church at Ebrington Street, but had removed to Exeter. He disapproved of Newton’s line of things. Of the other men, Code, long well known amongst the Brethren as “Code of Bath,” was the most interesting. As a curate of the Church of Ireland he enjoyed the very high esteem of his diocesan, good Archbishop Trench of Tuam; but in the beginning of 1836, under the influence of Darby and Hargrove,[1] he resigned his curacy. He was not, however, a pronounced partisan of Darby’s, and exerted himself at Plymouth in the interests of peace.
The investigation was a most curious proceeding, and barren of everything but fresh occasions of strife. The functions of the board of investigation were left totally indefinite, and no less so its scope of enquiry. It had certainly no judicial authority, and its almost haphazard constitution should have precluded the idea that it was a board of arbitration. Indeed, before it assembled, Darby’s action had ensured its futility. Lord Congleton had arrived in Plymouth some little time before, and on the 26th of November he and three others, at Newton’s request, addressed a letter to Darby, suggesting that Darby should choose four brethren to meet an equal number nominated by Newton, “to enquire into and report on the charges said to have been made … on Monday the 17th, etc.” Darby refused. “I thought it,” he says, “a worldly way of settling it. Nor can I yet see that, when a person is charged with sin in the church, it is a scriptural way that he should name four persons to investigate it, and the one who has charged him four more. Indeed I was justified in this by every spiritual
- ↑ Hargrove had himself been a most successful minister of the Irish Church. He joined the Brethren in 1835, and died in fellowship with the “open” party in 1869, at the age of 76. He was an advocate of some restriction on open ministry, and was severely animadverted upon by Darby in consequence.
