ares

 
Cornell Universit

The making of Methodism:studies in the
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
LIBRARIES
ITHACA, N. Y. 14583

 

 
THE MAKING OF METHODISM.
@
DR. TIGERT’S WORKS. —

A Constitutional History of American Episcopal Methodism. 8vo.
414 pages. $1.50.

“The work will bear the same relation to Methodism that the great work of Hodge
bears to the Presbyterian Church.’—Bishop Hurst. ‘A classic in Methodist literature,
not to say ecclesiastical literature.’’—Bishop Hendrix.

Hand-book of Logic: A Concise Body of Logical Doctrine, Including Modern Ad-
ditions; with Numerous Practical Exercises. 12mo, 320 pages. #1. Seventh edition.
“It is comprehensive; written with a great deal of ability and precision. It ma; be

characterized as multum in parvo.’—Dr.H. M. Harman, Dickinson College. ou

have certainly produced an excellent work—one of the best in our language—the influence
of which will greatly encourage the study of the science in our colleges. I believe and
hope that it will come into extensive use.’’— Prof. Noah K. Davis, University of Virginia.

Systematic Theology: A Complete Body of Wesleyan Arminian Divinity, Con-
sisting of Lectures on the Twenty-five Articles of Religion, by the late Rev. Thomas
O. Summers, D.D., LL.D. The Whole Arranged and Revised, with Introduction, Co-
pious Notes, Explanatory and Supplemental, and a Theological Glossary. By Rev.
Jno. J. Tigert, M.A., S.T.B., Professor in Vanderbilt University. In two volumes.
Royal 8vo. 552, 572 pages. Each $2. (Over two thousand sets have been sold.)

“T regard it as a most valuable contribution to our Methodist and general theological
literature. It ought to occupy a prominent place, because of its broad scope and of the
rich material which abounds throughout the work.”—Bishop John F. Hurst.

The Preacher Himself: Homely Hints on Ministerial Manners and Methods.
12mo. 200 pages. 80 cents. (Second edition.)

“The character, duties, and relations of the ministry, with special reference to the re-
quirements of Methodism, are here sketched in graphic outlines, every chapter bristling
with suggestions of practical value.”—L.

Passing Through the Gates, and Other Sermons. By the late Rev. Holland
Nimmons McTyeire, D.D., Senior Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
Edited, with an Introduction, by Rev. Jno. J. Tigert,D.D. 12mo. 319 pages. $L
“Dr, Tigert has en the Church evidence of superior skill, both as an author and

editor. Bishop McTyeire was known both as preacher and writer throughout the coun-
try; so when we saw the book our expectations were high. An eager perusal has not
disappointed us. Dr. Tigert, in his Introduction, has given us an instructive, discrimi-
nating, and faithful estimate of Bishop McTyeire as a preacher. No juster estimate of
the bishop in this line have we seen.”—Dr. Potter.

A Manual of Christian Doctrine. By the Rev. John S. Banks, Theological Tu-
tor, Headingley College, Leeds. First American from the Fourth English Edition.
Edited, with an Introduction and Additions, by Jno. J. Tigert, D.D., LL.D., Book Ed-
itor, Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 12mo. 891 pages. Price, $1.50.

 

“Here is a great book. We have read it through, and portionsof it twice. It combines
depth and brilliancy.”—R. N. Price, D.D. “It is not surpassed by any book of which
we have knowledge.”—Central Methodist. ‘‘ Dr. Tigert’s notes are pertinent and lumi-
nous, and enhance the value of a work which was already almost invaluable to the stu-
dent of theology.” —Worth Carolina Christian Advocate.

The Journal of Thomas Coke, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, from
September 18, 1784, to June 3, 1785. Reprinted from the Arminian Magazine, Phila-
delphia, for May, June, July, and August, 1789. Carefully conformed to the Original.
8vo. 32pages. Paper, 50 cents.

A Voice From the South: The Fraternal Address, Delivered Before the General
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, May, 1892. 12mo. 64 pp. 10 cents.

“Dr. Tigert has performed a real service.”—J. M. Buckley.

Theology and Philosophy, A Select Glossary of; Including Brief Biographical
Notices of Eminent Theologians and Philosophers. 8vo. 52pages. Paper, 25 cents.
‘There is more matter in the fifty-two closely printed pages than is usually found in

one hundred, and the work is distinguished’ throughout by fullness of information,

clearness of statement, and conciseness of expression."—Dr. (. F. Smith.

Original Status of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America.
8vo, 21 pages. Paper, 10 cents.

Wandering Stars; or, Rationalism the Root of Sin. 8vo. 16 pages. 10 cents.

BARBEE & SMITH, Agents, NASHVILLE, TENN.

 

(ii)
“hgdi ‘Lz MAINS ON SOI

A MOWLLIV EG, SHONTD
IP WVTTMILAY ONV SAUSV A SVINOILD, SLVOOLVILAY GUVIHOIYE SAMOD AOMSTE, At SNOLLVYNIGUO *

 

NOD SVIWLSINMD AL LV

 
 

‘NIM 1lODS1A S,RMAASY SIONVA

 

 

 
THE

NG OF METHODISM:

STUDIES IN THE

(ESIS OF INSTITUTIONS.

BY

JNO. J. TIGERT, D.D., LL.D.,

EDITOR OF THE METHODIST REVIEW.

the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the
ear.” —Mark iv. 28.

Nasxavitie, TENN.:
. Houss or tHE Mersopist Episcopal Cuurca, Soura.
Barsee & Suira, AGENTS.
1898.
CoPpyYRIGHT:
BarBEE AND SmiTH, AGENTS.
1898.
To My Father,

Sobn James Tigert, Sr.,

Wao, ror Hatr a Century, HAS WISELY AND TENDERLY DIscHARGED
THE Duriss or Crass LEADER AND STEWARD;
WHo, For A ScorE oF YEARS, HAS BEEN THE CONSIDERATE AND
AFFECTIONATE Parent or My HovusrHoLtp; AND
Woo, 1n AGr AND FEEBLENESS EXTREME, ABIDES

with Us at Fourscore YEARS;
THIS VOLUME IS
GRATEFULLY AND LOVINGLY DEDICATED.
@)
PREFACE.

Tue last quarter of the seventeenth, and the first decade of
the eighteenth, century were needed for building the cathedral
church of the metropolis of the world. Though thus a church
of two centuries, it is a building of but one generation; for
throughout the period of its erection there were but one mas-
ter-builder, one architect, and one bishop of the diocese. While
St. Paul’s was in building there was born in England the ar-
chitect, master-builder, and bishop of another London ecclesi-
astical edifice—a building of God, a spiritual house not made
with hands, whose materials were living stones—who, though
he lived nearly across the eighteenth century, did not live long
enough to finish the work he began. The Making of Metho-
dism is a work of the generations for the generations; and,
since to-day it probably occupies the position of the first Prot-
estantism of the world, it is beginning to look as if it might
prove the Church of the Centuries.

To students it is becoming increasingly evident that the
history of Methodism in America, especially in its beginnings,
must sooner or later be critically reconstructed and rewritten.
It is not that Abel Stevens does not richly deserve recognition
as the Macaulay of Methodism, or Bishop McTyeire as its
Tacitus. It is not that writers earlier than Stevens—I refer
particularly to Jesse Lee—did not collect and preserve inval-
uable materials and render other useful service. It is not that
some later writers have not made careful studies and embodied
them in more or less trustworthy monographs and general
works. But it is that there have been slowly collecting the
materials for a more comprehensive and exhaustive presenta-
tion of the history according to the philosophical and causal
principles of its development; for the correction of errors and

(vii)
viii PREFACE.

misconceptions, some of them grown hoary and stubborn by
long unchallenged acceptance; for freeing the narrative from
one-sided controversial elements; for more accurately and mi-
nutely tracing the genesis of the government of the Church,
and the unfolding of the organic principles of fundamental
law, purely in the light of the abundant contemporary sources;
for filling in details in the biographies of the itinerant heroes
who planted Methodism in the wilderness and made it bloom
as the garden of the Lord; and, in fine, for occupying a new
and higher historical standpoint from which a better outlook
over the whole field can be secured, putting all the objects of
the vast panorama in something like their true proportion and
perspective.

