Cronin bears similar testimony. “We felt free up to this time [evidently 1830], and long afterwards,[1] to make arrangements among ourselves as to who should distribute the bread, and to take other ministries in the assembly.” Cronin goes on to explain that the Brethren came out gradually into the light, and thus concedes the allegation of those who in 1845 and the following years appealed to primitive Brethrenism in opposition to Darbyism.
In view of this consensus of testimony, the statement that either absolutely open ministry, or the rejection of all ostensible government, existed in the earliest phases of the movement must be pronounced either disingenuous or ignorant. Not that either can be regarded as an alien graft on the original stock. On the contrary, both were its natural, perhaps its inevitable, outcome. Groves’ celebrated observation to Bellett in 1828 more than foreshadows the state of things in which these customs were conspicuous, at least so far as liberty of ministry is concerned. The rejection of government was more strictly Darby’s work, as we shall yet have occasion to observe.
Groves’ spiritual history perhaps best illustrates the general state of mind out of which Brethrenism arose. From first to last in his departures from traditional procedure, Groves seems to have been actuated by a conviction that there was a dearth in the Church of a living energy of faith in God. He was far indeed from being such a spiritual egotist as to assume that he could himself supply the lack of it; but he resolved that he would at least act on the principles that its presence
- ↑ At least till 1834, by the testimony of the late J. B. Stoney, who also mentions that at Plymouth, even in 1838, “it used to be arranged beforehand who should break the bread and do official acts”.
