oliver D. An American Augustinian: Sin and salvation in the dogmatic theology of William G. T. Shedd. Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2018. Crisp, Oliver D. Deviant Calvinism: Broadening Reformed theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014. Cross, Edwin. The Irish saint and scholar: A biography of William Kelly. London: Chapter Two, 2004. Cross, Edwin. The life and times of Charles Henry Mackintosh: A biography. London: Chapter Two, 2011. Crutchfield, Larry V. The origins of dispensationalism: The Darby factor. London: University Press of America, 1992. Cunningham, Valentine. Every where spoken against: Dissent in the Victorian novel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. de Campos, Heber Carlos. Doctrine in development: Johannes Piscator and debates over Christ’s active obedience. Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017. Despins, Gilles. La Bible Darby et son histoire: Sa rédaction, ses objectifs et ses principes. Trois-​Rivières, Canada: Éditions Impact, 2019. Dickson, Neil T. R. “A Darbyite mystic: Frances Bevan (1827–​1909).” In Bible and theology in the brethren, edited by Neil T. R. Dickson and Tom Marinello. Glasgow: Brethren Historians and Archivists Network, 2018, 213–​48. Dickson, Neil T. R. Brethren in Scotland, 1838–​2000: A social study of an evangelical movement. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2002.

Bibliography  221 Dickson, Neil T. R. “Darby, John Nelson.” In Biographical dictionary of evangelicals, edited by Timothy Larsen et al. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2003, 178–​81. Dickson, Neil T. R. “Modern prophetesses: Women preachers in the nineteenth-​century Scottish brethren.” Records of the Scottish Church History Society 25 (1993): 89–​117. Dickson, Neil T. R. “Revivalism and the limits of cooperation: Brethren origins in Orkney in the 1860s.” In The growth of the brethren movement: National and international perspectives: Essays in honour of Harold H. Rowdon, edited by Neil T. R. Dickson and Tim Grass. Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2006, 80–​91. Dixon, Larry Edwards. “The pneumatology of John Nelson Darby.” Unpublished PhD thesis, Drew University, 1985. Donnelly, James S. Jr. Captain Rock: The Irish agrarian rebellion of 1821–​1824. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. Dunn, James D. G. The partings of the ways between Christianity and Judaism. London: SCM, 2006. Eaton, Michael A. Baptism with the Spirit: The teaching of Martyn Lloyd-​Jones. Leicester, UK: IVP, 1989. Ehlert, Arnold D. Brethren writers: A checklist with an introduction to brethren literature and additional lists. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994. Embley, P. L. “The early development of the Plymouth Brethren.” In Patterns of sectarianism: Organisation and ideology in social and religious movements, edited by Bryan R. Wilson. London: Heinemann, 1967, 213–​43. Embley, Peter L. “The origins and early development of the Plymouth Brethren.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1967. Evans, William B. Imputation and impartation: Union with Christ in American Reformed theology. Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2008. Fazio, James I. “John Nelson Darby: The unknown and well-​known nineteenth-​century Irish reformer.” In Forged from reformation: How dispensational thought advances the Reformed legacy, edited by Christopher Cone and James I. Fazio. El Cajon: Southern California Seminary Press, 2017, 81–​108. Featherstone, Guy. “‘Holy city’: The brethren community at Kyneton, 1900–​ 1911.” Brethren Historical Review 5 (2008): 2–​24. Festinger, Leon, et al. When prophecy fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. New York: Harper, 1956. Field, Marion. John Nelson Darby: Prophetic pioneer. Godalming, UK: Highland Books, 2008. Flegg, Columba G. Gathered under apostles: A study of the Catholic Apostolic Church. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Fromow, George H. B. W. Newton and Dr S. P. Tregelles: Teachers of the faith and the future, 2nd ed. London: Sovereign Grace Advent Testimony, 1969. Froom, L. E. The prophetic faith of our fathers: The historical development of prophetic interpretation, 4 vols. Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1948. The fundamentals: A testimony to the truth, edited by “Two Christian Laymen.” 12 vols. Chicago: Testimony Publishing Company, 1910–​1915. Garrett, Clarke. Respectable folly: Millenarians and the French Revolution in France and England. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975. Goddard, J. H. “The contribution of John Nelson Darby to soteriology, ecclesiology, and eschatology.” Unpublished PhD thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1948.