As a contribution to the correct construction of our govern-
mental history this volume is intended. The chapters which
follow have occupied me at intervals through a period of three
years, receiving from time to time the best attention I could
give them. Though some of them were written under the
pressure of various and somewhat exacting editorial duties,
there has been in every case opportunity for review of the po-
sitions taken and of the foundations upon which they rest. I
have endeavored to imitate the example of the workman who,
in the pause at the railway station, taps the car-wheel with his.
hammer. While my readers may discern abundant traces of
infirmity and fallibility in these pages, I cannot tax myself
with haste or carelessness in their composition and publica-
tion. I prefer, nevertheless, to have these papers looked upon
as historical studies; though the conclusions reached are de-
liberate and, I think, not unworthy of attention.

Some new ground has been broken. Some features in the
development of the presiding eldership have perhaps been
more distinctly traced, if not placed in a new light: taken in
connection with what I have tried to present elsewhere, the
materials now exist for an orderly and complete history of this
PREFACE. ix

 

important arm of our service. No former attempt has been
made at a critical catalogue of the sources of the history of the
Christmas Conference—the forerunner of a similar catalogue
of all the editions of the Methodist Discipline, in both Epis-
copal Methodisms, for which I have nearly completed the ma-
terials. Some aspects, at least, of the history cf the Christmas
Conference, e. g., the exact occasion and circumstances that gave
birth to the body in the call of the preachers at Barratt’s, are
here more exhaustively treated, with a more careful basing of
the narrative exclusively on the sources, than by any histori-
an with whose work I am acquainted. I think that most crit-
ical students will probably agree that the question of the
“lost minutes” of the Christmas Conference is about laid: at
least the investigation here made approximately exhausts the
state of the evidence, and cancels this hypothetical factor in
the present reconstruction of the history. In the earlier chap-
ters, covering more familiar ground, citations of the evidence
are not so uniformly given; but in these cases, also, readers
who care to investigate will generally find that the paragraphs,
and often the very sentences and phrasing, rest immediately
on unimpeachable sources. My constant aim has been to make
the discussions intelligible, constructive, and conclusive, and of
equal interest to special students and general readers; in short,
to all who have an interest in tracing the growth of Methodism.

During the writing of this book, official duty, as well as in-
clination, has led me to wide reading in general history: I
have been more than ever impressed with the study of history
—the investigation of historical problems, and the weighing of
historical evidence—as perhaps the most valuable of mental
disciplines. It is at the opposite pole from the reasonings of
mathematics and pure logic, within whose demonstrative pale
so little of practical human interest can be brought. Bishop
Butler was among the first, not only to gauge the value of
x PREFACE.

 

probable reasoning for the evidences of religion, but also to
‘selze upon its unique worth as an element of mental discipline
—nay, as a characteristic and distinguishing feature of moral
probation itself. Similarly, the successful study of history re-
‘quires or produces an elevated position, a broad horizon, a del-
icate and sensitive poise of the faculties, which must be shel-
tered from controversial gusts, a serious and impartial judg-
ment, an intellectually sympathetic and hospitable nature, a
clear rational collocation of conditions, and a firm passage from
causes to effects. Of the greatness of my deficiencies in all
these respects, no one can be more painfully aware than myself,
especially as from my youth my natural bent has been toward
purely philosophical studies. But I must be permitted to say
that, in reading such books, for example, as Harnack’s History
of Dogma—involved and perplexing as the style often is—my
spirit has at times been raised to a pitch of admiration and en-
thusiasm that was little short of transporting. To watch the
accurate, complete, and beautiful manner with which pertinent
scraps of evidence are brought together from the four quarters
of the earth, until there is a reconstruction before one’s very
eyes of the opinions and influence of sometimes obscure men,
sects, and parties, of whom the literary monuments are few and
scant, affords a sublimer exhibition of human skill than is in-
volved in the most delicate or the most ponderous mechanical
creations, or even in the putting together of fins and wings and
bones until the extinct fishes, birds, and beasts of long past
geological ages are made to take their places in our scientific
catalogues. I shall not be misunderstood, therefore, I trust, if
I venture to acknowledge that some high ideals have dimly and
distantly floated before my mind while writing these pages, and
that with an increasing sense of responsibility I have put pen
to paper. In particular, it is with no disrespect for the later
historians that I have very generally neglected their labors,
and sought to draw the history directly, purely, and objectively
PREFACE. xi

from the sources. If I have missed the way, I have no one but:
myself to blame, as I have chosen to plunge into the forest
with little help from guides or guideposts.

These sources, with two or three exceptions, it is unnecessary
to enumerate here, as they are sufficiently indicated in the volume..
I wish, however, to express my personal obligations to the Rev.
David J. Waller, D.D., for the courtesy and generosity with which
he delivered into my official custody a complete set of the “ Min-
utes of the Methodist Conferences” ( British ) from 1744 to 1896—.
thirty-nine stoutly-bound volumes inall. These books have been
of no slight service to me, and pass into the editorial library of
the Publishing House as a fertile deposit for the years to come.
I have also made use of a collection of Methodist Disciplines
which, with the help of my friend, Mr. R. T. Miller, of Coving-
ton, Ky., may fairly be described as complete. I am particu-
larly indebted to Brother Miller, who is a member of the Fed-
eration Commission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, for the
use of the original Disciplines of 1784 (the first) and of 1787—of
which he owns one of the only two copies known to be in existence.
All the passages in this volume which were first taken from re-
prints, have been carefully collated with the originals of 1784
and 1787, “that,” as Brother Miller says in a private letter,
“you may be able to state that you have seen and compared
what you have reproduced with the originals, and that, of your
own knowledge, your reproduction is correct.” For this kind-
ness I here express my grateful thanks to Brother Miller. I
am safe in saying that no previous writer on Methodist history
has had at his command a collection of Disciplines comparable
with my own thus supplemented: of them I have endeavored to
make constant and judicious use. I have also used a collection
of Sunday Services completed, with the help of Mr. Miller, to a
point where they cease to be of importance for my present pur-
poses: the first edition, 1784; the second edition, 1786 (both
American); the third edition, 1788 (British); the fourth edi-.
xii PREFACE.

tion, 1792 (both the American and the British editions);+ and
the fifth edition, 1816 (British).

Though this preface is already too long—embracing matter
which perhaps might better have gone into the volume, but for
which I did not find a place—I desire to acknowledge the effi-
cient and constant aid unstintedly given me by my assistant,
Mr. John L. Kirby, whose journalistic and typographical expe-
rience, reaching back more than thirty years to his association
with Mr. Geo. D. Prentice on the staff of the Louisville Jour-
nal, has contributed to the accuracy and dispatch of all my
literary work for three years past.

Jno. J. TIGERT.
NasHvI.e, 2 February, 1898.

 

1In explanation of this distinction I ought to add that in 1788 and 1792,
and almost certainly in 1786 also, both American and English editions of the
Sunday Service or Prayer-book were published. In the English editions
the XXIIId Article of Religion differs wholly from the American Article,
reading as follows:

XXIII. OF THE RULERS OF THE BRITISH DOMINIONS.

The King’s Majesty, with his Parliament, hath the chief power in all the British Do-
minions; unto whom the chief government of all estates in all causes doth appertain,
and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign jurisdiction.

So the Article reads in the British editions of 1788 and 1792—p. 320 in
both—which lie before me. It might be added that both of these British
books contain the forms of ordination for Deacons, Elders, and Superintend-
ents. They are of first-rate importance in determining the intentions of
Mr. Wesley with regard to the relations of British and American Methodism.
These distinguishing features of the British editions disappear after 1792. I
think I may safely say that I am the first writer—at least on this side the

Atlantic—to discover these books, and to appreciate their importance and
use them.
CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

DHE JPISCOPMON ig ceasmies an dos ang uecedurelena ces oiaue Si8. avers 3
CHAPTER II.

