not have been thus deceived.” The devil is constantly in requisition to explain the perversity of his critics. “The attempt to connect my doctrine with his [Newton’s] is folly or worse—an effort of the enemy to palliate or cover his work.” At an earlier date, apparently before even Hall had taken the matter up openly, he had written the following intensely characteristic sentences: “But I do see another hand and mind behind what is going on, of which this pamphlet is a clear sign to me. As an attack on myself, I am glad not to answer it. If I have to take my adversaries up because they still carry on their warfare, and Satan is using them for mischief, I here declare I will not spare them, nor fail, with God’s help, to make plain the tenets and doctrines which are at the bottom of all this.”
At no time does Darby’s conduct appear less amiable. If he really felt in conscience unable to retract or modify his doctrines, he might none the less have done justice to the motives of such venerable opponents; he might have given them honour and thanks for long and faithful friendship; he need not have cast gratuitous reproach upon their spiritual condition, or have vilified them as men acting by instigation of the devil. This is not, we may all gladly recognise, the Darby of earlier years. It is not the Darby that Groves and Newman loved for his large-heartedness in Dublin; nor even the Darby to whom his enemies bore honourable witness in Switzerland. I suppose it is well-nigh impossible for a man to be treated as infallible through a long series of years by thousands of his fellow-creatures, without suffering grievous moral deterioration; and arrogance and ruthlessness are obviously the qualities most likely to be developed.
On a review of this controversy, the question whether
