Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/26

14 on the subject; and when Dr. Pusey was not heard of. I fasted in Lent so as to be weak in body at the end of it; ate no meat on week-days—nothing till evening on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, then a little bread, or nothing; observed strictly the weekly fasts too. I went to my clergyman always if I wished to take the Sacrament, that he might judge of the matter. I held apostolic succession fully, and the channels of grace to be there only. I held thus Luther and Calvin and their followers to be outside. I was not their judge, but I left them to the uncovenanted mercies of God. I searched with earnest diligence into the evidences of apostolic succession in England, and just saved their validity for myself and my conscience. The union of Church and State I held to be Babylonish, that the Church ought to govern itself, and that she was in bondage, but was the Church.”

I doubt if Darby took orders in this state of mind. It is clear from his correspondence that he passed through some great crisis of belief in 1825, and it is a plausible conjecture that a remarkable accession of spiritual light, as he deemed, led him to seek ordination. However that may be, Bellett considered him still “a very exact Churchman”; and in his first tract he takes his stand at the point where extreme Evangelicalism and extreme High Churchmanship join hands in the intensity of their common anti-Erastianism. This point remained throughout his life the pivot of Darby’s ecclesiastical position.

The circumstances in which this paper appeared have been often described. The following account is taken from Professor Stokes’ article.