Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/337

 to indicate within what limits the same account holds good of Open Brethrenism.

Open Brethrenism may be best regarded as a kind of incomplete Darbyism. Darby is the prophet of the whole movement in all its ramifications. Newton, for example, represented elements that existed in some strength in primitive Brethrenism, until they were crushed out by Darby; but Newton separated wholly from both sections, and constantly directed the fire of his polemics against the views that they held in common. Both parties alike were heretical in Newton’s eyes, mainly on three points. They denied that the Church would go through the Great Tribulation; they denied the imputed righteousness of Christ, in the sense in which Newton deemed it essential that that doctrine should be held; and they denied that the Old Testament saints formed an integral part of the Church. It is true that on these points there is not the rigid uniformity amongst the Open Brethren that prevails amongst Exclusives; but the immense majority—and a majority that gives its tone to the whole—is as thoroughly Darbyite on these test-questions as Darby himself.

The looseness of the ecclesiastical organisation of the Open Brethren has saved them from the necessity of pushing local quarrels to the point of a universal schism. Each local meeting grants regular communion to such other meetings as it sees fit; and though there is some approach to an understanding amongst them as to what meetings should be generally recognised, there is nothing to prevent two meetings that disown each other from being both alike recognised by the mass of “open” meetings. This has been the great gain of the Open party, and an ample compensation for certain points of decided inferiority. These cannot be denied. For the