222 Bibliography Goldman, Shalom. Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the idea of the Promised Land. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Grant, James. The Plymouth Brethren: Their history and heresies. London: William Macintosh, 1875. Grass, Tim. Brethren and their buildings. Glasgow, UK: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2021. Grass, Tim. Gathering to his name: The story of the Open Brethren in Britain and Ireland. Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster 2006. Grass, Tim. “How fundamentalist were British brethren during the 1920s?” In Evangelicalism and fundamentalism in the United Kingdom during the twentieth century, edited by David Bebbington and David Ceri Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 115–​31. Grass, Tim. “The church’s ruin and restoration: the development of ecclesiology in the Plymouth Brethren and the Catholic Apostolic Church c. 1825–​c.1866.” Unpublished PhD thesis, King’s College, London, 1997. Grass, Tim. The Lord’s work: A history of the Catholic Apostolic Church. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017. Gribben, Crawford. “Baptist or Brethren? Primitivism, restorationism, and the legacies of Alexander Carson,” Irish Baptist Historical Society Journal 29 (2022): 5–​22. Gribben, Crawford. “Brethren and the reformation.” In The brethren and the church, edited by Neil T. R. Dickson and Tom Marinello. Glasgow, UK: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, 2020, 117–​38. Gribben, Crawford. “Dating Darby’s addresses to his Roman Catholic brethren.” Brethren Historical Review 18 (2022): 1–​14. Gribben, Crawford. Evangelical millennialism in the trans-​Atlantic world, 1500–​2000. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Gribben, Crawford. “Introduction.” In Expository discourses on the Apocalypse, edited by Crawford Gribben, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2022), 1–​43. Gribben, Crawford. “John N. Darby, dispensational eschatology, and the formation of trans-​Atlantic evangelicalism.” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions-​and Kulturgeschichte 110 (2016): 99–​109. Gribben, Crawford. “John Nelson Darby’s Bible.” In Riches of the Rylands: The Special Collections of the University of Manchester Library. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2015, 166–​67. Gribben, Crawford. John Owen and English puritanism: Experiences of defeat. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Gribben, Crawford. “John Owen’s Milton.” Milton Quarterly 54 (2020): 184–​90. Gribben, Crawford. Rapture fiction and the evangelical crisis. Webster, NY: Emmaus, 2006. Gribben, Crawford. “Rethinking the rise of rapture fiction: H. R. K.’s Life in the future (?1879).” Brethren Historical Review 7 (2011): 68–​80. Gribben, Crawford. “The history of evangelical eschatology: Or, whatever happened to J. N. Darby?” In The gospel in the past: The historiography of the evangelical movement, edited by David Bebbington. Under consideration. Gribben, Crawford. The puritan millennium: Literature and theology, 1550–​ 1682. Dublin: Four Courts, 2000. Gribben, Crawford. The rise and fall of Christian Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

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230 Bibliography Tollinger, W. V. “Moorehead, William Gallogly (1836–​ 1914).” In Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition in America, edited by D. G. Hart. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999, 164. Turner, W. G. John Nelson Darby: A biography. 1901; reprinted London: Chapter Two, 1990. Vaca, Daniel. Evangelicals incorporated: Books and the business of religion in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. van Asselt, W. J. “Chiliasm and Reformed eschatology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” In Christian hope in context, edited by A. van Egmond and D. van Keulen. Zoetermeer, the Netherlands: Meinema, 2001, 11–​29. van Asselt, W. J. “Structural elements in the eschatology of Johannes Cocceius.” Calvin Theological Journal 35 (1999): 76–​104. Van Dixhoorn, Chad B. A day at the Westminster Assembly: Justification and the minutes of a post-​Reformation synod. London: Congregational Memorial Hall Trust, 2005. Ward, John Percy. “The eschatology of John Nelson Darby.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1976. Ward, W. R. Early evangelicalism: A global intellectual history, 1670–​ 1789. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Watts, M. R. The dissenters: II: The expansion of evangelical nonconformity, 1791–​1859. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Watson, William C. Dispensationalism before Darby: Seventeenth-​century and eighteenth-​ century English apocalypticism. Silverton, OR: Lampion Press, 2015. Weber, Timothy. Living in the shadow of the second coming: American premillennialism, 1875–​1982. Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1983. Weber, Timothy. On the road to Armageddon: How evangelicals became Israel’s best friend. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005. Weremchuk, Max S. Becoming JND: The early years of John Nelson Darby, 1800–​1829. El Cajon: Southern California Seminary Press, 2023. Weremchuk, Max S. John Nelson Darby: A biography. Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux, 1992. Weremchuk, Max S. “John Nelson Darby (1800–​1882).” In Discovering dispensationalism: Tracing the development of dispensational thought from the first to the twenty-​first century, edited by Cory M. Marsh and James I. Fazio. El Cajon: Southern California Seminary Press, 2022, 207–​45. Weremchuk, Max, and Timothy C. F. Stunt. “John Nelson Darby: Bicentennial reflections.” Brethren Archivists and Historians Network Review 2, no. 2 (2003): 67–​74. Wertheimer, Douglas. “The truth about 1843, and why it’s important: Gosse, brethren, Jamaica, and the scorpion.” Brethren Historical Review 18 (2022): 15–​63. West, Gerald T. “Early brethren assemblies in London.” Christian Brethren Review 41 (1990): themed issue, Harold H. Rowdon (ed.): Scottish Brethren, 1838–​1916, and other papers. Exeter: Paternoster, 1990, 67–​76. Whalen, Robert K. “Millenarianism and millennialism in America, 1790–​ 1880.” Unpublished PhD thesis, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1972. Whelan, Irene. The Bible war in Ireland: The “Second Reformation” and the polarization of protestant-​Catholic relations, 1800–​1840. Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2005. Wilkinson, Paul R. For Zion’s sake: Christian Zionism and the role of John Nelson Darby. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007. Wilt, C. “Erdman, William Jacob (1834–​1923).” In Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition in America, edited by D. G. Hart. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999, 92.

