Establishment of A Brethren Assembly At Plymouth
At Oxford he abandoned Quaker beliefs and joined the Anglican Church. He was friends of Francis William Newman and George Wigram. Through Newman he first met John Nelson Darby. Newton and his friends in Oxford became increasingly critical of the Anglican Church especially in regard to its subjection to the sovereign state and the appointment of ordained clergy. In December 1831 Wigram left the Anglican church and bought a nonconformist place of worship, Providence Chapel in Raleigh Street, Plymouth, Devon. Meetings were open to Christians from all denominations for fellowship, prayer, praise and communion. In January 1832, Newton and Darby, although at the time, both Anglican clerics, shared communion with Wigram at such a meeting. By March 1832 Newton had left the Anglican Church, committed himself to the new fellowship and married a local girl, Hannah Abbott. The “Providence People” as they were known locally, grew quickly, became known as “The Brethren from Plymouth” and then were referred to as the Plymouth Brethren. Around 1832 Darby also left a denominational/sectarian system, the Church of Ireland.
The predominant features of the Plymouth assembly in 1832 included:
- Rejection of clergy and adoption of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers
- Plurality of Elders – The elders were unpaid. Newton soon became an elder, and earned his living as a school teacher
- Weekly communion
- Separation from evil systems – e.g. not being in the armed forces or a member of any apostate denominational church
The Plymouth assembly was similar to an assembly in Dublin, Ireland which was established in 1827 by Anthony Norris Groves, Darby and other Christians who sought a return of Christendom to New Testament principles. Like the Dublin assembly which originally was anti sectarian in that it was open to all Christian believers, the Plymouth assembly in 1832 began defining qualifications for membership and an insistence that fellowship could only occur after severing any other fellowship with a denominational church. The shifting to a sectarian position was detected by Anthony Norris Groves, as shown in his letter to Darby in 1835.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin Wills Newton
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