Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/167

Rh men would only lay aside their most superfluous anxieties for the ark of God, the Church would surely be saved nine-tenths of its miseries and scandals.

Some thirty years later, a man as good as Trotter published the following sentence: “Mr. Newton and his friends, in attempting to meet the charges which were brought against them, acted in so unscriptural and untruthful a manner, as to decide many of their former friends to separate from them.” The statement, though moderate from the pen of an adherent of Darby’s, was of course libellous; but it was uttered in a perfect, if in a somewhat inglorious security. It was impossible to put too great a strain on Newton’s magnanimous forbearance.

We cannot choose but admire the rigid adherence to the principle that forbade all appeal to a secular tribunal. This constancy was not peculiar to Newton. Probably all his leading opponents would have done just the same in his place. It did not occur to them that St. Paul’s prohibition assumed that there was an appeal within the Church to a court whose decision would be final. The Brethren made no effort to constitute such a court; and that being the case it becomes a question whether an appeal to secular law would not have been the lesser of two undoubted evils. It is at all events pretty certain that if Newton had sent Darby a lawyer’s letter on the first publication of the charges of lying, there would have been an end of the whole matter, and the Church of Christ would have been saved a very great scandal.