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Agier, Pierre-​Jean, 123 Akenson, Donald H., ix, 63–​64 Aldershot, 80–​81 Algeria, 80–​81 Alnwick, 80–​81 Alsace, 80–​81 America, United States of, 3, 5–​6, 16–​17, 54–​55, 80–​81, 105, 108–​10, 113, 114–​ 15, 116–​17, 128–​30, 139–​41, 142–​43, 146–​48, 149, 150–​51, 152–​53 American Civil War, 5–​6, 114–​15, 140–​ 41, 153–​54 Anderson, Sir Robert, 150–​51 antichrist, 68, 114, 118–​19, 122–​23, 124–​ 25, 127–​28 antinomianism, 70, 107, 139–​40, 142–​ 43, 144–​46 Apostles’ Creed, ix–​xi, 50–​51 Aristophanes, 25–​27 Athanasian creed, 29 atonement, 14–​15, 21, 34–​35, 40–​41, 42–​ 44, 49–​50, 52–​55, 102–​3, 132 Augsburg Confession, 36–​37 Augustine, 126 Australia, 3, 16–​17, 80–​81 Babylon, 38, 118–​19, 124–​25, 135–​36 Ballymena, 16–​17 Ballymoney, 78–​79 baptism, 16–​17, 22, 35–​36, 38–​39, 57, 65–​ 67, 68, 70, 89–​90, 101–​2, 140–​41 Baptists, 9–​10, 12–​14, 23, 28–​29, 34–​35, 40–​41, 48–​49, 51–​52, 54–​55, 57, 83, 129–​30, 144–​46, 149 Batten, James Ebenezer, 105–​6 Bavinck, Herman, 110–​11 Baylee, Joseph, 70–​71 beatific vision, 125–​26

Bebbington, David, 29 Belgium, 13–​14, 80–​81 Bell, Alfred, 47–​48 Bellett, John Gifford, ix–​xii, 11–​12, 16–​17, 34–​35, 93–​94, 110, 119, 140–​ 41, 146–​47 Bengel, Johann Albrecht, 25–​27 Bennett, James, 56 Bevan, Frances, 85 Bevir, Edward Lawrence, 23–​24 Bible, Authorised (King James) Version, 1–​3, 24, 132–​34 Bible Society, 9–​11, 23 Bible Treasury, The, 21, 44–​45, 48, 75–​76, 81–​82, 105–​6, 131–​32 Bible Witness and Review, The, 53–​54, 84, 143–​44 Biggs, M. W., 55 Birr, 13–​14 Bissett, William, bishop of Raphoe, 9 Blackstone, William E., 148 Boardman, William, 103, 105–​6 Bonar, Horatius, 140–​41 Book of Common Prayer, 10, 11–​ 12, 14–​15 Borlase, Henry, 12–​13 Boston, 128–​30 Brazil, 80–​81 Brethren, exclusive and open boundaries of fellowship, 51–​52, 115–​16 conditional immortality among, 114, 115–​16, 128–​30, 131–​32 Darby’s elevation among, ix division in 1848, 1–​3, 14–​15, 28, 32, 35–​36, 42–​43, 57–​58, 59–​62, 73–​74, 97–​98, 99–​100, 114, 127–​29 division in 1866, 77–​78, 79–​80, 109–​10

234 Index Brethren, exclusive and open (cont.) division in 1880, 16–​17, 81–​85, 109–​10 lists of meetings, 74–​75, 76–​79, 80–​81, 83 unusual locations of meetings, 78–​79 Brighton, 107 Brockhaus, Carl, 23 Brookes, James Hall, 15–​16, 148 Brooks, Thomas, 1 Brown, David, 15–​16 Brown, F. G., 129–​30 Brown, Robert, 95–​96 Bulteel, Henry, 34–​35, 39–​40 Bunyan, John, 1, 47–​48 Burgon, John, dean of Chichester cathedral, 27–​28 Burton-​on-​Trent, 78–​79 Buttman, Alexander, 25–​27 Cage, Nicholas, 152–​53 Calary, 9–​11, 39–​40, 66–​67 Callahan, J. P., 64 Calvin, John, ix, 6, 34, 36–​38, 47, 54–​55, 89–​90, 97–​98, 101–​2, 142, 143, 144–​ 46, 153 Calvinism, ix–​xi, 9–​10, 30–​31, 32–​33, 34–​37, 39–​41, 43–​44, 45–​46, 47–​48, 52–​53, 54–​55, 56, 57, 91–​92, 102–​3, 104, 107–​8, 109–​11, 138–​39, 141, 143, 144–​47, 150, 153 Canada, 48–​49, 80–​81, 128–​29 Captain Rock, 10–​11 Caribbean, 3, 7, 35, 80–​81, 142–​43 Carleton, William, 12–​13 Carlsberg Brewery, 78–​79 Carson, Alexander, 48–​49 Carson, James C. L., 48–​51 Carson, Margaret, 48–​49 Castle Willington, 13–​14 Catholic Apostolic Church, 88–​89 Catholic emancipation, ix–​xi, 63–​64, 69, 135–​36 Cecil, Lord A. P., 83–​84 Chafer, Lewis Sperry, 152–​53 Chapman, R.C., 40–​41 Chesterman, W. T., 132 China, 80–​81 Christian Brethren Archive, xii–​xiv Christian Witness, The, ix, 12–​13, 57, 75–​ 76, 88–​89, 93–​94, 119, 120–​21

