London and put pacification almost out of the question. This letter, technically known as “the letter from Pau,” is conceived in its author’s worst style. “The course of Dr. Cronin,” it says, “has been clandestine, untruthful, dishonest, and profane.” The course was clandestine, because Cronin had visited Ryde without giving notice of his intentions; for it could scarcely be said that he had kept quiet about it after it was done. It was untruthful, because Cronin had gone “on the ground that it was notorious that there was no meeting at Ryde; whereas it was notorious that many, and very many, brethren quite as upright as himself, held distinctly that there was;” and it was profane, because the guidance of the Holy Ghost was claimed by the Doctor for such a nefarious transaction.
This opportune letter was circulated with tremendous energy by the leaders of the Priory meeting[1]—a meeting always distinguished by its relentless resort to “discipline” for the enforcement of the highest ecclesiastical pretensions of the sect. These men, who thus used the name of their venerable chief for the prosecution of their own purposes, might have tried rather to save the credit of his grey hairs—a task that they have made it hopeless for any one else to undertake. They did not lack admonition. Mr. John Jewell Penstone[2] printed an open letter on May 1, a few days after the receipt of Mr. Darby’s. “I do not,” he says, “criticise in detail
- ↑ By this time removed to Park Street, Islington, and sometimes known by the old name, sometimes by the new.
- ↑ Mr. Penstone, who at the time of writing is connected with Open Brethren, is one of the oldest living representatives of Brethrenism. He was first associated with it in Little Portland Street, at least as early as 1839. The letter referred to in the text is dated from Stanford-in-the-Vale, Berks, which was his home for many years.
