Interesting Notes by F W Newman (24/2/1887)

The first sentences are copied in a different hand and (presumably) included points 1 to 3.

“I did not invite Darby to Oxford so far as I remember or believe.  I had no means of giving him reception in Balliol College except by inviting persons to meet him in my//

?p.2 

[continues in FWN’s microscopic hand]

room for breakfast or tea. I suppose I did so.  But the rumour of him spread fast among Evangelical undergraduates.  He had no lack of invitations and of closetings ^in no particular order^ and consultations.  He took others by storm, as he had taken me.  The “Lord’s coming” was in the air, and Irving’s “Holy Tongues” were about to burst on us. [I think they had not begun.]

4.         I do not remember that any one, Anglican or Dissenter, asked JND into the pulpit, though he was ostensibly in the Irish Episcopal Church.

5.         While I was in Ireland in 1827-8 Darby was an active curate in the Wicklow moors, except when [?]driven by illness and neglect of his body, to his sister’s house, where I was living.  I do not remember that he had opportunity to “open a Lord’s table”, if his mind had reached the desire of it then.* Bellet [sic], Cronin, Hutchison, (or Hutchinson) Carr? and others were the movers for it in Dublin

            *He still called himself an Anglican Clergyman, and was quite behind as to any church theory.

6.         After my return from Bagdad I did break bread with the new born sect at Plymouth; but Darby was not there.  When I found that I could not do it in any of their connections without Darby rising against me in hostile fashion//

p.2

I entirely/?certainly abstained, believing such a controversy would draw off the young, tender, warmly religious, whom I looked on with such affection, into hot and hurtful partisanship, — or bigotry!

7.         I never “preached” among them; but while at Plymouth I for the first time accompanied Rev Mr Harris (the Plymouth leader) into the villages and with him preached by the roadside.  B W Newton was a close ally of his older friend Harris.

8.         I do not believe that Benjamin W Newton ever took Anglican Orders at all any more than myself. Do not you confuse him with Rev [James] Harris?  Mr Harris was towards me a great contrast to Darby.

I think I have answered all your last questions

Yours truly

F W Newman

My hand from some weakness of the sinew sadly gravitates into very small writing as soon as I cease to think of the writing.  I sometimes cannot read what I have written, till I use an additional glass.