Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/71

Rh has spoken to edification, or otherwise,” and “whether what may be advanced is according to the truth or not”. (5) The Lord’s Supper should be observed weekly, in compliance not with a command of the apostles, but with their example. (6) Liberty of ministry in the fullest sense, comprising teaching and exhortation, prayer and praise, should be associated with the ordinance. (7) Preferably, every individual communicant should break off a piece of the sacramental loaf for himself, rather than that it should be broken up by one of the elders.

During all these years Darby’s influence was continually increasing. If we said that he was steadily drawing closer his toils round the infant community, the expression would not be incorrect, unless it were understood to impute to him a deliberate policy of subjugation. Unconsciously, he was surrounding the various companies of the Brethren with influences that were bound to draw them very far from their original intentions; but there is no ground to question the sincerity with which he at first entered into the designs of his friends in Dublin. Ambition came with success; the opportunity was the temptation; and Darby became the helpless captive of his own triumph. So at least I am disposed to interpret the course of events. In his evolutions, Darby ended at a point exactly opposite to that from which he started. He began, as Rees put it, with universal communion, and ended with universal excommunication. He began with the declaration that it would be presumption and impiety to attempt to build up the “ruined Church,” or to restore “the administration of the Body”; and he ended by doing both things strenuously, if there is meaning in