imply even a previous error of judgment; it may have depended altogether on the altered circumstances.
The investigation seems to have been laboriously thorough. Seven church meetings were held between November 27 and December 11, 1848.
“At the first two or three meetings Mr. Müller read from the tracts, page after page, pointing out as he went along what inferences were legitimately deducible from what was read, and which, if they were allowed, would vitiate the atonement; and while these inferences would be disallowed by Mr. Newton, in judging of his views, they must, if legitimate, necessarily be their guide in leading to a decision on them. During the remaining four or five meetings sixteen other brethren spoke. … The result of these deliberations was, that the following conclusion was arrived at: ‘That no one defending, maintaining, or up- holding Mr. Newton’s views or tracts should be received into communion’. Of this decision Lord Congleton writes: ‘This conclusion was given out two or three times by the brethren Groves, Müller and Craik’.”[1]
This declaration, on the most charitable construction, was very unfortunately worded. If it merely meant that people defending the doctrines that were stated to be found in the tracts would not be received, it declared that Bethesda would do as it was already doing. If, on the other hand, it announced a change of policy, the change could only consist in requiring of all candidates for communion that they should entertain the same opinion as the church at Bethesda, not on the theological points, but on the meaning of Newton’s writings. The Jansenists long before had been willing to condemn the “five propositions”; but this was not sufficient; the Pope required that they should also declare that the five propositions were to be found in Jansenius. It is surely
- ↑ Henry Groves, op. cit., p. 44.
