Beloved Brother,
Your note has caused me sorrow but it has scarcely caused me surprise. I could not but be conscious that ever since March {1845} there has been a gradual and increasing distance growing up between us. To this end, Satan, has I doubt not, long been directing his efforts, and now has succeeded. The chief instrument in this has been Mr. Darby.
I do not say this in anger or haste of spirit. It is my calm settled deliberate judgment. I believe Mr. Darby's visit to Plymouth & conduct since to have been of Satan & against God.
Feeling this so strongly as I do, it has caused me great distress to find you arriving at a different judgment.
I have long felt that if that if that judgment continued and went on to its results happy co-operation would be impossible. We must necessarily be meeting with circumstances which would continually excite suspicion and mistrust.
I have said to you before that I should have considered myself to have been the proper person to leave Plymouth, if I did not believe the whole system of divine truth to be affected by the system promulgated by Mr. Darby. My convictions on this subject are so strengthened that they will materially influence all my future decisions.
You will see from this how little my thoughts are influenced by mere local questions. I see no local [difficulty] that a little patience and forbearance, might not in time surmount, under God's blessing. The real questions are questions that affect the whole church of God.
I still firmly believe that it would have been for my blessing, your blessing, the Church's blessing, if we could have stood together in unity of mind & of judgment. But if it be impossible, I think that I unfeignedly desire that the will of the Lord should be done. I should greatly shrink from continued and constant collision of judgment with one whom I love so sincerely as yourself. I would certainly desire, if it might be, that that ingredient might not be added to what I expect to be a cup of sorrows.
My beloved wife is, I trust somewhat better. She unites in affectionate remembrance to Mrs. Harris and yourself.
Believe me Yes {?} in sincere affection. B. W. N.
[Here BWN's attitude regarding JND comes out (and his entire opposition to the recovered truth through JND) -and that while BWN was generating his doctrine which in after-years he called Christ's "unspeakable circumstantial distance from God"-which evil teaching he held until his death. This clandestine evil teaching was first made public in 1847 through notes of lectures on Psa. 6 from BWN's teaching, which came into the hands of J. L. Harris' wife. She showed her husband the notes and he recognized its blasphemous character. After visiting where BWN was lecturing, to speak of this matter, JLH published an exposure of BWN's evil teaching concerning Christ's relationship to God during His life.
At the end of 1845, JND and some others separated (withdrew from fellowship) from the meeting where BWN was -on the basis that clerisy was established at Plymouth. Later, BWN's supporter at Plymouth, S. P. Tregelles (the well-known textual critic), stated that a modified form of Presbyterianism was being introduced at Plymouth. In 1847 the evil teaching concerning Christ's distance from God was exposed.)