Tus: Hprscopacy (CONTINUED) iis oe aw seas vecwoss’ Pawewees 13
CHAPTER III.

THE PRESIDING ELDERSHIP......... ccc cce cence eteeeeeeenees 27
CHAPTER IV.

Tur PResipING ELDERSHIP (CONTINUED).........eeeeeceeeaes 38
CHAPTER V.

HAE: DPI N ERAN GS. sissies: vie.e is Wie'isiee:ae acolere warmnaseeulsaane a cceaa 47
CHAPTER VI.

THE ITINERANCY (CONTINUED).......00ccceeececceeceeenees 57
CHAPTER VII.

Tar ITINERANCY (CONCLUDED)........ccccccccceecesseeseecs 66

CHAPTER VIII.

Tut GENESIS OF THE GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES..... 75
I. The Origin of the Christmas Conference.

CHAPTER IX.

Tur GENESIS OF THE GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES..... 86
II. Organization, Membership, and Minutes of the Christ-
mas Conference.

(xiii)
xiv CONTENTS.

 

CHAPTER X.

PAGE
THE GENESIS OF THE GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. ... 98

III. Sources of the History of the Christmas Conference.

CHAPTER XI.

THE GENESIS OF THE GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES.,.. 113
III. Sources of the History of the Christmas Conference
(Continued).

CHAPTER XII.
Tuer GENESIS OF THE GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES.... 120
IV. The Historical Development.
CHAPTER XIII.

Tuer BALTIMORE CONFERENCE SysTEM oF GOVERNMENT IN AMER-

TOAN METHODISM .:cs<imcontnm was Aten snes Rie 147
APPENDIX.

ORDERS: ROMAN AND ANGLICAN... ...cccccecucccccceccceccs 161

TID Bevan ts aa ito 0S IRR ai coda oe sve ails ave “essa oi nhgcanacube woacototanavecy 171

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Francis Assury’s EpiscopaAL ORDINATION............Frontispiece
Ricnarp Wuatooar, THE First Mernopist Exvper..Facing p. 30
Francis Aspury, Apostle or American Mernopism.Facing p. 57
Barratr’s Coapet, Kant County, DELAWARE...... Facing p. 76

Tuomas Cons, Forgran Minister or Meruopism....Facing p. 113
THE EPISCOPACY.
@)
THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

CHAPTER I.

THe EpiscopPacy.

AuL the powers, and more, ever exercised by a Methodist
bishop were exercised by John Wesley. He admitted to and
excluded from his societies; he chose and removed stewards;
he invited his helpers to meet him in consultation; he presided
in the Conferences and fixed the appointments of the preachers;
he received, changed, and suspended preachers according to his
judgment; he traveled throughout Great Britain and Ireland
superintending the spiritual and temporal business of the Con-
nection; and he ordained deacons, presbyters, and bishops.
Nothing has been introduced into Episcopal Methodism in
America that did not exist in primitive Methodism in England
under the government of its founder. All these things he did
without the mandatory, and even without the concurrent, action
of the Conference, except as he chose to consult its sentiments,
and to follow its advice. Advance in America has been by
reversion to the primitive type; in England there has been
degeneration from the type.

Modern American Methodists have commonly supposed that’
only in a figure was Mr. Wesley a bishop; but, in view of the
facts stated above, as well as some things which Mr. Wesley
said of himself about a clear divine call and providential desig-
nation to the office and work of a scriptural bishop, it is not
surprising that the American minutes of 1789 and 1790 number
John Wesley among the persons that exercised the episcopal
office in the Methodist Church in Europe and America.

In America the earliest adumbration of the general super-
intendency was in the person and duties of Thomas Rankin,
the first general assistant for America. From 1773 to 1777 he
exercised in America the same powers that Mr. Wesley did
in England, except that he was under the direction of Mr

(@)
4 THE MAKING OF METIIODISM,

 

Wesley; that he did not administer sacraments or ordain,
though the question was mooted whether he ought not to bap-
tize; and that the Conference decided by vote many measures
that were submitted to it. But when Mr. Asbury was first
recognized as general assistant by the irregular Delaware Con-
ference of 1779, the largest powers of Mr. Wesley in the control
of Conference action were expressly bestowed upon him: after
hearing the debate in Conference the right of determination
rested with him. In 1780 it was decided by Asbury’s irregu-
lar Conference that every traveling preacher must hold an an-
nually renewed license signed by him. When reunion with
the regular Conference in Virginia was effected in the same
year, Mr. Asbury was requested to superintend the work at
large; and in 1782 he was unanimously elected to preside over
the American Conferences and the whole work. In 1783 his
position is recognized or confirmed by Mr. Wesley, who forbids
the American Conference to receive any English preachers who
are reluctant to recognize Asbury’s authority as general assist-
ant. By the double tenure of Conference election and Mr.
Wesley’s confirmation Asbury holds office as the superintend-
ent of the whole work when the Christmas Conference meets.
In September, 1784, Mr. Wesley ordained Thomas Coke,
a presbyter of the Church of England, to the office of superin-
tendent for the American work. He was not intended to su-
persede Asbury, but to bea joint superintendent with him.
This third ordination Mr. Wesley justified on the ground (1)
that by the clearest providential appointment he was himself
as much a scriptural bishop as any man in Europe; (2) that no
bishop at that time exercised any ecclesiastical jurisdiction in
America; (3) that the three orders of bishops, presbyters, and
deacons are plainly described, though not enjoined, in the New
Testament; (4) that three grades of ministers generally ob-
tained in the Churches of the apostolic age; (5) that the pres-
byters of the apostolic Church of Alexandria continued for two
hundred years to ordain their own bishops; and (6) that the
right of ordination to all grades of the ministry thus inhering
in presbyters, he, being a Church-of-England presbyter, and
divinely called and providentially designated to the office and
work of a scriptural bishop, could rightfully proceed, and was,
according to the law of an inexorable necessity (which Hooker
THE EPISCOPACY. 5

and many other Church-of-England authorities recognized as
valid) in duty bound to proceed, to the ordination of Thomas
Coke, a coequal presbyter of the same Church, to the episco-
pal office, and of Messrs. Whatcoat and Vasey as presbyters,
they having first been ordained to the diaconate. This, it is be-
lieved, is as succinct and complete an analysis, from Mr. Wes-
ley’s own standpoint, as it is possible to give, every item of
which can be, and has been, substantiated by direct and indu-
bitable historical evidence. Within eight months of Coke’s or-
dination Charles Wesley declared that he could scarcely yet
believe it, that in his eighty-second year his brother had as-
sumed the episcopal character, ordained elders, consecrated a
bishop, and sent him to America to ordain others.

Bishop Coke was directed on his arrival in America to ordain
Mr. Asbury deacon, elder, and superintendent according to the
three ordination forms of the Church of England provided for
the purpose, his own letters of episcopal orders from the hand
of Mr. Wesley having declared that the Methodists of North
America still adhered to the doctrines and discipline of the
Church of England: Mr. Asbury refusing to actin the capacity
of a superintendent by Mr. Wesley’s appointment, without the
unanimous choice of the preachers, the Christmas Conference
was called on his motion, and it was agreed to form the Ameri-
can Methodists into an Episcopal Church, with superintendents,
elders, and deacons. Dr. Coke and Mr. Asbury were unani-
mously elected to the superintendency, and on three successive
days, December 25th, 26th, and 27th, 1784, Bishop Coke or-
dained Francis Asbury deacon, elder, and superintendent,
being assisted by three elders at the third ordination. This
was paralleled by the three successive ordinations which Mr.
Wesley himself bestowed on Alexander Mather.

The exact method of the election of Asbury and the recep-
tion of Coke we do not know, as the original minutes of the
Christmas Conference are not extant. But in 1789 the Annual
Conferences, in which were many members who had sat in the
Christmas Conference, and which, since the General Confer-
ence had not then been instituted, exercised full legislative
powers, inserted in the Discipline substantially this account:
that Wesley sent over three regularly ordained clergy, hav-
ing set apart one of them to the episcopal office, delivered to
6 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

him letters of episcopal orders, and commissioned him to set-
apart Francis Asbury to the same episcopal office, after his or-
dination as deacon and elder; and that the Christmas Confer-
ence did unanimously receive these two persons as their bishops,
being fully satisfied of the validity of their episcopal ordi-
nation.

