but a step or two more to advance, and you will see all the evils of the systems from which you profess to be separated, to spring up among yourselves… I ever understood our principle of communion to be the possession of the common life or common blood of the family of God (for the life is in the blood); these were our early thoughts, and are my most matured ones. The transition your little bodies have undergone, in no longer standing forth the witnesses for the glorious and simple truth, so much as standing forth witnesses against all that they judge error, have lowered them in my apprehension from heaven to earth in their position of witnesses.”
He also vindicates his right of worshipping with all Christians. “We were free,” he says, “within the limits of the truth, to share with them in part, though we could not in all their services; in fact, as we received them for the life, we could not reject them for their systems.” He makes the personal application: “Some will not have me hold communion with the Scots, because their views are not satisfactory about the Lord’s Supper; others with you, because of your views about baptism; others with the Church of England, because of her thoughts about ministry. On my principles I receive them all; but on the principle of witnessing against evil I should reject them all.”[1]
Such were the principles of the Brethren at the beginning. Soon after the meeting at Dublin, which had its origin in 1828 or 1829, one was commenced also in Plymouth―the meeting which has given its name to all the rest, and may be regarded as the parent of most of the forms of Brethrenism that now exist.
My authority for this statement, as far as the date is concerned, is Dr. Tregelles. He says:―
