The Plymouth
Brethren
shorter version by Peter Blackwell
The Plymouth Brethren form a small separatist denomination
that emphasizes the coming millenium, or end of the world. According to Owen
Chadwick's The Victorian Church, "They began first as a little extreme
evangelical group in Dublin from 1827 that believed anyone may celebrate the
Lord's Supper or preach, and received the name when the strange powerful
ex-Anglican clergyman J. N. Darby went to Plymouth in 1830. In 1847-49 the
Brethren divided, through Darby's rigidity, into Open Brethren and Exclusive
Brethren, the latter holding no communion with others. At the best-attended
services on 30 March 1851 there were in England and Wales 7,272 Brethren"
Francis Newman (younger brother of John Henry, who was to become the famous
Roman Catholic Cardinal Newman) had achieved first class honours in classics
and mathematics at Oxford went to Dublin in 1827 to be private tutor to the
household of Serjeant Pennefeather, a leading Irish lawyer. While there he met
John Nelson Darby, a curate in the Church of Ireland and Pennefeather's
brother-in-law. Darby had been meeting on Sundays with three other men, Dr.
Edward Cronin, a convert from Roman Catholicism Francis Hutchinson, son of the
Archdeacon of Killala, Sir Samuel Synge and John Gifford Bellet, a classics
prizewinner from Trinity College, to "break bread" in a way they believed the
early church did. Others began to join with them including, Lord Congelton, who
hired an auction room for their growing Sunday meetings.
After Newman
returned to Oxford from Ireland he persuaded Darby to visit him there in 1830
and meet his friend, Benjamin Wills Newton, a Fellow of Exeter College. After
several visits by Darby to Oxford, Newton invited him to his home in Plymouth
where a small group met to study Bible prophecy. The group included George
Wigram, a friend of Newton at Oxford and Percy Hall, a navy Commander turned
pacifist. Wigram acquired a chapel, which was called Providence Chapel, where
regular preaching, especially on prophetic subjects, was given and attended by
local clergy and lay persons. The numbers grew mainly in response to Hall's
preaching and it soon became an established independent church, larger than
either Dublin or Bristol. Of the original group of leaders, Newton was left to
carry on. Darby was a traveler and only occasionally present, and Wigram and
Hall had moved on to London and Hereford to establish new churches. Newman
parted company with the Brethren turning eventually to Unitarianism and free
thought.
Newton was still in his twenties. Although he had been a member of
the Church of England, he was connected by marriage through his mother to the
Fox family and other members of the Quakers. He had left Oxford completely
(over the issue of gifts of tongues and healings) and with Darby and others,
began to work out procedures for the new church as Hall's preaching was
attracting large numbers of people, many who were illiterate. The new church
was also joined by the former curate of Plymstock, James Harris (at 40, the
oldest member of the group), and Henry Borlase, curate of St. Keyne, Cornwall.
In 1835, the group was joined by Samuel Tregelles, a Quaker who had been
converted through his association with his cousin, Benjamin Newton. Tregelles
worked with Wigram on the Englishman's Greek and Hebrew Concordances and became
a foremost scholar in Biblical textual studies. At that time about 80 people
attended and over the next few years the assembly grew to some seven
hundred.
The growing numbers required a new building which became a pattern
for other early Brethren assemblies. As they now no longer could be called the
"Providence People" as had been the case to this point, they began to be called
the "Brethren from Plymouth" and then the "Plymouth Brethren".
In the
centre front of the new chapel was the communion table and generally speakers
addressed the audience from there. The seating was arranged in gradually
ascending tiers in a semi-circle giving the effect of the table at the centre
of things. They did not take up an offering but had collection boxes at the
back of the seating. It was not unusual for people to put jewelry into the
boxes which was sold by the deacons and the proceeds given to the poor.
The emphasis on prophetic teaching (Darby at one stage had dated the return of
Christ to 1842 though later he disclaimed any basis for date-fixing) led to an
awareness of the need to be separated from the world, and so people began to
give away what they considered "worldly" in dress, books, and furniture.
A
very common meeting was the Bible reading held in people's homes. Andrew
Miller, one of the early Brethren writers, recounts that some thirty members
gathered together at about 5:30 in the evening for tea. They were plain in
their dress with no ornaments. They did not discuss general news, and politics
would have been regarded as profanity. [He points out that the Brethren did not
vote at elections]. When tea was ready, things became quiet and they waited
until someone prayed. At about seven o'clock people found a seat all having
their Bibles and a hymnbook. After a little wait a hymn was sung and a prayer
given. The head of the house then asked if any brother had a portion of the
word on his mind that he would like to share. Discussion [by the men] continued
until about nine o'clock and then after a hymn and prayer the meeting dispersed
at about ten o'clock. These meetings were different from the Fellowship Meeting
which was a more serious Bible study on a predetermined topic and involved only
men, and the Social Tea Meeting which was a home social gathering although it
may end in a worship time at about nine o'clock.
From the earliest days
there was identifiable authority in the assembly. A presiding elder was
appointed to maintain order in the meetings, but unfortunately, Newton, still
in his twenties, became autocratic and controlling. Because of his revulsion
with the church he had left, Darby was never at ease with the appointment of
elders, and as time went by he increasingly devalued the importance of the
formal recognition of an eldership. He tended to reject any form of succession
or transmission of office as much as he did the choosing of leadership by
church election as seen in other dissenting churches. In a similar way, Darby
did not adopt the practice of believer's baptism as was by then the practice in
Bristol, though it was never a condition of fellowship. He discouraged some
young preachers from speaking on the subject, and to this day many of his
followers (Exclusive Brethren) practice a modified form of infant baptism.
Coad says, "Of the vigour and the remarkable character of the church at
Plymouth there can be no doubt. For a period of fourteen years it enjoyed a
success and rejoiced in gifts, such as few single churches have experienced.
Yet its documents make one conscious of a radical weakness from the beginning.
Much of its teaching and testimony of the church was based on prophetic
interpretation, and upon the apocalyptic expectations of apostacy and judgement
which that study generated."
But to a real extent, the "heavenly thinking"
of the early Brethren grew from their struggle to find a perspective between
that of the Established Church and the political agitation of the the
Dissenting churches.
Selected Bibliography
Chadwick, Owen. The
Victorian Church, . London, 1966.
Coad, Roy. (1968) The History of the
Brethren Movement. Exeter: Paternoster Press.
Miller, Andrew (slightly
revised and abbreviated by G.C. Willis) (unknown date) The Brethren. Hong Kong:
Christian Book Room.
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