Christology, 14–​15, 52–​53, 57–​58, 59–​60, 72–​73, 85–​86, 88–​89, 147–​48 church fathers, 25–​27, 62–​63, 67 Church of England, ix–​xi, 7, 11–​12, 34–​35, 39–​40, 42, 47–​48, 64, 69–​70, 76, 81–​ 82, 95–​96, 138–​39, 144–​46, 147–​48 Church of England homilies, 36–​37, 47–​48 Church of Ireland, ix–​xi, 7–​9, 10–​11, 13–​ 14, 22–​23, 34–​35, 38–​39, 63–​64, 65, 66–​67, 117–​18, 136 dis-​establishment (1869), 136 reorganisation (1833), ix–​xi, 69 Church of (Jesus) Christ of Latter-​Day Saints, 88–​89, 114–​15 Church of Scotland, 57–​58, 88–​89 Cicero, 18 Coates, C. A., 55 Cocceius, Johannes, 90–​91, 147–​48 Codex Sinaiticus, 27–​28 Codex Vaticanus, 27–​28 Coleman, John, 128–​29 Conder, Josiah, 12–​13 conditional immortality, 114–​16, 128–​32 Congregationalists, 13–​15, 34–​35, 47–​48, 68, 71–​72, 83, 95–​96, 131–​32, 149 Cork, 13–​14 county Clare, 10–​11, 39–​40 Cox, John, 47–​48 Crawford, Dan, 114 Crisp, Tobias, 47–​48 Cronin, Edward, 10–​11, 16–​17, 34–​35, 76–​77, 82–​83 Croskery, Thomas, 85–​86, 114–​15, 139–​ 41, 143, 144–​47 Dabney, Robert L., 140–​47 Daly, Robert, 118–​19 Dante, 34–​35 Darby, Christopher, 7–​9 Darby, Horatio, 13–​14, 40–​41, 84–​85 Darby, John Nelson “A letter on a serious question connected with the Irish education measures of 1832” (1832), 21 A word to the protestants of Ireland in a letter to the Ven. Archdeacon Stopford (1869), 136 active and passive obedience of Christ, 44–​52

Index  235 addresses to his “Roman Catholic brethren” 22, 39, 65–​67, 68 “ages” and “administrations” 116–​17, 120, 132–​34, 147–​48 and Arminianism, 39–​40, 57, 105 and cessationism, 90 and Pelagianism, 39–​40, 107 and politics, 116–​17, 119–​20, 123–​ 24, 135–​37 apostolic succession, 66–​67 assurance of salvation, 94–​95 atonement, 40–​41, 42–​44, 54–​55, 79–​80 baptism, views on, 16–​17, 22, 35–​ 36, 38–​39, 65–​67, 68, 87, 101–​2, 140–​41 Bible translations, xii–​xiii, 1–​3, 15–​16, 20–​21, 22–​29, 133–​34, 138–​39 (see also languages) biography, 6–​17 “Blank-​paged Bible” 1–​3, 18, 22–​23 Brethren and their reviewers (1862), 49, 51 Brief Scriptural evidence on the doctrine of eternal punishment, for plain people (1847), 128–​29 Calvinism, ix–​xi, 30–​31, 32–​33, 35–​37, 40–​41, 54–​55, 57, 141 Catholicism, 7–​9, 72 Christology, 14–​15, 20–​21, 140 “Cleansing with water; and what it means to walk in the light” (1875), 106–​7 Collected writings, ix, 1, 20–​21, 22, 51, 84–​85, 114, 120–​21, 131–​32, 138–​39 Considerations addressed to the Archbishop of Dublin (1827), 64, 65–​66 Considerations on the nature and unity of the Church of Christ (1828), 67 covenant of redemption, 40–​41 Covenant of works, 35–​37, 50, 52–​53 “deliverance from the law of sin” (1881), 108–​9 disappointment with brethren, 83, 84, 108–​9 dispensationalism, xi, 5, 24, 29, 32–​33, 61–​62, 72–​73, 85–​86, 94–​95, 113, 116–​17, 120, 122–​23, 132–​34, 148, 150, 153

