Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/171

 such things might happen, in the absence of the investigation he demanded. It would certainly seem that Alexander was “thoroughly baptised,” according to the prayer of the seceding Scotch minister, “into the spirit of disruption”.

Alexander’s action forced the hand of the elders, and accordingly they summoned a church-meeting for June the 29th. At this meeting the famous Letter of the Ten was read by the elders, and sanctioned by the church.

If this document had been a concise subscription to all the heresies of Christendom from the days of Cerinthus downward, it could hardly have raised a greater tumult of execration. According to Trotter, some of its statements “tell a louder and more solemn tale in the ear of conscience than anything which has been advanced by those whom Bethesda looks upon as her adversaries”. Considering the nature of some of the things that had “been advanced” by those whom Bethesda came somehow or other to “look upon as her adversaries,” Trotter’s statement is a very bold one. It will be best to present a summary of the principles of the Letter.

The writers begin by declaring in the most unequivocal terms the orthodoxy of their own belief on the points raised in the Newtonian controversy.

They allege as their reasons for not having consented to a church investigation of Newton’s doctrines, that, in the first place, it was not to edification that people in Bristol should get entangled in the controversies of Plymouth; that, secondly, there had been “such variableness in the views held by the writer in question that it” was difficult to ascertain what he would at that