These joint superintendents, for so Mr. Wesley designated
them in the circular letter which was the basis of the work of
the Christmas Conference, were empowered to ordain superin-
tendents, elders, and deacons elected by the Conferences and ap-
proved by themselves; to preside in the Conferences; to fix the
appointments of the preachers; to receive, change, or suspend
preachers in the intervals of the Conferences; and to receiva
and decide appeals from preachers and people. They were
rigidly responsible to the Conferences, which had power to ex-
pel them for improper conductif they saw it necessary. When
the Quadrennial General Conference was organized in 1792,
and until 1808, their power, their usefulness, themselves were
entirely at the mercy of the General Conference.

The superintendency in America differed from the beginning
from the superintendency in England in that it was double-
headed—one superintendency administered by two coérdinate
men. The one office is now (1895) administered by ten men
in one branch of Episcopal Methodism and sixteen in another.
Each of these has at all times in every place all the powers of
the office. So far as constitutional law or statutory provision
is concerned there is neither subordination of office nor divis-
ion of powers among them. Nor does there exist outside of the
office itself any provision short of constitutional reérganization,
for the imposition of limitations upon, or the creation of di-
visions of daty, or diversities of administration, in the one
office. The episcopal office or general superintendency is in
the most unqualified sense one; and there exists no power in
the Church, under its present constitution, to modify after any
manner or in any degree this primary unity. Any division or
subordination is of internal origin among the persons who for
the time being administer the one office; and such adjustment
has no higher sanction or more binding obligation than the
mutual, voluntary agreements of these persons among them-
selves can giveit. Ifa general principle is sought which should
THE EPISCOPACY. qT

 

serve as a sufficient warrant for such voluntary and temporary
self-divestment of the powers of general superintendency over
the whole Church on the part of any one person occupying
with his colleagues the episcopal office, it would perhaps be
found in this: that only the strictest necessities of adminis-
tration could warrant it. Consequently the Church has acqui-
* esced in the temporary assignment of episcopal districts, that
is, a voluntary limitation of the general superintendency of any
one bishop as to territory for the time being, because it is a
strict necessity of administration from which there is no escape.
There is, however, a history involving something of a strug-
gle, by which this solution was finally reached. On the other
hand, any attempt at the voluntary creation of permanent epis-
copal districts, that is, the temporal as well as the territorial
limitation of the general superintendency of any one bishop,
would doubtless be resisted by the Church, because unwar-
ranted by the exigencies of actual administration.

Such an office and such officers are unparalleled in the his-
tory of ecclesiastical government. In the peculiar character-
istic we have been analyzing lie both its weakness and its
strength, its danger and its safety. From this standpoint
the episcopal office contains within itself the law of its own
life and the law of its own death; it is self-preservative and
self-destructive. Its freedom from difference and dissension;
its harmony of counsel and unity of wise and energetic action,
are a conditio sine qua non, not only of its efficiency, but of its
very life. Should these characteristics be permanently lost,
the office, as it has existed, must perish. It is almost safe to
predict that it will never become extinct in any other manner.
But if, on the other hand, self-preservation is more than the
first law of life, namely, its constant and invariable instinct,
this very fact is a surer guarantee than any law imposed from
without could possibly be of the perpetuity of the office. The
episcopal office as known in American Methodism is as sensi-
tively responsive in its self-regulation and as certainly self-
preservative as any governmental machine that has ever been
devised by the wit of man.

From the a priori standpoint this would not have been sup-
posed. So complex and unprecedented an arrangement as the
administration of one office by many coérdinate officers, with
8 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

80 little explicit statute and so much latitude for individual
judgment and action, would have been prejudged a failure.
The experience of one hundred and ten years demonstrates the
contrary. But the conditions of its successful operation, after
its original projection, were not the offspring of a moment.
‘They were a growth. That growth let us study.

Under the resolution of submission adopted by the Christ-
mas Conference, Mr. Wesley contended for a special and inde-
pendent control of the general superintendents of American
Methodism, which extended in his judgment, it is said, to their
removal from the continent. However great or little the power
claimed, the whole of it was swept away in an instant and
forever in 1787, when the resolution of submission was repealed,
and Mr. Wesley’s name was for the time left off the minutes,
and his nominees for the episcopal office were rejected. Trouble
nevermore arose from this source.

The very nature of the episcopal office in Methodism seems
to imply its incumbency by the fewest possible number of men
who can administer it with efficiency in the general oversight of
the whole Church. Notwithstanding the obvious solicitations
to a contrary course, this principle, which has never been em-
bodied in constitution or statute, has governed all the General
Conferences of the Church from the beginning. From 1784 to
1816, almost a third of a century, there were really never more
than two contemporary bishops; first Coke and Asbury; then
Asbury and Whatcoat; and finally Asbury and McKendree.
Coke’s active (though from the beginning intermittent) super-
intendency terminated with his return to Europe in the spring
of 1798, though he came to America to preside in the General
Conferences of 1800 and 1804. Both of those bodies, as well
as the General Conference of 1808, consented, with various
provisos and conditions, to his residence in Europe. Asbury
had Whatcoat for a colleague from 1800 to the latter’s death
in 1806; and McKendree occupied the same relation from his
election in 1808 to Asbury’s death in 1816.

From 1784 to 1808 the office, as well as the officers, was at
the mercy, first of the Annual Conferences, from 1785 to 1792,
and then of the Quadrennial General Conference, from 1792 to
1808. Though several of these unlimited and supreme General
Conferences had before them various questions and measures
THE EPISCOPACY. 9

 

touching the superintendency of Bishop Coke, it is sufficient to
observe here that all of them treated him with the utmost per-
sonal consideration, and that he was never for a moment dis-
qualified for the performance of any of his episcopal duties
when present in America to discharge them.

Upon Coke and Asbury devolved the practical task of first
solving the problem of the actual administration of one office
by two coérdinate officers. There is evidence, besides Asbury’s
own writings, that his general bearing toward Coke was that of
the utmost deference. It was the habit of the two bishops to
attend all the Annual Conferences in company whenever Coke
was in the United States. Division of the work seemed neither
necessary nor desirable. In Coke’s absence Asbury discharged
alone all the episcopal duties. He always conceded the presi-
dential chair of an Annual Conference to Coke when he was
present. In 1787, at Charleston, at the first session of the
South Carolina Conference, Asbury, though opposed to the ac-
tion, acquiesced when Dr. Coke proposed Richard Whatcoat’s
name from the chair as Mr. Wesley’s nominee for the episco-
pacy, and the Conference elected him. It is probable that As-
bury generally exerted a controlling influence in making the
appointments, since he alone enjoyed personal familiarity with
the work and the workmen. There was, however, consultation
with Coke, who seldom or never held a Conference without the
presence of Asbury. The nature of the business, as well as the
state of his health, necessitated Asbury’s retirement during
much of the General Conference of 1792, and Asbury refers
expressly to Coke’s presidency; we find Coke presiding in
1796, also, until the nature of the business brought about his
retirement in turn; in 1800, though there were three bishops
after the election of Whatcoat, the journal is attested by the
single signature of “'T. Coke, President;” and in 1804 Coke,
as senior bishop, so Quinn tells us, presided. Thus the idea
of rotation among the bishops in the presidency of the General
Conference had not been suggested, Coke alone being almost
exclusively president. Contemporary bishops were so few that
the custom of rotation did not obtain until quite late in the
history of General Conferences.

That the nature of the office and the relations of the officers
among themselves were not regarded as permanently settled
10 THE MAKING OF METHODISH.

