Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/302

 his calmer moments. But others used expressions, even after Cronin’s death in the beginning of 1882, that showed that the purely conventional character of the accusations was not understood by them. One said, “He passed away with sin unconfessed on his conscience”; another, “That wicked old man has gone to his account”. Now whether Darby had merely written under strong excitement, and was afterwards withheld by false shame from acknowledging his fault,—or whether he had instinctively fallen back on moral charges as a much needed makeweight, and had accordingly elaborated them in so artificial a manner,—I cannot say; possibly he could hardly have said himself. But the following facts are certain: Darby wrote to Cronin on January 5, 1881,—“If you could give up breaking bread,” (i.e. in private), “and own you were wrong in the step you took as to Ryde I should be the first to propose and rejoice in your restoration [to ‘fellowship’]. … I believe … it was false confidence in yourself led you to the false step you took buoyed up by others, not doubting the unhappy influence exercised over you by others.”

That is to say, the charges against Cronin’s moral character were to be tacitly dropped! Cronin’s first reply declined Darby’s terms, and refused to consent to his being “the holder of the keys”. The letter is chiefly important for the solemn declaration it contains that neither Mr. Kelly nor any one else had known anything of the writer’s purpose before the hapless visit to Ryde; but in a further reply Cronin explicitly asks if Darby were prepared to withdraw the “immoral charges”.

Darby replied in a stiff note, in which he attempted no answer whatever to this very natural question. Dr.