precision of thought and expression, and so have given just reason for the present chastisement, I willingly admit; and I desire to mark the rod and who has appointed it. At the same time I increasingly feel, after writing the present tract, that the doctrine intended to be conveyed will bear, as a whole, most rigid examination by the word of God.”
In the body of his tract Newton occasionally complains that the notes had misrepresented him, and that his critic had misrepresented the notes; but everything is said with the same total absence of bitterness.
Darby replied in A Plain Statement of the Doctrine on the Sufferings of our Blessed Lord. In the introduction he says, “The author, as is his known custom, after making statements which subvert the faith, seeks by modifying, by making statements which are entirely different appear to be the same, or substituting one for the other, smothering up what was said by expatiating on recognised truths, to confound the minds of the simple, and escape the discrediting detection of the doctrines he has taught.” Darby leaves “to others to express their feeling as to the hopeless dishonesty of the author”. In other respects also, “the author” was by Darby’s account in a very pitiable plight. “I have not the least doubt,” he gravely observes, “from circumstances I have heard lately, of the authenticity of which I have not the smallest question, that Mr. Newton received his prophetic system by direct inspiration from Satan, analogous to the Irvingite delusion.”
The gravamen of Darby’s charges is that Newton placed Christ under Divine wrath, apart from that which He endured vicariously in making atonement. By His position as a man and an Israelite, Christ incurred “wrath,”[1] from which He delivered Himself by keep-
- ↑ Not “damnatory” wrath, but apparently disciplinary. Cf. Newton’s Observations, especially section ii., and page 48.
