Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/109

Rh nights in the week. It is at least clear that he did not obtain a footing among them by false or even ambiguous pretences. Nevertheless difficulties speedily arose. A prolonged discussion as to whether Müller should be allowed to take the Lord’s Supper with them produced so deep a division of opinion that one of the stricter party declared that there must be a separation. “I then,” says Müller, “entreated the brethren not to think of a separation. I represented to them what a scandal it would be to the ungodly, and what a stumbling-block also to the believers who are yet in the State Church.”

Division however was inevitable. One or two of the elders having determined to reject him, a meeting “for the breaking of bread” was started in his private room the same evening. Seventeen persons were present; “of these seventeen, twelve were belonging to this little Baptist church, two Swiss brethren who have learned the way of truth more perfectly through our brother John Darby, one English sister, my wife and I”. Of the separation Müller says, “The matter would be, however, more painful, did I not see it of great importance that the disciples who hold the truth should be separate from those who hold such fearful errors as: The forgiveness of sins received through baptism; baptism a covenant between us and God; regeneration through baptism, and no regeneration without it; the actual death of the old man through baptism, it being drowned, so that only the body and the new nature are alive.” It is evident that these views were not generally held before Müller’s arrival, but that they were taught by the principal elders and accepted by the extreme party that had refused Müller the communion.

Müller attributes the unhappy state of the Baptist church at Stuttgart to the want of the settled practice