Page:Dennet - The Plymouth Brethren.djvu/7

 and reading the Word.” One day, Mr. Bellet―afterwards a prominent “Brother”―said to a lady, “Groves has just been telling me that it appeared to him from Scripture that believers, meeting together as disciples of Christ, were free to break bread together, as their Lord had admonished them, and that, in as far as the Apostles could be a guide, every Lord’s day should be set apart for thus remembering the Lord’s death and obeying His parting command… This suggestion of Mr. Groves’ was immediately carried out by himself and his friends in Dublin… This was the beginning of what has been erroneously termed Plymouth Brethrenism.” There was not the slightest intention, at the outset, of passing condemnation on either the Establishment or the churches outside the Establishment. They carefully abstained from such a question, confining themselves to their right to meet on the foundation of a common faith in a common Saviour. Many of their number, indeed, were clergymen, and all continued to meet for worship at times with those bodies of Christians with whom they were associated, and claimed the right to meet with all. Mr. Groves, for example, distinctly asserts this principle. In 1829 he left England for Persia, in the bonds of the Gospel, and returning, for a time, in 1836, he found, to his sorrow, that the foundation on which “the Brethren” had met before his departure had been subverted during his absence. So keenly did he feel this, that he wrote a letter of remonstrance to Mr. Darby, in which he assures him that he is no way estranged from him, “though,” he goes on to say, “I feel you have departed from those principles by which you once hoped to have effected them (his purposes), and are in principle returning to the city from whence you departed. Still, my soul so reposes in the truth of your heart to God that I feel it needs