Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/137

Rh cast in his lot with Darby. His accession was important to the Brethren, for they were wont to obtain far fewer recruits from the Nonconformist ministry than from the clergy of the Establishment. At first Dorman worked at the Rawstorne Street meeting; but he was now residing at Reading. This did not hinder him from taking a leading part in all the disciplinary proceedings against Newton. The following passage will give an idea of the position taken up by the London meeting:—

"“Let me ask you, therefore, to say whether you are prepared to meet Mr. Darby and others concerned in this question in the presence of the saints at Rawstorne Street: where your visit and expressions of willingness to meet investigation have brought it on. I beg to say very distinctly I do not write to brethren at Plymouth for any opinion as to the scriptural mode of proceeding in this investigation—not because I despise their judgment, but because the only satisfactory course for me to pursue, if I am charged with evil, is openly and fairly to answer those charges, when I am required to do so by the Church, whose province is to judge the evil: and not to be raising questions about the competency of the tribunal.”"

It is hard to imagine how a man of Dorman’s intelligence came to persuade himself of the propriety of taking up such an extraordinary position. Everything, as a matter of fact, turned on the competency of the tribunal. As Tregelles said, “It is no answer to say that he [Newton] had come within your jurisdiction by reading Scripture at the house of a sister in Pentonville”. “Surely the difficulty must have been great,” he adds, “before this was assigned as a reason.”

Can Dorman have held that an accused person was bound to plead before any self-constituted tribunal that might choose to send him a summons? Plymouth Brethrenism, it is true, originally rejected local membership, and held that any Brethren coming from a