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November 1905

William Kelly's Annotations on "A History of the Plymouth Brethren" by Neatby

361 pages.



TAGGED : William Kelly


Comments:
Tom said ...
Don't know if any transcriptions of these exist already, otherwise would be good to have one ..
Friday, Nov 12, 2021 : 15:23
Joshua said ...
In Pg.311 Mr Kelly makes the following annotation regarding Mr Dorman's death & burial at Reading:

" So deeply had Dorman sunk into his old ministerialism before his feud & slanders, that he used at the Lord's Table to go continuously through the Epistle to the Hebrews at Reading".

Can anyone point out the objections that Mr Kelly might have regarding going through Epistle to Hebrews at the Lord's Table , something that is very common among OB.
Friday, Apr 8, 2022 : 18:35
Jonathan said ...
Ministry at the Lord's Table was and still is, I think, relatively uncommon amongst non-OB groups, but I think Kelly is also implying Dorman was using this platform to develop his personal position - ie trending back to one-man ministry.
Friday, Apr 8, 2022 : 21:57
Timothy Stunt said ...

Transcript of introductory note:

“A pretentious book by a young man of schoolmaster mind, & habit of preacher seeking a living among dissenters, & striving to clear himself of all complicity with brethren, exclusives especially. He never possessed the spiritual mind, essential to a right appraisal, but had a glib tongue & boundless confidence in himself for the task he understood [?undertook]. He is without insight into the counsels & ways of God, & slides over the surface of revealed truth, talking of theology with much flippancy on doctrines of which he knows little or nothing. As he speaks [?of me, W.K.] with more respect than almost any other so called Exclusive, I have no personal motive for my severe notes on his opinions & misrepresentations & absured [sic] objects of laudation, or of the objects of his abuse, having known himself & his brothers etc. from their birth, & his father & mother from their childhood, on the friendliest terms. But I have a horror of his departure from the faith in the Holy Spirit’s presence & free action in the assembly & in testimony to Christ, His work & headship in heavenly glory, & in His Coming as the constant hope. In all this he is a retrograde enemy of God’s word; & it could surprise no discerning Christian that such a romance should owe most of its sale to the freethinking novelist Ian McLaren [MacLaren. Sc. John Watson (1850-1907]. [Novr. 1908] (initialled) W.K.

Saturday, Apr 9, 2022 : 04:01
Syd said ...
According to the Quakers, W.B. Neatby, “became a Baptist Minister and spent fourteen years in this service. He gradually became dissatisfied with what he regarded as the narrowness of the Brethren and the one-man ministry among the Baptists, and, having read extensively the writings of the early Friends, he joined the Society in 1912.”

Neatby’s Brethren history has some value in that he provides some chronology, and documents some factual events, but his extrapolations are quite biased - against Darby, and so-called “exclusive” brethren (of that mid-19th century). He says in his preface – “I have seldom, I think, conversed with any one not intimately acquainted with the Brethren, but what I have found that he understood Open Brethren to be so called because they admit Christians who are not ‘Brethren’ to the communion table, and Exclusive Brethren to have earned their title by the exclusion of all who did not belong to their own sect.” He used this "reference" but in fact, it was his own stance.

"Exclusive brethren" like Darby, Kelly and many others, showed conclusively in their writings that they gladly welcomed and received all true believers to the table, irrespective of their ecclesiastical association.

In the true, and precise style of William Kelly, he says what he thinks of Neatby's work - it was his prerogative.
Sunday, Apr 10, 2022 : 03:43
Joshua said ...
Thank you Jonathan
Monday, Apr 11, 2022 : 13:40
Max Weremchuk said ...
Willaim Kelly’s notes are fascinating and helpful on some points, but also very misleading.
His comments are often quite simply wrong and at times contradict what he wrote elsewhere. So one must be careful in making use of them and not simply take his comments/statements at face value. I do NOT consider Kelly to be purposely misleading, but simply not properly informed. When I first had access to his marginal notes (more than 30 years ago) I was delighted and considered his comments to be the determining factor in proving the truth of certain historical points. Since then, and after having researched much more material than was available to me back then, I have to regrettably conclude that he is not very reliable.
Wednesday, Apr 13, 2022 : 17:56


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