Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/318



Indeed this was the position unflinchingly taken up. A French Brother, who, like most Continentals, “bowed” to the simulacrum of the authority of Park Street, and to the reality of the authority of Darby, received from a very close friend of former days, who had taken a leading part in the advocacy of the more liberal views of Mr. Kelly, a letter discussing the situation. The Frenchman answered with a blunt refusal to attend or reply to the remonstrances of a révolté—a rebel.

It might have been hoped that the absence of doctrinal complications would have moderated the bitterness of the strife; but if any improvement existed it was scarcely perceptible. The Kelly party indeed, when once things had settled down, showed no wish to persecute; but it was otherwise with their rivals. Perhaps the estimate of schism as worse than wife-murder was widely accepted. At all events, adherents of Park Street again and again refused the proffered hand of old and tried friends. The presence of even near relatives was sometimes publicly ignored. All spiritual relations would be generally suspended, even when a minimum of social intercourse was still admitted. Mr. J. Coupe, a very well-informed writer, gives an example of the prevailing intolerance. It may stand as the representative of many things that I have no wish to perpetuate.

"“In the far Western States lived an Exclusive and his wife. They were more than a hundred miles from one of their own meetings and with no other Christians could they hold any fellowship. Far off as they were shoals of conflicting pamphlets reached them. The result was the wife went with John Darby, the husband refused his authority, and from that moment they could no longer remember the Lord’s death or worship together!”"

This is no isolated case of extravagant bigotry. It is typical of Darbyism.