election to salvation, 34, 39–​41, 42–​ 43, 54–​55 evangelical conversion, 10, 39–​40 “exact churchmanship” 9–​10, 34, 65–​66 federal headship of Adam, 23, 35–​36, 50, 52–​53, 54–​55, 140 Greek grammar, 1–​3, 28 Greek New Testament, xiii–​xiv, 1–​3, 22–​23, 38 Hebrew Bible, 1–​3, 22–​23, 126 hermeneutics, 30–​31, 116–​17, 118–​ 19, 148 historical theology, 13–​14, 36–​37, 141 (see also names of individual theologians) imputation, 35–​37, 42–​43, 44, 45–​46, 47–​48, 50–​53, 105, 108–​9, 140, 142, 144–​47 influence among brethren, ix, 5–​6, 75 Irrationalism of infidelity (1853), 52–​53 justification, 35–​36, 39, 42–​43, 51, 65–​ 66, 106–​7, 138–​39 languages, 10–​11, 16–​17, 20–​21, 22–​23, 39–​40 (see also Bible translations) “laundered charismaticism” 91, 96–​99, 110–​11, 112, 138–​39 leadership, 5 letters, xii–​xiii, 5, 18, 20–​21, 22–​23, 35–​36 library, 17–​18 literary interests, 1–​3 Lord’s Supper, 11 missionary work, 3 moral law, 35–​36, 40–​41, 138–​39, 142–​ 43, 144–​46 mysticism, 29, 104–​5, 110, 111 new birth, 55, 89–​90, 101–​3, 108–​9 Notes and comments, 22 Notes on the Book of Revelations [sic] (1839), 123 notebooks, 1–​3 “On sealing with the Holy Ghost” (1881), 108–​9 ordination, 9, 38–​39, 64 orthography, 18 poetry, 18 primitivism, 30–​31 rapture, 11–​12, 59–​60, 68, 73–​74, 113, 118–​19, 120, 123, 124–​25, 126–​27, 137, 138–​39

236 Index Darby, John Nelson (cont.) ruin of the church, xi–​xii, 16–​17, 30–​31, 61, 62–​64, 73–​74, 75, 87, 88–​89, 91–​ 92, 93, 98–​99, 124–​25, 153 “sanctification” (1878), 108–​9 scholarly interests, 17–​30 Scriptural enquiries as to the doctrine of eternal punishment (1852), 128–​29 sealing of the Holy Spirit, 89–​90, 101–​ 3, 107–​11 secession from Church of Ireland, 10, 22–​23, 70–​71 Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, xii–​ xiii, 1–​3, 5, 15–​16, 20–​21, 22–​23, 107–​8, 124, 139–​40 text criticism, 27–​28 The apostacy of the successive dispensations (1836), 122 The connexion of the term clergy with the penal guilt of the presentation, and the sin against the Holy Ghost (1834), 70–​71, 96–​97 “The dispensation of the fullness of times” (1850), 120 The doctrine of the Church of England at the time of the reformation (1831), 39–​40 The hopes of the church of God (1840), 123, 130 “The operations of the Spirit of God” (1837), 93–​94 The presence of the Holy Ghost and the coming of the Lord … (1878), 100–​1 “The righteousness of God” (1859), 20–​21, 45–​46 The sufferings of Christ (various editions), xi–​xii, 14–​15, 20–​21, 43–​ 44, 53–​54, 79–​80 tracts, 16 tribulation, 59–​60, 73–​74, 113, 118–​19, 126–​27, 138–​39 views on theology, ix writing style, 19–​20 Darby, William, 7–​9, 38 date-​setting, prophetic, 114 de Burgh, William, 117–​18 Dennett, Edward, 32, 51–​52, 144–​47

Denny, Sir Edward, 34–​35, 92–​93, 110, 127–​28 Dentan, Albert, 114, 129–​30 dispensation, 24, 29, 72–​73, 132–​ 33, 139–​40 dispensational premillennialism, ix, 5, 6, 113, 114–​15, 116–​17, 143, 148, 150–​54 dispensationalism. See dispensational premillennialism Dix, Henry Thomas, 51 Dodderidge, Philip, 47–​48 Dodsworth, William, 70–​71 Dorman, Willian Henry, 14–​16, 51, 79–​80, 95–​97, 98–​99 Dort, Synod of, 54–​55 Doyle, James, bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 65–​66 Dublin, ix–​xi, xiii–​xv, 7, 9–​14, 34–​35, 51, 63–​64, 65–​67, 68–​69, 70–​71, 91–​ 92, 117–​18 Edwards, Thomas, 139–​40 Egypt, 80–​81 Elrington, C. R., 65 Enlightenment, 30–​31 Enoch, book of, 1–​3 Erastianism, 38, 65 Erskine, Thomas, 88 Euripides, 25–​27 Evangelical Alliance, 57–​58, 114–​15, 128–​29 evangelicalism, xi, 5–​6, 61–​62, 63–​64, 108–​9, 113, 114–​15, 149–​50 extraordinary revelation, 91–​93, 94–​95, 98–​99, 110 Festinger, Leon, 58–​59 Finch, Charles, 81–​82 Formula of Concord, 36–​37 France, 3, 22–​23, 25–​27, 73, 80–​81, 97–​98 Free Church of Scotland, 15–​16, 52–​53, 57, 90–​91, 140–​41 French Revolution, 118–​19 Frowde, Henry, 149 Fuller, Andrew, 54–​55 fundamentalist movement, xi, 5–​6, 27–​29, 150–​51, 152–​53

