quarters. And declared with very great violence, that if he believed one of the charges brought against him that he would have nothing more to say to him.
There is one other important fact which I mention, as it bears on other points, such as the truth of Sir A. C.’s statements so publicly and carefully denied.[1] At Mr. N.’s first meeting with the brethren, before he made his statement, he declared to them that if they came to meddle in Plymouth affairs he would tell them nothing at all. If they came to inform themselves he could go on, and on this ground he continued. I may here add what is more important, that at their last meeting Mr. Newton (having had now months to consider, and many meetings to see the bearing of things, and his statement in April discussed), stated that his object would be to produce in every gathering united hostility to the brethren’s teaching who differed from him on the points discussed.
Several efforts were made by Mr. Newton and his friends to obtain a vindication of his character from the charges, which issued in nothing, as several declined signing them for different reasons. Not merely because they were not satisfied, but because they felt that the Church ought to judge such a case. This was the feeling of many or most of the brethren who came, even of those who were more particularly friends of Mr. Newton, as of all the rest. I will recur to this as a very material point, but to close the narrative as to vindication. After the refusal, for whatever reasons, of a joint signature of such justification, five brethren, in order to settle this point,
- ↑ It has been attempted to modify this denial. Any one conversant with the poor at Plymouth knows that the tract of Sir A. C. being found to act on their consciences, it was publicly and privately declared to be entirely false, and by the secondary agents of these statements “willingly and wilfully false,” but by the principals everywhere declared to be false. Mr. Newton and Mr. Soltau both declared at the meetings they subsequently held, that if Sir A. C’s statements were true they themselves would have left Ebrington Street. As to the thing denied it will come in by and bye.
