Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/309

 but what limit could he prescribe to the action of such a formula? If the “New-lumpists” held that the spiritual must form a new communion by forcing out or excising the unspiritual, it was open to them to say that they sought only a further and more exquisite refinement of that mysterious, impalpable “unity” which their great prophet had taught them to seek.

How impassable the gulf between the “spiritual” party and those who still sought for some moral significance in spiritual things, was finely illustrated in a correspondence between two London Brethren who were acknowledged leaders in the advocacy of the principles of their several parties. One of them had made some severe strictures on Dr. Cronin’s schismatical act. The other wrote to remonstrate. The first replied, “If you understood (pardon me saying so) the unity of the Spirit as the constitutional bond of the church, the body of Christ compacted together by that which every joint supplieth, you could not … have put any moral conduct, even the murder of a wife, as deeper in sinfulness than a persistent wilful denial of the constitution of the Church of God.” This was not the language of a raw disciple of an extravagant school; it was the language of the school’s greatest leader.

In the London community, for months and even for years, the Ramsgate “question” effectually banished all more edifying topics. It became everybody’s duty to investigate the local facts. Parties formed rapidly, and their differences threatened once more the disintegration of the whole system. Indeed, to the apprehension of the disputants, Luther had not raised a more important question; for the very existence of the last witness to the Church of God upon earth was at stake.

Unhappily, the question on which so much depended