Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/236

 “gatherings” were not enamoured of the Central Meeting. Bad blood had been created by an unfortunate occurrence at one of its sessions. To keep the proceedings private, the doors had been guarded and locked; and a brother who endeavoured to obtain entrance was violently assaulted. No redress could be obtained, the assault being, according to one authority, “justified on the ground of the secret character of the meeting”.

This disaffection may account for the fact that the Walworth Brethren asked of the Priory, “What sin or sins, according to Scripture, of an excommunicable character” Mr. Stewart had committed. The answer was, that they were “of a character not needing to be determined by Scripture”. A request for an investigation by a general meeting met with no better success, and a strained condition of things ensued for several months. The London Bridge Conference eventually found occasion against the disaffected meeting, for the Walworth Brethren actually removed their meeting-place to Peckham without permission. A notice from London Bridge then went the round of London, stating that the Walworth-Peckham meeting had acted “in self-will”. “Subsequently, an individual from the disaffected meeting, presenting himself for fellowship elsewhere, was ‘challenged’ as ‘not in communion’. This led to an official notification from the Presbytery [i.e., the Central Meeting], that the disaffected gathering, and its sympathisers, could not ‘be accredited at the Lord’s table,’ till they were “humbled for their course’.”

The matter did not end here. A member of the Peckham meeting, Goodall by name, applied for communion at the Exclusive meeting in Sheffield. The Sheffield Brethren, with full knowledge of the circumstances, received him. Well knowing the seriousness of the