Ebrington Street Church, for he felt that there was “a sectarian and clerical spirit” there, though “that did not constitute grounds for leaving”. Yet he would not “break bread with them,” because “they did not do all they might have done to prevent the division”.
Wigram continued to exercise his virtual leadership at the Rawstorne Street meeting as before. Darby, who was equally involved in Lord Congleton’s charge, was received there without enquiry. In April there was a meeting at Rawstorne Street of “brethren from other parts”. Congleton attended this meeting and made a statement “substantially the same as that contained in the last part” of a letter he had sent beforehand to one of the conveners. This was as follows: “I consider that Mr. Darby, after withdrawing from communion, Sunday, October 26, 1845, giving certain reasons, did publicly slander and defame, in Ebrington Room, Monday, November 17, 1845, his neighbour, his Christian brother and his fellow-minister in the word, and thereby caused a great breach and division in that gathering. … That Mr. Wigram helped him, etc.” These charges were left uninvestigated.
In October Wigram addressed to the Rawstorne Street meeting a violent printed attack on Newton, alleging (presumably as the principal charge) the discrepancy between Newton’s account of the April meeting and Darby’s, and claiming confirmatory evidence on Darby’s behalf. Passionately as the charge is urged, it breaks down ludicrously. Mr. Newton, he tells us, had circulated an explanatory paper, “most specious and artful,” but proving “to any simple mind … not untruthfulness only, but a jesuitical mode of acting, which is most painful”. Wigram intimates that he has further evidence in reserve, (a favourite artifice throughout this
