chiefly to a total change of front on the part of Mr. Kelly’s following.
Both sides were beginning to feel that the form of the controversy was cumbersome, and as if by a common impulse efforts were being made to simplify the issue. The Kellyites felt that the claims of Abbott’s Hill would afford them no strong footing, and possibly thought that in any case it would be wiser and better to find broader ground. They accordingly rejected the Park Street decision as imposing a new test of communion, and so far fell back (consistently or inconsistently) on original principles.
Their opponents also had a new policy. The historical case for Guildford Hall was to a great extent given up when once the question passed from London to the provinces, and it receded further and further from view as the question pursued its way to the ends of the earth. The cry was raised instead that it was the universal duty to “bow to the Park Street decision”. It could not, of course, be said with decency that it was a duty to submit to Darby’s ruling, and it was therefore necessary to invoke “the authority of the Assembly,” which thenceforth became a topic round which a great, and surely (within its limits) a very important, conflict raged.
But, conceding the loftiest views of the authority of the Assembly, there were still two flaws in the claim that the Priory decision settled the question; and Mr. Kelly’s followers were not slow to point them out. For one thing, it was of course de fide with the Exclusives that no local meeting in London could take any action
were liable to censure. The whole question is left on one side in the text, partly because of its intrinsic insignificance and want of general interest; partly because the controversy was ultimately made to turn on wholly different points, as will immediately appear.
