When Bellett was about two and twenty a clergyman of the name of Kearney was appointed to the parish in which the country house of the Bellett family was situated, and the young men, to their father’s intense displeasure, came deeply under their new pastor’s influence. George Bellett describes Kearney as “thoroughly unworldly—not a tinge of the world seemed to soil him, nor a desire for the honour which cometh from men to affect him”. It is easy enough to recognise such an influence throughout the whole of John Bellett’s career.
John subsequently studied law in London, where he was deeply impressed by Henry Martyn’s Life, and where also he found his Christian sympathies widened by intercourse with a devout Congregational minister, West of Chigwell. Returning to Dublin about 1822, he was called to the bar, but he does not seem to have practised much, if at all. Probably he was under no necessity in the matter, and his attention was becoming thoroughly preoccupied with religious interests.
His ties to the Church of England were, for a man of his peculiarly fervent family affections, many and strong. Both his brothers were in Anglican orders; and his only sister was married to a clergyman. Nevertheless, he was gradually moving towards a very different standpoint. I can find no definite landmark in the journey earlier than Groves’ suggestion as to the observance of the Lord’s Supper in 1827. The first reference to Darby occurs in a letter dated January 31, 1827. Bellett was afterwards wont to say, “If I deserve any credit it is that I early discerned what there was in John Darby”. Indeed, Bellett was probably the great link between Darby and the Dublin movement in its earliest days.
