his assertions, and that upon the very loosest (not to say upon an absolutely erroneous) apprehension of the circumstances that had occurred, he based a decree that was to spread strife, misery and shame, like a conflagration, to the remotest bounds of Christendom.
Another point of the greatest importance must be kept in view in reading this letter. Whatever the relation to Newton of the persons admitted at Bethesda, they were admitted at a time when Newton’s teaching was being held in suspense. The principal error had been abjured with expressions of penitence; the tracts containing the lesser errors had been withdrawn for reconsideration, and the results of the reconsideration were then unpublished. Bethesda was excommunicated for suspending judgment in the meantime.
“Beloved Brethren,
“I feel bound to present to you the case of Bethesda. It involves to my mind the whole question of association with brethren, and for this very simple reason, that if there is incapacity to keep out that which has been recognised as the work and power of Satan, and to guard the beloved sheep of Christ against it—if brethren are incapable of this service to Christ, then they ought not to be in any way owned as a body to whom such service is confided: their gatherings would be really a trap laid to ensnare the sheep. … The object of Mr. Newton and his friends is not now openly to propagate his doctrine in the offensive form in which it has roused the resistance of every godly conscience that cared for the glory and person of the blessed Lord, but to palliate and extenuate the evil of the doctrine, and get a footing as Christians for those who hold it, so as to be able to spread it and put sincere souls off their guard. In this way precisely Bethesda is helping them in the most effectual way they can: I shall now state how. They have received the members of Ebrington Street with a positive refusal to investigate the Plymouth errors. And at this moment the most active agents of Mr. Newton are assiduously occupied amongst the members of Bethesda, in denying that Mr. Newton holds errors, and explaining and palliating his
