makes the charge of falsehood against Newton ridiculous; and it is amazing that Darby should not have seen how completely he stultified himself by publishing it.
This extraordinary charge was not brought forward without a long delay, and may have been altogether an afterthought. The quarrel dragged out its weary length from March to October. Newton’s incriminated letter bore date, April 18. On Sunday, October 26, at the close of the morning meeting, Darby detained the congregation at Ebrington Street Chapel, and told them that he “was going to quit the assembly”. He abstained from entering into details, as he puts it. “I … only stated the principles on which I went: that I felt God was practically displaced; and more particularly, that there was a subversion of the principles on which we met; that there was evil and unrighteousness unconfessed and unjudged.” An allusion to the suppression of a kind of informal committee meeting, called the Friday meeting, followed; and that was all.
Three weeks after his secession, Darby was invited to attend a meeting at Ebrington Street. The object of the meeting, which was held on Monday, November 17, was to enquire into his reasons for seceding; and he then made his first public complaint against Newton’s personal integrity. Thenceforward the charge was urged with a pertinacity to which few men would have been equal.
It was accompanied by several others. To some of these Darby himself attached little importance, and we may imitate his example with the most perfect safety; but there was one other on which he laid great stress. In the summer of 1845 Newton had published a letter that had for some time previously been circulating in manuscript. He expunged a paragraph that had “caused pain to some,” and inserted two new passages, “negativ-
