Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/198

 If Captain Woodfall took the communion at Compton Street, he became as Compton Street, and therefore as Newton. If Bethesda Chapel had even excommunicated Captain Woodfall, but had refused to excommunicate one of its own members that had taken the communion with Captain Woodfall somewhere on the Continent, it would have become in the same completeness identified with Newton. If the Bath meeting, rejecting such a member of Bethesda, had admitted one of the other members to communion, it would have been in Newton’s position also; and so would the meeting at Hereford, if it had resolved to refuse everybody from Bethesda but to admit from Bath. To the remotest stage the penalty was exacted. Every one that took the sacrament at a defaulting meeting was excluded from fellowship. This is the meaning of the term “exclusive” as applied to Darby’s following, and it is worth while to add that the term means nothing else whatever.

The Exclusives believed that they found Scriptural authority for their course in the injunction contained in 2 John 10, ii: “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine [the doctrine of Christ], receive him not into your house, neither give him greeting; for he that giveth him greeting is partaker of his evil deeds”. The allegation was that Newton had denied the doctrine of the Person of Christ; that those who associated with him partook of his evil deeds, and were therefore (according to this curious argument) in exactly the same condemnation with himself; that those who refused him without refusing all his associates were consequently no better than if they received him himself, and therefore no better than he; and so on ad infinitum no matter how incalculably the distance from the original heresy went lengthening out.