Index  237 Gadsby, William, 35 Gaebelein, Arno Co., 149 Geneva, ix–​xi, 13–​14, 34, 36–​37, 40–​41, 42–​43, 58–​59, 71–​72, 73, 90, 97–​98, 123, 126, 130, 131–​32, 146–​47 Geneva Bible, 147–​48 Germany, 3, 22–​23, 25–​27, 80–​81 Gladstone, William, 107, 136 glossolalia, 88, 93 Goodwin, Thomas, 1, 47–​48 Gosse, Edmund, xvi Gosse, Emily, ix–​xi Gosse, Philip Henry, ix–​xi, 114, 128–​29 Grant, F. W., 109–​10 Griesbach, Johann Jakob, 27–​28 Groves, Anthony Norris, 10–​11, 16–​17, 132 Groves, Edward Kennaway, 114, 132 Guernsey, 130

Irish language, 10–​11, 39–​40 Irving, Edward, 52–​53, 70–​71, 88–​89 Islam, 119–​20 Isocrates, 25–​27 Israel, 66–​67, 85–​86, 90, 99–​100, 118–​19, 121, 124, 147–​48 Jewish restoration to the land of, 119–​ 20, 124, 147–​48 Italy, 22–​23, 80–​81

Haldane, Robert, 47–​48 Hall, Percy Francis, 3, 10, 14–​15, 16–​17, 51, 56, 77–​78, 80, 93, 114, 127–​28 Hammond, Henry Anthony, 18 Harris, James Lampden, 12–​13, 42, 56, 68–​ 69, 90–​91, 95–​97, 127–​28 Haverill, 78–​79 Hawker, Robert, 34–​35, 39–​40 Headlam, Arthur, 16 hell, 125–​26 See also conditional immortality Helps for the poor of the flock, 21 Herodotus, 28–​29 Herzog, Johann Jacob, 13–​14 Hinduism, 1–​3 Hodge, Charles, 34–​35 Holland, 3, 22–​23, 80–​81, 90–​91 Holy Spirit, 11–​12, 21, 22–​23, 32–​33, 35–​36, 44–​ 45, 55, 60, 61, 68, 70–​72, 79, 82, 85–​86, 88–​ 112, 115–​16, 124–​26, 127–​28, 138–​39, 143 Horace, 3 Hummel, Daniel G., xi, 147–​48, 150–​51 Humphery, Percy Adolphus, 18, 22 Hutchinson, Francis Synge, 10–​11

Kant, 1–​3 Käsemann, Ernest, 114–​15 Kelly, Emily, 20–​21 Kelly, William, ix, 10, 16, 18–​19, 24–​25, 29, 32, 44, 51–​52, 75–​78, 81–​82, 84–​85, 90–​91, 105–​6, 107, 127–​28, 131–​32, 136–​37, 147–​48 editing Darby’s work, xii–​xiii, 1, 21, 22, 53–​54, 120–​22, 131–​32 Keswick convention and holiness movement, 103, 107, 110–​11 King’s Inns, Dublin, 7 Knoch, Adlph Ernest, 151–​52

India, 3 intermediate state, 125–​26 See also conditional immortality

J. K. L. See Doyle, James, bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Jensen, Liz, 152–​53 Jerusalem, 124–​25 Jukes, Andrew, 98–​99, 103, 114 justification, xi–​xii, 34, 35–​37, 39, 42–​43, 44–​48, 49–​50, 51–​53, 54–​55, 65–​66, 106–​7, 138–​39, 141, 142, 144–​47

Lachmann, Karl, 27–​28 Lambert, Bernard, 123 Larkin, Clarence, 151–​52 Lausanne, 13–​14, 23, 71–​72, 73 Left Behind, 152–​54 Liddell, Henry George, 27–​28 Limerick, 12–​13 Lincoln, William, xi–​xii, 146–​47 Lincoln’s Inn, London, 7 Lindsey, Hal, 152–​53 Lloyd-​Jones, Martyn, 110–​11 London, 7, 17–​18, 44–​45, 61–​62, 75, 76–​ 79, 80–​81, 82–​83, 84, 86–​87, 88–​89, 98, 122, 128–​29, 130, 149

