Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/31

Rh that I became resident in Dublin. I was then informed that I could no longer be allowed to break bread with any of them without special membership with some of them. That was the starting point with me. With the strong impression on my soul, though with little intelligence about it, that the Church of God was one, and that all that believed were members of that one body, I firmly refused special membership.”

Dr. Cronin’s narrative proceeds as follows:

"“This left me in separation from their table for several months, and then, feeling unable to attend their meetings from the growing opposition to one-man ministry, I was left exposed to the charge of irreligion and antinomianism.

“… To avoid the appearance of evil, I spent many a Lord’s Day morning under a tree or a haystack during the time of their service.

“My name having been publicly denounced from one of their pulpits (the Rev. E. Cooper’s), Edward Wilson, assistant secretary to the Bible Society in Sackville Street, where he resided, was constrained to protest against this step, which led ultimately to his leaving also.

“Thus separated, we two met for breaking bread and prayer in one of his rooms, until his departure for England.”"

The little meeting was transferred to Cronin’s house in Lower Pembroke Street. Apparently before Wilson’s departure, the two dissidents had been joined by Cronin’s cousins, the two Misses Drury, who seceded from the same chapel. A fifth member of the little band was Timms, a bookseller in Grafton Street. Cronin seems to intimate a considerable expansion in his company before it came into touch with the circle in which Groves, Bellett, and Darby were leading spirits.

“It there [i.e., at Lower Pembroke Street] became noised abroad, and one another became affected by the same truth, which really was the oneness of the Body and the presence of the Holy