 

in the period from 1792 to 1808 is evident from several sources.
In 1797 Asbury nominated Lee, Poythress, and Whatcoat to
the Annual Conferences for “assistant bishops.” Permanent
coérdination of new bishops with himself Asbury seemed as
yet not to regard as feasible or desirable. Before the election
of Whatcoat in 1800 various modifications of the new bishop’s
powers were proposed in the General Conference, all of which
were promptly and decisively rejected. Coke moved that the
new bishop when presiding in the absence of Asbury should
read the draft of appointments once in Conference for sug-
gestion and amendment before their final announcement. This,
though the English plan, the Americans did not care to vote
upon, and it was withdrawn. Stationing committees of three
or four to be appointed by the Conference, to advise or to decide
appointments, were rejected; and the new bishop was left in
every respect on a perfect parity with Asbury. Thus was more
clearly defined and fixed the “plan of itinerant general super-
intendency”’ which was to be embodied in the constitution of
1808.

Asbury and Whatcoat followed the old rule of attending all
the Conferences in company, which was so general that the
General Conference had thought it unnecessary to make it
mandatory. Asbury, doubtless, usually occupied the chair, and
the two bishops made the appointments after consultation to-
gether, in which it is natural to suppose Asbury exerted a de-.
cisive influence. Despite his legal parity with Asbury, What-
coat was practically little more than an “assistant bishop.”

In 1805 Coke proposed to come to America on the express.
condition that the seven Conferences should be divided be-
tween himself and Asbury, four and three, and three and four,
each exchanging with the other annually. This is the earliest.
foreshadowing of the present plan of episcopal districts of an-
nual tenure. But it also indicates that despite the equality
which the General Conference had bestowed upon Whatccat,.
his position was practically so subordinate or indefinite that
Coke makes no mention of him, probably supposing that he
would by turns assist both the older bishops as he was then
assisting Asbury.

In 1807, after the death of Whatcoat, a scheme originated in
the New York Conference, and was approved by the New En-
THE EPISCOPACY. 1i

 

gland, the Western, and the South Carolina Conferences, for
forty-nine electors, seven from each of the seven Conferences,
who should meet at Baltimore on July 4 to organize and estab-
lish a permanent superintendency of the Methodist Episcopal
Church. At this period it is evident that little connected
with the superintendency was regarded as organized, estab-
lished, or permanent. Not only could any General Conference
overturn the office, but the Annual Conferences assumed to be
fully competent to remodel it at will. Precipitation and crys-
tallization occurred in 1808.

At this time the constitution was established. It excepted
episcopacy and the plan of itinerant general superintendency
from statutory modification by the General Conference. Asbury
was now the sole occupant of the episcopal office itinerating in
America. McKendree was elected his colleague, and Asbury
and he resumed at once the now established rule of attending
all the Annual Conferences in company. McKendree was a man
of high understanding and pronounced character, and perfectly
aware from the beginning of his constitutional equality with As-
bury. He always shared in the public presidency of the Con-
ferences. As late as 1811, however, Asbury was able to attend
all the Conferences in a single year; though, as his infirmities
increased, and his confidence grew in McKendree’s wisdom and
really great executive abilities, he gradually relinquished the
presidential chair to him, and confined himself to the work of
making the appointments. Not until 1815, at the session of the
Tennessee Conference, did Asbury “resign the stations ” wholly
to McKendree. So far as appointments were concerned, up to
their last round before Asbury’s death, McKendree suffered the
senior bishop to prepare the preliminary draft; he then made
such changes as seemed necessary after consultation with the
elders in council. Asbury refused to the last to depend upon the
advice of these officers in “cabinet.” On the other hand, Mc-
Kendree refused as early as 1811 to make the final revision of
the appointments furnished by Asbury without the aid of the
presiding elders. He became thus the originator of the “cab-
inet,” which rests to this day on the basis of general usage.

In 1816, Asbury having died, George and Roberts were
added to the board of bishops. For the first time in the his-
tory of the Church, there were three active contemporary
12 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

bishops. Up to this time not even a temporary division of the
Conferences into what are now called episcopal districts had
ever been effected. McKendree, George, and Roberts divided
the work among themselves, though McKendree strongly
leaned to their continuing as much in company in the dis-
charge of their duties as the nature of the work would allow.
From McKendree’s journal it appears that the following princi-
ples were accepted by the three bishops: (1) the necessary divi-
sion of the Conferences among the three constitutional superin-
tendents; (2) theannual exchange of districts among the bishops;
(3) the responsible presidency of the bishop to whom a Con-
ference was assigned; and (4) the attendance of all or any of
the bishops as counselors or assistants at such Conferences as
they could reach beyond the limits of their own districts. All
of these principles, except, perhaps, the last, are now generally
accepted. Whether the more formal recognition of the fourth
is not desirable is, at least, a question. We have now general
superintendents in the third quadrennium of their episcopal
supervision who have not yet visited officially all the Annual
Conferences in the United States. The personal familiarity of
each superintendent with the entire work and all the workmen
of the vast itinerant field is certainly desirable. This familiarity
ought to be acquired as speedily as possible. Visiting bishops
seldom appear at the Annual Conferences. It must be that dif-
ficult and delicate questions often arise in which the president
of the Conference would gladly consult with a colleague if he
were at hand. The administration could often be unified and
strengthened. It seems to have been a principle generally ac-
cepted for a half-century as implied in the very nature of the
episcopal office that every bishop was in duty bound to be pres-
ent at all the Annual Conferences which his own special duties
would permit him to reach. If this plan should at present be
regarded as too onerous, or, on any ground undesirable, it might
still be feasible and beneficial for each bishop to be assigned,
in the plan of episcopal visitations, not only to his own proper
episcopal district, but also to one other district, as the com-
ponion and adviser of a colleague, who would still remain the
responsible president of his own Conferences.
CHAPTER II.
Tue Episcopacy (CONTINUED).

In the preceding chapter it was intimated that the now uni-
versally accepted plan of episcopal districts of annual tenure,
though a most simple and necessary solution of the problem of
one joint, itinerant, general superintendency administered by
many bishops, was not reached and adopted without something
of a struggle. McKendree’s hesitation in 1816, when such a
division was first made, is evident. That hesitancy doubtless
rested on a latent constitutional scruple. In 1820, when the
plan had been operated for a quadrennium by McKendree,
George, and Roberts, Joshua Soule, author and rigid construc-
tionist of the constitution, gravely doubted its constitutionality.
There were other perplexities besides the elective presiding
eldership, unconstitutionally ordained and then suspended by
the General Conference of that year, which involved him in a
torrent of difficulties and quite drank up his spirit. In a letter
which Mr. Soule addressed at this time to Bishop McKen-
dree concerning his own refusal to accept the episcopal office,
to which he had been elected, occur the following significant
sentences which have hitherto escaped notice and comment:
“T have seriously reflected on the subject of a partial (sec-
tional) visitation of the Conferences. I have attempted to ana-
lyze this in relation to our plan of itinerant general superin-
tendency, and I perceive a dissonance which I cannot harmo-
nize. I apprehend that my path, should I proceed, would
inevitably lead me to a point where I should be at issue with
my predecessors and seniors in office.” That is to say, a vol-
untary, even though temporary, relinquishment of episcopal
duty and prerogative, in that continuous oversight of the whole
Church, to which every superintendent is chosen by the Gen-
eral Conference, without restriction of any sort (and, indeed,

(13)
14 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

without the constitutional possibility of such restriction),
seemed to Mr. Soule, at the end of the first quadrennium of the
now established usage of divided episcopal cversight and re-
sponsibility, unconstitutional. These duties and responsibili-
ties imposed by the General Conference, he doubted the right
of any individual bishop to surrender; and this difficulty was
among the complications that caused Mr. Soule to decline epis-
copal ordination in 1820. Another quadrennium of the smooth
and efficient working of the new plan by the three bishops who
had felt obliged by the practical exigencies of administration
to inaugurate it, together with the continued acquiescence of
the entire Church, removed Mr. Soule’s constitutional scruple.
His questions were silenced at last only by the inexorable
principle that necessity knows no law; and, after his election
and ordination in 1824, he was not brought into collision with
his senior colleagues, as he had feared would be the case had he
become a bishop in 1820; for, from that time forward, it was
an evident impossibility for all the bishops to attend all the
Conferences. For many years afterwards—certainly to a period
later than the division of the Church—it was the custom for
all the bishops present to share the presidency of an Annual
Conference, and to enter the stationing room to assist in mak-
ing the appointments of the preachers. It may indeed be
questioned, as was suggested in the last chapter, whether the
spirit of the constitution, which ordains joint, itinerant, gen-
eral superintendency, does not suggest, according to Soule’s
constitutional scruple, the presence of disengaged superintend-
ents at the seat of such Annual Conferences as they can reach.