238 Index Los Angeles, 151–​52 Lowe, William Joseph, 23–​24 Luther, Martin, ix, 34, 36–​38, 46, 47–​48, 73, 90, 144–​46 Lutheranism, 34–​35, 39–​40, 73 Macauley, Thomas Babington, 19 Mackintosh, Charles Henry, 16, 48–​49, 52–​53, 85, 140–​41, 148 Magee, William, archbishop of Dublin, 9, 64–​66 Majorca, 80–​81 Malta, 80–​81 Marsden, George, ix–​xi Marshall, Walter, ix–​xi Mauro, Philip, 150–​51 McCormack, W. J., 63–​64 McLeod Campbell, John, 88 Middleton, T. F., 25–​27 Mill, J. S., 1–​3 millennium, 35, 63–​64, 114–​15, 120, 124–​ 25, 126–​27, 134, 151–​52 See also dispensational premillennialism; postmillennialism; premillennialism Miller, Andrew, 32, 52, 73–​74, 76–​77, 80–​ 81, 83, 84 Miller, Samuel, 146–​47 Miller, William, 129–​30 Millerites, 128–​30 Milton, John, 95–​96 Minorca, 80–​81 Minucius Felix, 28–​29 Molyneux, Capel, 44–​46 Moody, D. L., 149 Moody Bible Institute, 149–​50 moral law, 35–​36, 85–​86, 138–​39, 142–​ 43, 144–​46 Morris, William, 128–​29, 130 Morrish, George, 1, 20–​21, 24–​25, 53–​ 54, 55 Müller, George, 34–​35, 114 Murdoch, Alexander, 86–​87 Murray, John, 110–​11 Neatby, William Blair, 29 New York, 1, 129–​30, 148, 152–​53 New Zealand, 3, 16–​17, 22–​23, 80–​81

Newman, Francis, 1–​3, 39 Newman, John Henry, 1–​3 See also Oxford movement Newton, Benjamin Wills, ix–​xi, xiv–​xv, 14–​15, 16–​17, 40–​41, 42, 43–​44, 47–​ 48, 57–​60, 61, 68–​69, 72–​74, 97–​98, 113, 119, 126–​27, 128–​29 Newton, John, 47–​48 Niagra Bible conferences, 148 non-​juring controversy, 7–​9, 38 Norway, 80–​81 oath of supremacy, 65 O’Connell, Daniel, 12–​13, 65 O’Donnel, Sir Richard, 12–​13 Orkney, 76 Othery, 78–​79 Owen, John, xi–​xii, 1, 43–​44, 47–​ 48, 147–​48 Oxford, ix–​xi, 12–​13, 34–​35, 39–​41, 70–​ 71, 149–​50 Oxford Movement, 9–​10, 62–​63, 65–​66, 70–​71, 86–​87, 117–​18 See also Newman, John Henry Oxford University Press, 23–​24, 149–​50 Paine, Tom, 69 Panacea Trust, xiii–​xiv Parlane, William Alexander, 147–​48 Parliament, houses of, 7, 69–​70 See also Catholic emancipation Parnell, John, second baron Congleton, 16–​17 Pearsall Smith, Robert, 90, 103–​11, 138–​39 Pearson, John, bishop of Chester, ix–​xi penal laws, 65 Pennefather, Susannah (nee Darby), 9–​ 10, 66–​67 perfectionism, 90, 102–​3, 105, 106–​7, 111, 144 See also Pearsall Smith, Robert; Whitall Smith, Hannah Perrotta, Tom, 152–​53 Peterborough, 78–​79 Philadelphia, 103, 105, 129–​30 Philpot, Joseph Charles, 9–​10, 35, 40–​ 41, 45–​46 Pierson, A. T., 149

Index  239 Pink, A. W., 110–​11 Piscator, Johannes, 47, 147–​48 Plymouth, ix, 1–​3, 7, 11, 12–​16, 34–​35, 56, 57–​61, 68–​69, 73, 80, 92, 93, 95–​96, 97–​98, 119, 127, 128–​29 Plymouth Brethren. See brethren Pontis, H. W., 78–​79 Port Glasgow, 88, 91 postmillennialism, 63–​64, 114–​15 Powerscourt, Lady Theodosia, 11, 13–​14, 63–​64, 88–​89 Powerscourt estate, 11–​12, 69–​70, 80–​81, 88–​89, 118–​19 prayer, xi–​xii, 10–​11, 19, 57–​58, 60, 68, 76–​77, 85–​86, 90–​91, 93, 95, 98, 110–​ 11, 124–​25, 142, 144 premillennialism, ix–​xi, 35, 59–​60, 91, 92, 113–​15, 118–​19, 126, 129–​30, 134 See also dispensational premillennialism Presbyterianism, 15–​16, 54–​55, 68, 73, 84, 85–​86, 88–​89, 140–​41, 142–​44, 146–​47, 149 See also Church of Scotland; Free Church of Scotland Present Testimony, The, ix, 1–​3, 20–​21, 28, 42–​43, 51, 57–​58, 75–​76 See also Wigram, George Vicesimus primitivism, ecclesiastical, xi, 30–​31, 58–​ 59, 61, 67, 144 Princeton Review, The, 15–​16, 139–​40 Princeton Theological Seminary, 34–​35 prophecy charts, 110 Puritans, xi–​xii, 1, 29, 30–​31, 48, 52, 54–​ 55, 89–​90, 109–​11, 125–​26, 146–​47 Quakers, 57, 72, 91–​92, 97–​98 Queen’s University Belfast, 65–​66 Ramsgate, 82–​83 Raven, F. E. R., 55 Record, The, xi–​xii, 46, 47 Recordon, Charles-​François, 23–​24 Reform Act (1832), ix–​xi, 69, 93, 135–​36 Reform Act (1867), 135–​36 Reid, William, xi–​xii, 5, 53–​54, 84, 85, 143–​44, 146–​47 restorationism, ecclesiastical, 61, 72–​73, 85, 88–​89

