Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/156

144 says, “is a word used in two senses—being capable of dying, and being actually subject to death as a necessity. Now of course Christ was capable of dying, or he could not die. But the doctrine taught here is that he was mortal as we are.” This was written before the explicit declarations to the contrary (so far at I have observed) were made; but, when made, they availed nothing to mitigate the fury of the persecution. If Darby himself remained unentangled in the ambiguity he had so plainly exposed, it is a great pity that he allowed himself to profit by the ignorant zeal of his followers.

Of this zeal a curious example occurred two or three years later. Newton had written in August, 1850, A Letter to a Friend concerning a Tract recently published in Cork. In this letter he was supposed to have reiterated his heresies with regard to the mortality of Christ. I propose to give the reader the means of judging of the positions that the two parties severally occupied. Newton writes as follows:—

"“I am thankful to be able to say, that I hold (and so does Bishop Pearson) that Christ, though he did assume a mortal body, was under no necessity of death as we—that he was ever in moral nearness to God, not less so on earth than when He was in Heaven—that He was ever the object of the Father’s complacency, delight, and love,—that whether in the cradle, or in life, or on the Cross, He was alike morally perfect, as perfect as He now is in Heaven—perfect in all His inward experiences—perfect in all His outward ways, and therefore in both, unlike other men—that he never was as those for whom and with whom He suffered—that all His sufferings were as the Redeemer—all on behalf of others, and for their salvation. The doctrines of the Apostles’ Creed—the Nicene Creed—and the Athanasian Creed, I gladly accept, as well as the first seventeen articles of the Church of England, as containing the truths for which I would desire to live and die.”"

This was not written till 1850; but Newton quotes