Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/82

70 appeared to others as the enemy of the Church Missionary Society—an imputation that he felt to be very unjust. There were two sides to the question. Mr. Eugene Stock, the latest authority on the subject, has told us that Rhenius’ “breach with the Church was due to Mr. Groves’s influence”; but if this statement is to be deemed correct, it must only be understood to imply that Groves’ influence made an already serious breach irreparable. In December, Groves writes of his success in “the great object” of his coming to Tinnevelly—“that of preventing my dear brother Rhenius from going to England, which would, I fear, occasion the separation, or, at least, as far as we can see, the scattering of this most affectingly interesting mission”. The Society had invited Rhenius to England to confer on the great point in dispute—the right, that is, of Rhenius to ordain catechists himself instead of obtaining the intervention of the bishop. Evidently Groves did not anticipate that such a visit would lead to an accommodation; and equally evidently he was glad to see Rhenius in an independent position; but it does not seem that he made it his special object to detach him from the Church of England. In the earlier period of the operations of the Church Missionary Society, the great scarcity of English candidates necessitated a large employment of Lutherans. The ambiguous Episco-palianism of these recruits must have been so far a weakness. On the other hand, the inelastic machinery of Anglicanism was undoubtedly regarded by Groves with considerable disfavour; and, however far he was from making it a primary object to bring his fellow Christians over to his own views on ecclesiastical questions, his influence, if a crisis arose, would necessarily be thrown into the scale of separation. He might therefore very