Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/33

Rh as he thought, so vast a sweep of apostolic testimony to the heritage of the Church is not a little surprising. According to Cronin, as we have seen, his meeting never broke up at all. The spirit of this note of Darby’s sheds a good deal of light on the strangely perverted accounts of the beginnings of Brethrenism that afterwards circulated amongst his particular section of the movement.

It is difficult to assign the meeting Darby mentions to its proper place in connexion with Bellett’s detailed annals, as they may fairly be called; and we are not helped by Cronin’s rigid abstinence from dates. It is probable that it is to be identified with the meeting that Miller places in the winter of 1827-8; but if so, Miller was wrong as to its character, which must have been casual and informal, and not, as he supposed, the stable outcome of special deliberation and prayer.

Cronin’s story could scarcely have been broken up so as to end it with the close of 1828. It is from that point, however, that we must now resume the common history.

From his last visit to Dublin up to the time of his departure for Bagdad, in June, 1829, Groves does not seem to have been in contact with these embryonic Brethren. From a passage in one of his letters, to which further reference will be made, it may be inferred that he knew Darby’s tract on the Nature and Unity of the Church, and sympathised with it; and it is certain from his subsequent history that he had become well acquainted with Darby in Dublin, and powerfully attracted by him. Throughout 1829 the companions he left behind were gradually working out the fruitful idea that he had propounded. Bellett gives an account of their progress, of which the accuracy may be gauged by the fearlessness of the detail.