resurrection, 40–​41, 50, 52–​53, 125–​26, 130, 131–​32 revivals of religion, 30–​31, 48–​49, 63–​64, 103, 139–​40 Roman Catholic Church, 7–​9, 34, 38, 56, 65, 72, 80, 86–​87, 95–​96, 119–​20, 124–​25, 135–​36 Roman Empire, latter-​day revival of, 118–​20, 136 Romanticism, 30–​31 Rotherham, 78–​79 Russia, 80–​81, 123, 124–​25 Ryde, 81–​82, 83 sanctification, 35–​36, 44–​45, 90, 94–​95, 101–​3, 104, 105–​6, 108–​9, 121, 125–​ 26, 138–​39, 142, 144 See also perfectionism Sanday, William, 16 Schluberger-​Berthoud, Pierre, 23–​24 Scholz, Johann Martin Augustin, 27–​28 Scofield Reference Bible, 5–​6, 91, 115–​16, 132–​33, 149–​51, 152–​53 Scott, Robert, 27–​28 Scott, Walter, 149 Seabrook, William, 128–​29 Second Reformation, 9, 63–​64, 73 separatism, 61–​62, 70–​71, 72–​74, 76, 79–​ 80, 84–​85, 87, 118–​19, 138–​39 Shedd, W. G. T., 54–​55 Sheffield, 15–​16 Sibbes, Richard, 1 Simeon, Charles, 69–​70 Singer, Joseph, 70–​71 Sirr, Joseph D’Arcy, 12–​13 Smeaton, George, 52–​53, 90–​91 Socinianism, 28, 44, 48–​49, 139–​40 Southern Presbyterian Review, The, 140–​41 Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, 28–​29, 149 St Helena, 80–​81 Stokes, William, 10–​11 Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot, xii–​xiii Stuart, C. E., 52–​53 Stunt, Timothy C. F., 120–​21 Swedenborgians, 72 Switzerland, 3, 73, 80–​81, 97–​98 See also Geneva; Lausanne Tacitus, 19

240 Index Test Acts, ix–​xi, 63–​64, 65, 67, 69 Thirty-​Nine Articles, 29, 36–​37, 39–​40, 42, 50, 51, 65 Thucydides, 19 Tischendorf, Constantin von, 27–​28 Tregelles, Samuel Prideaux, ix–​xi, xiv–​ xv, 27–​28 Trench, John Alfred, 18, 22–​23 Trinity College Dublin, 7, 21, 37–​38, 63–​ 64, 65, 70–​71, 117–​18 Trotter, William, 78–​79 United Kingdom, latter-​day division of, 135–​36, 137 universalism, 103, 107, 114, 128–​ 29, 151–​52 Uttoxeter, 78–​79 Venn, John, 70–​71 Voetius, Gisbertus, 90–​91 von Poseck, Julius Anton Eugen, 23 Voorhoeve, Herman Cornelius, 23–​24 Voorhoeve, Nicholas Antony Johannes, 23–​24

Warburton, John, 35 Watts, Isaac, 47–​48, 149–​50 Wells, Arthur, 129–​30 Wesley, John, ix, 102–​3, 104 Westminster Confession of Faith, 29, 30–​31, 36–​37, 47–​48, 52–​53, 132–​33, 134, 142, 144–​47 Westminster School, London, 7, 117–​18 Westminster Theological Seminary, 110–​11 Wetstein, Johann Jakob, 25–​27, 28–​29 Whitall Smith, Hannah, 103, 107, 138–​39 White, Edward, 131–​32 Whitefield, George, 47–​48 Wigram, George Vicesimus, ix–​xi, xii–​xiii, 1, 3, 11, 16–​17, 18, 20–​21, 22–​23, 24–​ 25, 40–​41, 42–​43, 47–​48, 51, 52–​53, 59–​60, 68–​69, 75–​76, 77–​78, 80, 82, 83, 127, 128–​29 See also Present Testimony, The Witsius, Herman, 43–​44, 47–​48 Zionism, 113, 116–​17, 135–​37, 153–​54 Zwingli, Ulrich, 90