Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/98

86 appears to have told on Darby’s temper. Some excuse may well be made for a man sustaining single-handed, year after year, such a large and complicated undertaking. His influence, according to Herzog, declined from the time of a conference of the Dissenters of Lausanne, held in September, 1842, to examine his doctrine of the apostasy of the dispensation. With great difficulty Darby was persuaded to attend, and he went only to protest against the meeting as not having “the approval of God”. The following account, if it must be accepted with some reservation as being the statement of an opponent, is at least not wanting in verisimilitude.

"“Especially he [Darby] obstinately refused to take part in the discussions; but they pressed him, putting it to him as an obligation of Christian charity to declare himself on matters of such importance. In the end, as if weary of contention, he submitted to the desired conference, but only to astonish his very partisans by the rashness of his assertions, often contradictory; by the vagueness of his expressions, and by his wretched stratagem of jumping off from one subject to another. The discussion quickly lost all regularity, and degenerated into a regular uproar which put an end to the meeting. But however bewildering this strange scene might be, people left it profoundly impressed with the haughty, imperious, peremptory, ungovernable spirit that Darby had displayed. The thoughts of his heart had come to light, and this discovery of a blemish in the character of a man surrounded until then with so profound a veneration fully opened the eyes of some even amongst his admirers.”"

Darby’s pamphlets, against Rochat and Olivier alike, are bewildering to the reader. He says almost nothing explicitly, and we are left to catch glimpses of his meaning as we proceed. Strategically, he may have been quite in the right in adopting a tone of high-sounding vagueness. He had on his side a mass of chaotic