Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/645

 PLYMOUTH BRETHREN 625 eq. m. The royal hotel is an extensive struc- ture with a theatre and assembly rooms at- tached, erected by the corporation of the town at a cost of 60,000. A new guildhall and law courts were opened in August, 1874. The number of places of worship in 1872 was 46, of which 12 belonged to the church of Eng- land. Plymouth is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop. In the Oottonian public li- brary there are many rare and valuable works, a large collection of manuscripts, paintings, drawings, &c. The town is supplied with water brought from Dartmoor by a channel nearly 30 in. long. The manufactures, with the exception of those connected with the naval establishments, are of little importance. The fisheries are very productive. The im- ports for the year 1872 were valued at 1,335,- 794, the exports at 76,437. The number of vessels entering the port in 1871 was 738, ton- nage 123,445; cleared 495, tonnage 61,345. Several lines of ocean steamships touch at or ply from and to Plymouth; but the place owes its chief importance to the works in the most important division of the town. (See DEVONPORT.) Plymouth was a place of some importance as far back as 1438. The British fleet rendezvoused here at the time of the threatened invasion of the Spanish armada (1588), and the port furnished a larger quota of vessels for defence than any town but Lon- don. It sided with the parliament against Charles I., and was several times unsuccess- fully besieged by the royal forces. PLYMOUTH BRETHREN, a Christian denomi- nation, called by themselves simply Brethren, and sometimes called also Darbyites after one of their leaders. They have no written creed or confession, and every one is allowed entire freedom of belief ; yet they hold the total de- pravity of man, the necessity of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and the atonement by the sufferings and death of Christ. They believe that Christianity is in ruins, as appears in the sectarian divisions ; and that believers should withdraw from the churches, and meet in separation from all ecclesiastical evil. They reject any special designation or ordination to the office of the ministry, regarding all true Christians as priests, who, if they are found able to edify the brethren, are authorized to preach and administer the sacraments without any human call or ordination. As a body they practise adult baptism only ; they do not make it a condition of membership, yet generally convince their members of the importance of being rebaptized. They partake of the Lord's supper every Sunday morning, and believers only are expected to meet then. In the after- noon or evening they preach to such as are not yet converted ; but they consider pleading out of place in the assembly of believers. They regard the work of pastors and evangelists as distinct, and allow the payment of the lat- ter while itinerating, but consider the payment of pastors as unscriptural. The denomination originated almost simultaneously in Dublin, Plymouth, and Bristol. In 1829 a number of Christians in Dublin were accustomed to meet for religious improvement, and adopted the principle that they were free to celebrate the Lord's supper without the help of any ordained minister ; but they did not separate themselves from the churches of which they were mem- bers. In 1831 a similar society was formed in Plymouth, which became a separate and com- plete ecclesiastical organization. In 1832 John W. Darby, a curate of the established church of England, left his ministry and joined the Dublin society, but subsequently became the leading member of the Plymouth society. Be- fore the formation of the Plymouth brother- hood George Miiller, the founder of the well known orphan house, had advocated similar ideas in Teignmouth, and in 1832 he organized the Bethesda society at Bristol. These differ- ent societies increased in numbers and influ- ence, particularly that in Plymouth, which gained perhaps 1,500 believers. They soon became divided into three parties. At the head of one of them was Darby ; at the head of a second Newton, whose peculiar doctrines respecting the person of Christ were generally repudiated by the denomination as heretical, and afterward retracted by the author, who subsequently withdrew from the denomina- tion. Among the other congregations which refused to be involved in the bitter personal controversies between Newton and Darby, the Bethesda congregation of Bristol was promi- nent. Notwithstanding their internal divi- sions, they made great progress in Great Brit- ain, where in 1850 they had 132 places of worship. Societies varying from a small num- ber to many hundreds were established in most of the cities and large towns of England, Scot- land, and Ireland, also in remote country dis- tricts and villages. Darby was induced in 1838, by the opposition which he met in Eng- land, to remove to Switzerland. He gathered adherents in almost every town of the canton of Vaud, and in several towns of Geneva and Bern. A French periodical, Le temoignage des disciples de la parole (afterward called Etudes scripturaires), was started for the prop- agation of their tenets, and a kind of seminary established for training missionaries. They suffered some losses from the political revolu- tion in the canton of Vaud in 1845, and later from the organization of a free reformed church. From Switzerland they spread into France, where they established congregations in Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, and other places. They were still more successful in Italy after 1848, where nearly all the numerous so-called free evangelical associations adopted their prin- ciples to a greater or less extent. A few scat- tered congregations were gathered in Ger- many, Cape Colony, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. They made their appearance also in the East Indies, where Bishop Wilson of Calcutta published a pastoral letter against