brotherly fellowship. If they agree with the course followed by Mr. Wigram and others, there can be no fellowship between us and them; if they disapprove of that course, we feel that they are bound first to call to account those who have been manifestly guilty of following a course tending to division, and of grossly slandering their brethren.”
Meanwhile the execution of Darby’s decree was going rapidly forward. In the preceding spring, a division had been forced at Bath under the influence of Wigram and Sir Charles Brenton, the translator of the Septuagint. Bellett and Captain Wellesley tried in vain to keep up the neutral policy on which the meeting had decided, and Captain Hall paid a visit from Hereford in the interests of peace generally. Wellesley was considered “an exceedingly dangerous person,” because though he deemed Newton’s tracts erroneous he was not able to see the “extreme danger” in them that some saw. About the same time “it was required of brethren in Orchard Street, London, that they should refuse Christians coming from Bethesda. They declined compliance and were at once separated from by Mr. Darby’s followers”.[1]
Not a little of the fury of the persecution fell on one whose long services and broken health might have pleaded for exemption. Early in 1849 Norris Groves visited the meeting at Tottenham, and took the communion there. The meeting was one of some importance in the neighbourhood of London, because of the high regard in which its leaders, the brothers John and Robert Howard, were held. John Howard made his mark as a man of science, and was honoured with a Fellowship
- ↑ Divers Weights Brought out and Broken, by D. W., p. 2.
