of a disciplinary character, without the fellowship of all the other metropolitan meetings; and this would surely suffice to deprive the decision of the Priory of any right to give the law to the world. In the second place, the Priory was not the first meeting to announce a decision: the meeting at Hornsey had been beforehand with it; why were Brethren not rather called to bow to the decision of Hornsey? The real answer, of course, was that Hornsey, not being Darby’s meeting, was not a name to conjure with, and was, in fact, useless for the purposes of the party.
The truth, however, could hardly be avowed so bluntly, and the Darby party, unable to defend their position in argument, very wisely determined on reprisals. What alternative, they asked, had the Kelly party to propose? The only answer given to this question was that to refuse communion on the ground of a difference of opinion as to a quarrel at Ramsgate was to impose a new and unheard-of test of Christian fellowship. The retort naturally was, “Are we then to reject both meetings at Ramsgate, thus cutting off the innocent with the guilty from the privileges of the Church of God on earth; or are we to receive both, though one at least must be wrong, thus lending the sanction of the authority of the Assembly to schism?” It is hard to see how either party could answer the other. Each was irresistible in attack, impotent in defence. The deadlock that only Darby’s supreme authority had for thirty years held in suspense had come at last with a witness.
Yet so deeply imbued were both parties with the idea of the Divine authority of Exclusivism that comparatively few at that time boldly abandoned an untenable position, and acknowledged the futility of the Exclusive scheme. A universal choice had to be made between the two
