Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/264

 I asked this only because he told me in his last letter that he did not hold any such doctrine, and I very much wished to believe this, and thought such a statement might clear the way for something better; he would not consent to do this.” (The italics are my own.)

Nor could he. Quoting Psalm lxix. 26, he had said, “Here we have evidently more than man’s persecutions. They take advantage of God’s hand upon the sorrowing One to add to His burden and grief. This is not atonement, but there is sorrow and smiting from God. Hence we find the sense of sins (v. 5) though of course in the case of Christ, they were not His own personally, but the nation’s, etc.” Dorman also quotes from the Synopsis on Psalm cii. “He [Christ] looks to Jehovah, who cast down Him whom He had called to the place of Messiah, but who now meets indignation and wrath. [The italics are Dorman’s.] We are far here beyond looking at sufferings as coming from man. They did and were felt, but men are not before Him in judgment; nor is it His expiatory work, though that which wrought it is here—the indignation and wrath. It is Himself, His own being cut off as man.” In this passage, Darby so abuses his privilege of writing without regard to the principles of grammar that I should be loth to dogmatise as to his meaning; but the meaning that seems to lie the least remote from his words is surely that which Dorman imputes to him.

These are very far from being isolated expressions. The “third class” of Christ’s sufferings were said to be