The elements and ordinances of proto-Brethren assemblies, 1818–20

Decades before the premier gatherings of Edward Cronin, John Parnell, John Gifford Bellett, Anthony Norris Groves, John Nelson Darby, and the others who assembled with them to break bread in Dublin (c. 1827–28), leading to what would later come to be known as the Plymouth Brethren, independent communities of believers convened in homes and churches across Britain and Ireland and in some northeastern cities of the U.S. and Canada with the intent of replicating those ecclesiastical practices common to the early church. Letters from nearly two dozen proto-brethren assemblies dating between 1818 to 1820 serve to document the elements and ordinances of these primitivist-minded groups and offer us a rare window into the values and interests of these ‘conventicles,’ during a unique time in history. This chapter will compare and contrast the views of these assemblies as reflected through correspondence exchanged between them, having been collected and afterward printed in New York in 1820, a reprint of which was published in 1889 under a different title: Letters Concerning Their Principles and Order from Assemblies of Believers in 1818-1820.