Page:Groves - Darbyism - Its Rise and Development and a Review of the Bethesda Question.djvu/49



The letter was read to the church, with full and ample explanations verbally given to clear up any difficulty that might arise. When published afterwards by Mr. Wigram, The following remarks on the Letter of the Ten, and on Mr. Wigram’s comments on it, in the “Present Question,” as written about the time, we here give in a note, as a co-temporary witness, which may be of value. “We could write much in reference to this paper, ‘The Letter of the Ten,’ and to the notes and comments annexed to it in the ‘Present Question,’ but we cannot trust ourselves to compare the holy calmness and scriptural reasoning of the text, with the unhallowed rage and unauthorized dogmatism of the commentator. Suffice it to say, that this much abused letter contains not a sentence on which a candid mind can found the charge of adherence of any kind, or in any degree, to the heresy. Its chief object is to state the causes of the unwillingness of those who signed it to lay the subject before the church. Any one is at liberty to differ from these brethren in judgment, and to think that under the circumstances of the case, it might have been better, out of condescension to weak brethren, to resign themselves to the painful task of examining the errors in question; but let it be remembered that these brethren were occupied with far nobler and more useful labors, and that having sat at the feet of that Teacher whose commandment is “Love one another,” they naturally shrunk from following in the footsteps of those who beginning with apparent zeal for the honor of the great Head of the Church, had ended with heaping abuse on the members of His body, and with bringing some of the bitterest fruits of the flesh,—anger, wrath, malice, clamour, and evil-speaking,—to a perfection, which, happily, is seldom to be found among those who profess to follow Christ.”—From a tract entitled “Prove All Things, &c.,” p.p. 4, 5, published by Partridge and Oakey, Paternoster Row, London, 1850. with his animadversions on the “Present Question,”—animadversions in tone and character which we will leave to Another to pass sentence on—the explanations that accompanied the letter could not be given, and Mr. Maunsell and others sought an explanation of two points, the only ones that seemed to them of importance. They had interviews with the Bethesda brethren on the matter, of which Mr. M. writes, “The labouring brethren in Bristol, in reply to my letter to them, kindly gave me several hours’ conversation, in company with other brethren from Bath. Our difficulty with them was not as to what should be done in relation to the judgment of errors and departure from unsound assemblies, but rather to convince them that their letter involved certain principles and modes of action contrary to what they then avowed, and as now stated in Mr. Craik’s letter to me.”

The letter alluded to is as follows:—