That there is a good deal of truth in this view is sufficiently proved, even if there were no other evidence, by the exceedingly unsuspicious testimony of several of Darby’s personal adherents; but it is easy to allow it undue weight in discounting the value of individual initiative.
It is evident that, whatever the number of such little meetings may have been in the years between 1825 and 1832, only three of them—those of Dublin, Plymouth and Bristol—figure in the later history of the Brethren, and that no others can safely be presumed to have contained any power of propagation, or even any element of permanence. Now it will become clear as we proceed that the movement, whether at Plymouth or at Bristol, was not only considerably later than the movement in Dublin, but is to be more or less directly affiliated to it. Dublin must therefore be regarded as the place whence proceeded the great impulse without which Brethrenism, as a definite ecclesiastical system, would, for anything we can see, never have been.
But even if we limit ourselves for the moment to Dublin, we are still confronted by conflicting claims. Three names at least have been put forward in answer to the question, who was the founder, ostensible or virtual, of the new school. These are the names of A. N. Groves, J. G. Bellett and J. N. Darby. In addition to these, the name of Edward Cronin ought to have found some supporters, as his claim is at any rate much better than Darby’s. To present a sketch of the development of the new ideas in the mind of each of these leaders in turn will perhaps be the simplest way of clearing up the point.
Anthony Norris Groves was born in the early part of the year 1795, at Newton, Hampshire. He acquired
