Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/312

 instance in which Darby had thought it best to quietly ignore the principle. Indeed, it was a case of imperious necessity, for there was scarcely a London meeting that could claim to be unanimous on Darby’s side; and out of twenty-six meetings represented at Cheapside, five came to a decision absolutely adverse to Guildford Hall.

Abbott’s Hill made a qualified submission. It ceased to observe the communion on the 8th of May, in hope that a union with the triumphant seceders at Guildford Hall might in that way be effected. Guildford Hall, however, was in no mood to make concessions, but insisted that the rival meeting should be broken up, and that its members should make individual application for admission, with confession that “the position had been false, the course evil, and the table iniquity”. The Abbott’s Hill Brethren were sadly crushed and broken-spirited, but these terms, conceived with a magnanimity befitting a people whose preeminent spirituality had been the original cause of separation, were more than they could bring themselves to accept. They resumed the observance of the Lord’s Supper on the 12th of June, and lived in hopes of recognition from meetings that were reputed hostile to the “Park Street decision”.

Though they obtained this finally, it was not at once declared. The London meetings carried on their discussions into the autumn. Such of them as dissented from Park Street contented themselves with rejecting Guildford Hall, generally without defining an attitude to Abbott’s Hill. This was in some measure due to undeniable faults in the conduct of Abbott’s Hill, but