The saints in fellowship in Bethesda had not been trained into a blind acquiescence in the decision of one or two leading brethren, and that which has become so inveterate a practice and rule of procedure among Mr. Darby’s followers, had met with no countenance either among the leaders or in the church at large—a practice which will ever demoralize those under its influence by binding the decisions of the few on the consciences of the many, in matters of which they know nothing, and yet on the ground of which they are compelled to act. What the church in Bethesda would be called on to condemn, the church would feel called upon to investigate, as was fully proved when at the end of the same year, the elders and the whole church met, considered and condemned the doctrine here alluded to, in meetings at which some of the brethren, but little known, spoke with a clear perception of the tendencies of the views in question, which would surprise those who judge for the church, and keep “the sheep” in entire ignorance of what the matter to be judged is, who often answer an enquiry by an appeal to God, and a half uttered “awful! blasphemy!” which leaves the enquirer in absolute ignorance of the awful thing he is called to acquiesce in the judgment of others about, while the terrible words are passed about from mouth to mouth, and the accuser of the brethren rejoices in a defamation of christian character, a spiritual cannabalism, from which upright hearts and consciences must ever shrink with abhorrence, and that the more intense, when it is palmed off on the honor of God and the glory of Christ!!
Perverse disputations that minister questions, it was wisely deemed advisable to keep outside as long as it was possible to do so. The moment such things creep in, they have to be dealt with as grace and obedience to the Lord may dictate, when a godly decision in action, must take the place of a former watchful vigilance that seeks, if possible, to keep the plague outside, which nothing so tends to introduce, as discussions beforehand.
“5th. Even some of those who now condemn the tracts as containing doctrine essentially unsound, did not so understand them on the first perusal. Those of us who were specially requested to investigate and judge the errors contained in them, felt that, under such circumstances, there was but little probability of our coming to unity of judgment touching the nature of the doctrines therein embodied.”
Let those who allowed Mr. Newton’s views to ripen gradually so long before 1848, answer the question suggested here. Let them answer it who would, alas, have been rejoiced to have found him as great a heretic in 1845 as they found him out to be two or three years afterwards. The fact
