from those who could not, though blamed by them. In this spirit they walked for a good while. I now turn to details.
From an early period Mr. Newton isolated himself much from the other brethren. He held reading meetings, and would not allow the labouring brethren to attend them: saying it was bad for the taught to hear the authority of the teachers called in question, as it shook confidence in them. At the latter prophetic meetings in Ireland he did not attend. At one of them, instead of going, he held a meeting for himself at Plymouth, on the questions proposed and discussed among the brethren in Ireland, and published his views on them under the title of “Answers to Plymouth Questions.” Particular meetings of his own for inculcating his peculiar views were multiplied without end, and sisters instructed in them, and provided with notes, employed to hold smaller meetings among the poor, and to write letters elsewhere to propagate them. Every visitor was at once brought under the most stringent process for imbuing him with them, and instruments sought wherever possible.[1] Indeed I have known a meeting closed the moment any remark was made on a statement of Mr. N.’s. The “Christian Witness” was denounced as the most mishievous book that ever was written. This process of course grew up gradually. This, with a train of similar conduct, I sorrowed over as an unhappy trait of isolation, and love of acting alone, and having his followers for himself, but I had no suspicion whatever of any purpose of any kind: bore with it as a failing of which we all had some, and left perfect individual liberty complete, and entire, untrenched on. I should not have so acted without my brethren.—I should have rejoiced to have my views corrected by them when I needed it, and learn their’s—but there it was, and
- ↑ One meeting of a smaller number of brethren was at once broken up, that is, never met again, on some objection to critical remarks being made by another brother.
