Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/308

 called for in the interests of sound doctrine; and they could view without horror Cronin’s act of communion at an irregular “table” that had not the remotest ecclesiastical relations with Bethesda.

Darby, on the contrary, saw that the very existence of his party was bound up with the suppression of such irregular communion. He had, it is true, at first viewed Cronin’s proceedings without alarm; partly, because Cronin, if he stood alone, was not a man to carry much weight; partly, because Darby himself would very likely not have minded replacing Temperance Hall by Masonic Hall. Ultimately, he was restrained from this by one (or both) of two considerations. He may have apprehended that by disowning Temperance Hall he would be playing into the hands of Mr. Kelly; or he may not have dared to set the ultra-spiritual party at defiance.

It may seem a strange speculation that Darby might be afraid of a party among his own followers; but there is a point beyond which no man can altogether hold in check the forces of fanaticism that he has evoked. After that point, he must follow if he would still lead. Historically, it is clear that Darby at least made a truce with the party of which he had so frankly expressed his dislike, if he did not actually capitulate to it.

For indeed that party could find some basis in his writings for its most extravagant pretensions. He might make Unity his watchword to the last, but the only possible result was that his followers lost all sense of the meaning of unity. When, upwards of thirty years earlier, Darby had initiated his gradual process of resolving Brethrenism into its component parts, he had taken for his device, Separation from Evil God’s Principle of Unity. This was a bold attempt to reconcile his principle of universal communion with his practice of universal schism;