At a later time Darby spoke of this tract as if it had signalised his secession from the Church of England, but his attitude for several years after appeared somewhat vacillating to his friends.[1] Groves, whose mind moved faster, was delighted at this time with Darby, and was in hearty sympathy with the tract, if we can judge from the fact that he makes a sort of rough quotation from it in a letter he wrote in December, 1828.[2] Darby had written (p. 47), “So far as men pride themselves on being Established, Presbyterian, Baptist, Independent, or anything else, they are antichristian”. As might be expected, the sentiment appears in Groves’ letter in a softened form. “My full persuasion is, that, inasmuch as any one glories either in being of the Church of England, Scotland, Baptist, Independent, Wesleyan, etc., his glory is his shame, and that it is antichristian” (Memoir, p. 49).
Those who have recognised that Brethrenism followed at the first a genuine spiritual impulse in its revolt against a Church crippled by party spirit and deadened by secularity, have perhaps felt surprise that its authors should not have found solace and satisfaction in the circle where the ardour kindled by the revival of the eighteenth century still glowed. But two things must be borne in mind. In the first place, though there was undoubtedly some earnest evangelical ministry within the Irish Establishment, the most fervent elements of the revival in Ireland would seem to have been largely absorbed by Walkerism; and from Wal-
- ↑ If he resigned his curacy in 1828 he might naturally come to regard that as the epoch of his severance from the Church. On the other hand, his friends were impressed by his slowness to break off all association with it.
- ↑ It is of course just possible that both men are quoting from a common “oral tradition” of the first Brethren.
