“According to the light I have, both parties are so far in the wrong that I have no wish to be identified with either. I wait for further light, and my prayer is, ‘Hear the right, O Lord’. Should it turn out that Mr. Newton’s errors are only those of a rash speculative intellectualist, who is yet sound at heart and seeking to honour Christ, it will be no cause of regret that I have refused to have fellowship with those who have been seeking to crush rather than to recover him; if, on the other hand, it should appear that after all his long course of service he is really an enemy to the cross of Christ, it will be no cause of regret that I have been rather too slow to believe so terrible a charge. Until George Wigram be subjected to discipline, I shall not feel it any cause of sorrow to be standing in separation from a body where such a course is tolerated.”
What did Darby think of Wigram’s latest achievement? Probably he estimated it at pretty much its true value. It is impossible to consider Darby a very precise divine. Though he had undoubted power, it was rather as the mystic than as the systematic theologian. Still, he had plenty of theological learning of most kinds, and could scarcely have been deceived as to the character of Wigram’s hapless performance. At a meeting in Dublin in 1852, as I learn from one who was present, he was questioned about his action in regard to the discipline against Bethesda and its adherents. “When some reference was made,” my informant writes, “to the charges against Mr. Craik, he said, as I distinctly remember, that he knew nothing about it—that Mr. Wigram sent him his tracts, and that he put them at the back of the fire.” This implies that he had some inkling of their contents, even if we are to understand that he did not read them. But it was clearly impossible for Darby to wash his hands of the whole business in that way. Wigram’s charges against Craik became, as every Exclusive (at any rate in my time) knew perfectly