At the close of the General Conference of 1824 there were
five general superintendents: McKendree, George, Roberts,
Soule, and Hedding. This number introduced a complexity
which it is evident, in the view of the General Conference, cre-
ated a considerable strain on the theory and practice of the
general superintendency as it had hitherto existed. Some
members believed the Conference was authorized to divide the
Church into episcopal districts for the quadrennium; but Dr.
William Winans, of Mississippi, vindicated the constitutional
view in a thrilling speech. The Conference, on recommenda-
tion of the episcopal committee, adopted a resolution recom-
mending an annual bishops’ meeting (whose prime object
THE EPISCOPACY. 15

seems to have been to unify the whole episcopal administra-
tion), and allowing the bishops a choice between two suggested
plans: (1) the division of the Church into several “episcopal
departments,” with one or more bishops in each; or (2) to form
a plan of traveling through the Church “in a circuit after each
other”—language which was evidently meant to describe the
plan hitherto pursued.

All the bishops did not understand this action alike.
Throughout the ensuing quadrennium George and Hedding
rode the northern circuit and Roberts and Soule the southern,
while McKendree, though the senior and superannuated, was
the sole general superintendent of the whole Church in the
sense in which Asbury had understood and exercised it. This
plan was virtually the adoption of the first alternative suggested
by the General Conference, and the evils of sectional episco-
pal visitation began immediately to appear. McKendree by
no means concurred in the new order of things, and urged with
all proper vehemence that the bishops on the northern circuit
should exchange with those on the southern. Bishop George,
on the other hand, declared that “visiting all the Conferences
and becoming jointly responsible” was to him a “ new thought,”
and believed that the plan of episcopal visitation adopted in
1824 was for the quadrennium, as the labor of a continental
superintendency was to him insupportable. He seems to have
been under the impression that the General Conference had
authorized the restriction of the episcopal powers of the sev-
eral bishops to the “departments” to which they were tempo-
rarily assigned; for, when McKendree and Soule visited Phil-
adelphia in 1826, to attend the first bishops’ meeting ever held,
George, who, with Hedding, was holding the Conference, ig-
nored the presence of McKendree and Soule in their official
character, unaccountably failing to invite either of them to
share in the public presidency of the Conference or to enter
the stationing room to assist in making the appointments. This
conduct was not only disrespectful to the senior bishop, to say
nothing of Bishop Soule, but, according to the views and usages
which had universally prevailed, was a serious breach of the
constitution, since, in a sense, the failure of Bishop George to
recognize the visiting bishops in their official character was an
attempt on the part of a bishop to impose limitations upon the
16 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

joint superintendency of his colleagues in the episcopal office.
Bishop George’s position was a novelty in episcopal administra-
tion. While its explanation is probably to be sought, in part
at least, in Bishop George’s misunderstanding of the action of
the General Conference of 1824, his conduct seemed to Bishop
McKendree 60 serious an infraction of the established and uni-
versal usage of the bishops, and of the constitution itself, that
he actually drew up charges against Bishop George with a
view to presenting them to the General Conference of 1828.'
Fortunately the senior bishop stopped short of this extreme
step, or the rupture, along a sectional line but on constitutional
principles, which had been threatening since 1820, might sooner
have been precipitated.

In 1832 the General Conference sought again to give relief
in the difficulties of joint, itinerant, general oversight, and
passed a resolution that, considering the great extent of the
work, the Conference deemed it inexpedient to require each
bishop to travel throughout the Church during the recess of
the General Conference. To avoid all misunderstanding, the
bishops, probably on the suggestion of McKendree and Soule
in their private conferences, asked the General Conference for
a categorical answer, without debate, to the following question:
“Was it the intention of the General Conference, by the reso-
lution above alluded to, simply to relieve the bishops from the
influence of the resolution passed at the last General Confer-
ence on the same subject, and to leave them now at liberty on
their joint and several responsibility to make such arrange-
ments among themselves for the entire administration, and for
the visitation of the Annual Conferences as they shall judge
most conducive to the general good; and without designing to
give any direction or advice whether it be or be not expedient
for each of the bishops, in the course of the four years, to visit
each of the Annual Conferences, should they themselves find it
convenient and practicable, and judge it for the general good
so todo?” This carefully framed question, which seems to us
to bear the earmarks of Bishop Soule’s composition, was an-
swered in the affirmative; and, so far as our inspection of Gen-
eral Conference Journals will warrant so broad a statement,

1A copy of these charges in Bishop McKendree’s handwriting is in the

possession of the writer, j
THE EPISCOPACY. 17

later General Conferences have for the most part, if not en-
tirely, left the bishops to manage questions of this nature
among themselves, without direction or advice. Certainly so
it was in 1844-45 when the bishops, by consultation and agree-
ment among themselves, conformed their administration to the
Plan of Separation and arranged to visit all the Annual Confer-
ences of the dividing Church, “the editorial decisions to the
contrary notwithstanding.” The question of the bishops in
1832, therefore, with the reply of the General Conference, may
be regarded as the completion of the development of the ad-
ministration of one joint, itinerant, general superintendency
by many bishops, whose practical problems Coke and Asbury
had first faced in 1784. The principles involved in that ques-
tion and reply have been accepted as final ever since.

In 1832 Andrew and Emory were added to the episcopacy.
In illustration of the remark in the last chapter, a glance at the
following table may serve to remind our readers that the Gen-
eral Conference has always conformed to the principle of placing
as few men in the episcopal office as could efficiently oversee
the whole Church. The composition of the college of bishops
from the beginning to date has been as follows:

1784-1800: Coke and Asbury, 2.

1800-1808: Asbury and Whatcoat (to 1806), 2.

1808-1816: Asbury and McKendree, 2.

1816-1824: McKendree, George, and Roberts, 3.

1824-1832: McKendree, George (to 1828), Roberts, Soule, and
Hedding, 4 or 5.

1832-1836: McKendree (to 1835), Roberts, Soule, Hedding, An-
drew, and Emory (to 1835), 4, 5, or 6.

1836-1844: Roberts (to 1843), Soule, Hedding, Andrew, Waugh,
and Morris, 5 or 6.

[Methodist Episcopal Church, South.]

1846-1854: Soule, Andrew, Capers (to 1855), and Paine (Bascom,
one Conference), 4.

1854-1866: Soule, Andrew, Paine, Pierce, Early, and Kava-
naugh, 6.

1866-1870: Soule (to 1867), Andrew (to 1871), Paine, Pierce,
Early (to 1873), Kavanaugh, Wightman, Marvin,
Doggett, and McTyeire, 9 or 10, but 3 superannuated.

1870-1882: Paine, Pierce, Kavanaugh, Wightman, Marvin (to.
1877), Doggett (to 1880), McTyeire, and Keener, 6,
7, or 8: the “old panel.”

