person I know before whom it came.” Darby was determined to bring the matter before the Church, and consequently attached no authority to the proceedings of the board of ten, though he consented to meet them, presumably for the purpose of enlightening them as to the facts. It was afterwards a subject of furious dispute[1] to what conclusion the ten investigators had come. As a matter of fact they came to none. It is true that at one time, five of the ten, Campbell, Lord Congleton, Code, Potter and Rhind, signed a statement that “the brethren who investigated matters … were entirely satisfied that Mr. Newton had no intention to deceive or mislead in the letters referred to, though through being over cautious on the one hand, and deficient in carefulness on the other, he had laid himself open to accusation”. Wigram, who treated this document with great contumely, could only deny its allegation in so far as it related to himself. He said that he had not known that it was being drawn up, and did not agree with it. This was at most an oversight on the part of the signatories; and indeed it is certain, from Wigram’s own statement, that at one part of the investigation even he inclined to the same verdict. The document was not published, but its suppression was not due to any change of view as to the judgment
- ↑ The expression is fully justified by the rabid tone of Wigram’s tracts. I say it with regret. Wigram has left a memory that his friends still cherish with love and reverence, and I have already striven to do justice to the labours and sacrifices by which he conferred eminent advantages on English-speaking students of the Bible; but his numerous controversial tracts between 1845 and 1850 cannot be read without sorrow and shame. It is a bare act of justice to his opponents to make this statement, for their conduct cannot be duly estimated without some idea of the provocation they received. If they had been guilty of all that was imputed to them, it would have been far from justifying the unrelenting animosity, the positive scurrility, with which they were pursued.
