failed to get a verdict, but he could hardly have failed to gain some more adherents; and all that he gained Newton would have lost. If, on the other hand, Darby were refused access to the Church by its leaders, he had now no other means of gaining it. The leaders afterwards took the ground that there was no case to go before the Church. “We were, indeed, most painfully surprised at a brother’s extracting such charges from such facts; and we felt that we had nothing to lay before the saints; except indeed we expressed to them what must have been a crimination of our brother Darby.” “We hoped,” they add, “that his making such charges was nothing more than a result of the strong excitement under which he always spoke of things and persons here;” and they refer to the fact that Newton “had been known” in Plymouth “during his whole life,” but “that hitherto no moral charge had ever been brought against him”. Undoubtedly they had high views of the functions of leaders, and the strongest objection to making churches deliberative assemblies. At last, on the 17th of December, 1845, they issued a note informing the Church that in their judgment the charges had been “most satisfactorily answered,” and that they believed Newton to be “entirely innocent of the imputations”. This was signed by Soltau, and endorsed by Batten, William Dyer and Clulow.
But Darby had them at such an advantage that it would probably have been their wisest course to waive every objection and give the discussion the fullest publicity. Congleton took a very serious view of the refusal. “If Mr. Newton had consented to the proposed further investigation, and the result had been division, on no better grounds than what I conceive Mr. Darby stands on, the blame of such division would have been