1882-1886: Pierce (to 1884), Kavanaugh (to 1884), McTycire,

2
18 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

Keener, Wilson, Parker (to 1435), Granbery, Har-
grove, 5, 6, or 8.
1886-1890: McTyeire (to 1889), Keener, Wilson, Granbery, Har-
grove, Duncan, Galloway, Hendrix, and Key, 8 or 9.
1890-1894: Keener, Wilson, Granbery, Hargrove, Duncan, Gal-
loway, Hendrix, Key, Haygood, and Fitzgerald, 10.
- The following table indicates the number of general super-
intendents in proportion to the number of members of the
Church and of traveling preachers at the close of each General
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South:

Traveling
Members. Preachers.
1846, one bishop to....... SabwesnNetieeens 114,512 379
1850, one bishop tO......seceeeeecceeeees 102,920 340
1854, one bishop to....cecececeeescerecce 86,186 289
1858, one bishop tO.....ceececececccecees 116,528 429
1866, one bishop tO.....cseccsceccccecees 50,510 248
1870, one bishop tO... .cerecccececccccees 58,641 291
1874, one bishop to.....-seeeeececececece 89,095 435
1878, one bishop t0.......eseseceseeeeere 118,882 552
1882, one bishop to.......--eseeereseecee 97,477 449
1886, one bishop tO.........ceceeeeeecees 129,178 555
1890, one bishop tO.......ceeeeeeceveeecs 117,229 486
1894, one bishop to.......... Bia) oailalalacevtseon 139,037 5781

After this minute historical survey of the development of the
general superintendency, with the principles which underlie
and support it, we are prepared for a sober estimate of its fu-
ture. Its sole internal danger was noticed in the last chapter:
against peril from that source the very conditions of its life
were shown to be, if not a sufficient, at least the most efficient,
guard. The episcopate must continue an harmonious unit on all
vital and permanent factors of administration, or fall to pieces
and perish. Yet even on this point fears have begun to be ex-
pressed in our sister Methodism. Dr. W. F. Warren quotes an
unnamed bishop as speaking of the increasing difficulty of main-
taining uniformity in the episcopal administration. Twenty
men, said the bishop, cannot so easily agree and carry out their
agreements as five. He then anticipated the time, not far dis-
tant, when the Church would need the services of fifty bishops;
but with any such number he thought it absolutely impossible
to maintain the unity of administration hitherto maintained,

1These figures, with the exception of those of 1894, are taken from Dr.
P. A. Peterson’s “Handbook of Southern Methodism.”
THE EPISCOPACY. 19

and imperatively demanded. The same bishop expressed the
decided opinion that if relief were sought in the districting of
the bishops the plan would prove fatal, and declared that
preachers would not receive the less desirable appointments
year after year from the same man. The changing presidency
of the Annual Conferences is an essential safeguard of the ap-
pointing power and of the itinerancy. !

Without attaching undue weight to the opinions of any one
man, however wise and experienced, there comes into view at
this point what may be styled the external danger of our super-
intendency, which, while it does not threaten the extinction of
the office, may involve eventually its modification. There are
undoubted and peculiar advantages attending the itinerant
general superintendency as it exists in Methodism. Hitherto
these advantages have been essential to the unity and extension
of the Church. There arealso undoubted advantages connected
with some modified form of districted or diocesan episcopacy.
This appears, in part, from the measure of success our bishops
have been able to win from hard conditions in the case of col-
leges situated near their homes, and in whose management
they have continuously shared. The districted or diocesan
bishop secures a personal familiarity with all his ministers and
their charges, together with every important spiritual, elee-
mosynary, educational, and material interest of his district—a
familiarity which, under present conditions, annually becoming
more disadvantageous with the expansion of the Church, is not
possible to one of our general superintendents. On the other
hand, diocesan episcopacy is entirely foreign to the Methodist
system: 1866 has been the only time at which the adoption of
something resembling it was even possible in our own Church.
The unity of the Church has been conditioned largely on the
unity of the episcopacy. As we have shown at length elsewhere,
the schism in the college of bishops, which appeared in a very
pronounced form certainly as early as 1820, and which was never
entirely healed until the two wings of the Church (divided as
the bishops were) parted, was, after all, no inconsiderable fac-
tor in the division of Episcopal Methodism. Hedding, elected
by northern votes, visited the southern wing of the Church but
once in twenty years—from 1824 to 1844. Soule, elected by

 

1“ Constitutional Law Questions,” pp. 127, 128.
20 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

southern and western votes, did not appear in his native New
England until seven years after he became a bishop. Dr. War-
ren affirms that “more than from all other sources, the barriers to
organic union between the [Methodist Episcopal ] Church and
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, spring out of the histor-
ic disruption of the original unity of episcopal administration
and out of that which has resulted from that disruption.”

In any case, certain it is that the increase of the territory,
ministry, and membership of the Church, with a correspond-
ing increase of the number of Annual Conferences and of gen-
eral superintendents, brings with it an attenuation, if not a
positive displacement, of the plan and purpose and principles
of general superintendency as it was originally projected and
as it existed in the earlier history of the Church. The larger
the Church and the greater the number of superintendents, the
less is the superintendency of any one of these bishops general
in the sense in which it was originally intended to be. The
very success of the superintendency in overseeing and edifying

*the Church thus creates a limitation upon its maintenance in
its primitive purity. It is apparent that the general superin-
tendency, while in form and principle the same, with the ex-
tended and extending Church and the largely increased num-
ber of superintendents, is in some respects very different from
what it was when two, three, or five men could travel through-
out the whole Church in a year, or at most two, becoming per-
sonally acquainted in that time with the personnel of all the
Annual Conferences, and with the condition and needs of much
of the work. A Church with fifty Annual Conferences and ten
superintendents, each of whom holds an average of five Con-
ferences in a year, puts each superintendent at such a disad-
vantage that it requires ten years for him to fill the presiden-
tial chair of all the Annual Conferences. By the time he will
ordinarily reach the same Conference a second time (if he ever
does) his former knowledge of the body and the work will be
of little avail. In the other branch of Episcopal Methodism
the conditions are still more adverse, and the limit of develop-
ment has already been reached. In case of the organic reunion

 

1“ Constitutional Law Questions,” p. 180. Precisely what Dr. Warren
means is not altogether clear; except that 1844 created a division of episco-
pal as well ag General Conference jurisdiction.
THE EPISCOPACY. 21

of Episcopal Methodism, at the opening of the twentieth cen-
tury one might count on five millions of members, two hundred
Annual Conferences in all parts of the world, and at least forty
general superintendents. If we may judge from the representa-
tions of Dr. Warren, in the work before cited, and of the bish-
op whom he there quotes, the Methodist Episcopal Church is
even now confronted, not with a theory, but with a condition.
This condition is already recognized as demanding solution by
essential readjustment of the episcopal office. “The question
will come before future General Conferences again and again,”
says Dr. Warren, “until, in the evolution of our itinerant gen-
eral superintendency, some marked modification is reached.”
We do not mean to give undue credence or importance to all
the gossip that floats from lip to lip; but still itis evident, from
the matter-of-course announcements that constitute part of the
staple news of our weekly exchanges of the Methodist Episco-
pal Church, that in the case of the larger city and town charges
of that Church arrangements for preachers are in many cases
made by direct negotiation between official boards and the
preachers themselves. It is a very usual item of news in the
press of our sister Church that “ Rev. Dr. A. B. has been called
to C. Church, and has accepted;” or that “Rey. Dr. D. E. has
accepted the invitation of his official board to remain with them
another year;” or that “Rev. Dr. F. G., notwithstanding the
flattering invitation of the board of H. Church to remain, has
notified the officers of the church that he will not continue his
pastorate, but has accepted the invitation of the board of I.
Church,” on the other watershed of the continent. These an-
nouncements are not here mentioned for criticism, but simply
to note that this is not Methodism. Such arrangements may
be the necessary outcome of a “condition” to which our own
Church is happily as yet a stranger. We know not. Our sis-
ter Church has reached the forks of the road and, however
unavoidably, has taken the unmethodistic fork. It is a viola-
tion of the fundamental compact between preachers and people
upon which the itinerancy has always been held to rest; it is,
indeed, the destruction of itinerancy, except as the time-limit
forces removals; and it is an inevitably fatal invasion of the
primitive appointing power. On the other hand, the smaller
appointments in the country and villages are, we presume, In
22 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

the hands of the presiding elders. Thus the appointing power
of the superintendents is reduced to that of mere arbitration
between the conflicting claims of rival official boards in one
case, and of rival presiding elders in the other. And the arbi-
trator knows less of the men and Churches than those over
whom he is appointed an arbitrator! Such arbitration, however
decisive it may be, is a widely different thing from the general
superintendency as originally projected in Methodism and as it
largely continues to be in the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South. It is not our affair. Our advice has not been asked.
We do not mean to be impertinent, and nobody need give the
least attention to our opinion. But we nevertheless entertain
and venture td express the humble judgment that Dr. Warren
and others are giving themselves needless trouble about the
“future” of their episcopacy. A Methodist bishop is not kept
on hand as an ornament or a luxury.

