The recent edition of the Darby/Wigram correspondence confirms Matthew James Starling as the author of this pamphlet.
Matthew James Starling seems to be a pretty rare name – the only possible candidate I could find is an engraver who lived from 1805 to 1889. WikiCommons has a few engravings by him.
Starling is mentioned in Darby's Account of the Proceedings at Rawstorne Street, Part I, p. 6, and in Congleton's Reasons for leaving Rawstorne-Street Meeting, p. 10, as a member of the assembly in Rawstorne Street, London, in 1846/47.
The above pamphlet is a reply to Darby's The Intercession of Christ and was itself answered by Darby's Brief analysis of the Epistle to the Hebrews in connection with the Priesthood of Christ. Starling also wrote Four Letters on Priesthood. I wonder if he was still with the Brethren at the time of the dispute. A remark by Darby in a letter to Wigram sounds as if he was:
As regards Starling I should be anxious that a careful distinction were made between false interpretation and false doctrine. This is for me in these days important. I might refuse to go to Starling's meeting when I had done all I could to bring it right, but if there were no false doctrine as to anything that was the faith I might not have to excommunicate him, though wholly rejecting him as a doctor or a teacher. If what was taught touched the faith it is another thing. If he taught what I thought mischievous I might refuse to go there if the assembly did not stop it, but that is not excommunication.
On the other hand, Starling himself speaks pretty aloofly about Brethren in his Four Letters on Priesthood (p. 19f.):
I have so long turned from human writings to God's Word, that I am comparatively ignorant of much that is going on among brethren, both as to doctrine and practice. Some 25 or 30 years since, I learnt (from brethren) the sufficiency of God's Word for our instruction. [...] I have been looking to see by their writings what brethren hold about Melchisedec priesthood, and find they contradict themselves, and are not in accordance with the Word.
Does anybody have more information on him?
In his, The Intercession of Christ, Mr Darby was explaining the confusion some believers have in understanding Christ’s intercession. Some go to the throne of grace to make their righteousness and peace sure. If this is firmly settled, then on the other hand, some believers disregard needed intercession.
So Darby stated—“Both are wrong, and both mistake the nature of Christ's intercession. Christ's intercession is not the means of obtaining righteousness and peace. It is mischievous to use it to this end; and it does, so used, hinder the apprehension of our being made the righteousness of God in Christ. It is mischievous too to deny its use when we do know Christ as our perfect righteousness. The doing so makes that righteousness to be a cold and heartless security, destroying the deep and softening sense of His constant love to us, and our dependence on the daily exercise of that love.” (my italics).
Critiquing Darby’s tract, Mr Starling replies—“For myself I would say I neither deny nor set aside Christ's intercession, but I do not accept J. N. D's explanation of it: neither is ‘a cold and heartless security’ the result of my rejection of his explanation.” Starling refutes Darby on many points, and failed to grasp the comment, cold and heartless security.
But I wonder if Starling does understand Christ’s intercession. He writes on page 20 of his Remarks—“The repeated intercession of Christ, on each and every occasion of failure, involves the remembrance of sin before God, and so touches the perfection of His work which has put away sin, as well as overlooks also the present work of the Holy Ghost in the saint.” If this is so, then our cleansing by the blood of Christ is not complete and our righteousness in Christ before God is faulty. Not so, Mr Starling!
