But this sentence was found to be a _brutum fulmen_; the crime was no crime, the punishment turned out no punishment: and a minority, even in this very Assembly, declared publicly that they would not consent to regard this sentence as any sentence at all, but would act in all respects as if no such sentence had been carried by vote. _Within_ their own high Court of Assembly, it is, however, difficult to see how this refusal to recognise a sentence voted by a majority could be valid. Outside, the civil courts came into play; but within the Assembly, surely its own laws and votes prevailed. However, this distinction could bring little comfort to the Assembly at present; for the illegality of the deposal was now past all dispute; and the attempt to punish, or even ruin a number of professional brethren for not enforcing a by-law, when the by-law itself had been found irreconcilable to the law of the land, greatly displeased the public, as vindictive, oppressive, and useless to the purposes of the Assembly. Nothing was gained, except the putting on record an implacability that was _confessedly_ impotent. This was the very lunacy of malice. Mortifying it might certainly seem for the members of a supreme court, like the General Assembly, to be baffled by those of a subordinate court: but still, since each party must be regarded as representing far larger interests than any personal to themselves, trying on either side, not the energies of their separate wits, but the available resources of law in one of its obscurer chapters, there really seemed no more room for humiliation to the one party, or for triumph to the other, than there is amongst reasonable men in the result from a game, where the game is one exclusively of chance. From this period it is probable that the faction of Non-intrusionists resolved upon abandoning the church. It was the one sole resource left for sustaining their own importance to men who were now sinking fast in public estimation. At the latter end of 1842, they summoned a convocation in Edinburgh. The discussions were private; but it was generally understood that at this time they concerted a plan for going out from the church, in the event of their failing to alarm the Government by the notification of this design. We do not pretend to any knowledge of secrets. What is known to everybody is--that, on the annual meeting of the General Assembly, in May, 1843, the great body of the Non-intrusionists moved out in procession. The sort of theatrical interest which gathered round the Seceders for a few hurried days in May, was of a kind which should naturally have made wise men both ashamed and disgusted. It was the merest effervescence from that state of excitement which is nursed by novelty, by expectation, by the vague anticipation of a 'scene,' possibly of a quarrel, together with the natural interest in _seeing_ men whose names had been long before the public in books and periodical journals.