Evidently there is a limit to the development of Methodist
general superintendency along the lines of its original projec-
tion. In our sister Church that limit has been approximated.
In the case of the reunion of Episcopal Methodism, the limit
would be far overleaped. What would be left of the original
principles with twenty-five, thirty, fifty bishops? The general
superintendency is not in every particular adapted to a world-
wide Church such as Episcopal Methodism is rapidly becoming,
for the simple reason that no one man can sustain the relation
of a general superintendent to the ecclesiastical affairs of a
globe-embracing Church. Methodism bids fair to become the
leading Protestant world-force of the twentieth century. Meth-
odism is not yet made: it is yet in the making. There are still
in the system undeveloped possibilities. Its flexibility has been
its salvation in the past; and its willingness to follow the open-
ings of Divine Providence has been the uniform condition of
its largest usefulness to the world. Readjustment, of the kind
that has characterized Methodism at every critical stage of its
history, is sooner or later inevitable. It would be a pity if
either Episcopal Methodism attempted a solution of the new
problem independently of the other, especially if different con-
clusions were reached in the two bodies. Such a difference
could only constitute a fresh barrier to the nearer approach of
the two Churches. Has not Providence in store for American
THE EPISCOPACY. 23

Episcopal Methodism something better and more effective than
organic reunion could possibly bring? Is not relief to come to
the burdened episcopacy as well as to the unwieldy General
Conferences through some form of federation?

We may glance at a tentative outline of suggestions. (1) Dr.
Warren proposes a combination of local bishops, who might be
changed quadrennially, with a few general superintendents. He
suggests the analogy of local and itinerant preachers and of dis-
tricted presiding elders, and calls attention to the present plan
of missionary bishops and general superintendents in his own
Church. This plan, he thinks, of local and general bishops
could be very easily extended to the entire Church, and would
secure at least a four years’ trial of a local bishop before his
promotion to the general superintendency. The feasibility of
this scheme is doubtful. (2) In the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, we venture to suggest that for the present a bet-
ter distribution of the Annual Conferences over the entire year
would give all necessary relief. A single bishop could preside
over eight or ten Annual Conferences, and six or eight effective
men could do the whole work. If with this change the limit of
charges in a district were removed, and the sphere of District
Conference business and of the duties of presiding elders en-
larged, the bishops, by a careful schedule of the decreased num-
ber of District Conferences, could reach many more of them and
accomplish much more in them. These bodies should become
preéminently the local preachers’ court, in which the passage
of their character, their assignment to specific labor, and their
election to orders and ordination should take place. Thus
would the District Conference acquire a definite and essential
sphere, and a paralyzed arm of our ministry be revitalized. (3)
Finally, federation may bring to American Episcopal Methodism
a division of this continent into a number of coérdinate Gen-
eral Conference jurisdictions. When the time came to multiply
Annual Conferences they were multiplied—and still multiply.
The time has almost come to multiply General Conferences, to
relieve thé bodies themselves, the episcopacy, and the Church,
so extended that uniform legislation is not now always best for
every part. Such General Conferences should probably include
not more than forty or fifty Annual Conferences and six or eight
general superintendents.
THE PRESIDING ELDERSHIP.
(25)
CHAPTER III.

Tur Presiping ELpErsuip.

By the common consent of Christendom, as well as the au-
thority of our Thirteenth Article of Religion, it is necessary
to the existence of a visible Church of Christ that in it “the
sacraments” be “duly administered according to Christ’s ordi-
nance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the
same.” Among the things that of necessity are requisite to
the orderly and ordinary administration of the sacraments is
an ordained ministry. With the high-church doctrine of the
validity of lay-baptism, and the low-church or no-church doce-
trine which denies a distinction between the ministry and the
laity, and the grounds upon which these doctrines rest, we
have nothing to do in this connection. Our Methodist arti-
cle expressly enumerates three essential marks of a Christian
Church; to which, if we add the fourth clearly implied mark,
we shall have the complete Methodist doctrine of the visible
Church of Christ, distinguished by four characteristics as
follows: (1) a congregation of faithful men; (2) an ordained
ministry; (3) the proclamation of the pure word of God; and
(4) the due administration of the sacraments according to
Christ’s ordinance.

When John Wesley sent to America, by the hand of Thomas
Coke, the Article of Religion which contains these doctrines, the
Methodist societies in America already possessed the first and
the third of these marks. Mr. Wesley designed to convey to
them the second and the fourth, and thus to complete in Amer-
ica the organization of a visible Church of Christ. He did
this in his character as a providentially appointed scriptural
bishop, by bestowing a third ordination upon a presbyter of
the Church of England, and by ordaining two of his lay
preachers, Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey, first to the

(27)
a

28 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

diaconate, and, secondly, to the presbyterate. This company
he dispatched to America, empowered and directed to ordain
others according to “The Form and Manner of Making and
Ordaining of Superintendents, Elders, and Deacons,” then in
use in the Church of England for constituting the three or-
ders in her ministry. Thus did Mr. Wesley bestow upon the
American Methodists a truly protestant episcopacy, equally
removed from a papal or prelatical episcopacy on the one hand,
and from a so-called presbyterian episcopacy on the other;
thus did the venerable Founder of the people called Metho-
dists, in the eighty-second year of his age, and forty years after
the meeting of the first Methodist Conference in England,
“proceed to form the first Church that ever was organized un-
‘der a pure republican government,” and the first Episcopal
Church of any kind that was ever constituted in the United
States of America.

Had Methodist orders originated at Fluvanna, instead of at
Bristol and Baltimore; in Brokenback Church in 1779, instead
of in Lovely Lane Chapel in 1784; descending from Philip
Gatch, Reuben Ellis, and James Foster, instead of from John
Wesley through Thomas Coke, Richard Whatcoat, and Thomas
Vasey, and thence through Francis Asbury, who ordained
William McKendree, who ordained Joshua Soule, who ordained
Robert Paine, to living men now exercising the episcopal office,
this writer, for one, would have had no interest in disputing
their validity, as he unhesitatingly recognizes the validity of
the orders of every Presbyterian and Congregational Church
in the world. Should a New Testament drop down out of the
skies on an island never visited by civilized or Christian men,
and lead to the conversion of its inhabitants, who should forth-
with constitute a ministry and proceed to administer the sac-
raments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, a true Church of
Christ would be organized as good as the Church of Rome or
of England—perhaps better, since it would doubtless escape
the corruptions inherited by these Churches from post-apostolic
and medizval times, and approximate more closely to the
purity of the New Testament model. Thus, indeed, did Con-
gregational Churches in New England originate. “The gov-
ernor was moved to set apart the twentieth of July [1629] to
be a solemn day of humiliation, for the choyce of a pastor

 
THE PRESIDING ELDERSHIP. 29:

and a teacher at Salem.” After prayer, “the persons thought
on,” preferring no claim based on their ordination in England,
acknowledged a twofold calling: the inward, of God; the out-
ward, from a congregation of believers. The vote was taken,
and Skelton was chosen pastor.!. Such was the origin of the
use of the ballot on this continent, and such was the origin of
as valid a ministry as exists anywhere in the world. So little
is the importance which we attach to the fabulous history or
the historical fable of apostolic succession.

But as a matter of history, Methodist orders do not begin
with the ordinations of the Fluvanna presbytery, but with those:
of the scriptural bishop, John Wesley. Historically it can
hardly be doubted that he had a better, clearer, louder provi-
dential vocation than either the Fluvanna brethren, on the one
hand, or the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of
London, on the other. The actual origin is, to our mind, much
more desirable and respectable, because a more evident inter-
position of the hand of God, than either Canterbury or Flu-
vanna could have given. As for the ordination of poor brother
Seabury, “Samuel, Connecticut,” as he was fond of signing
himself, the secret nomination of eight or ten Tory rectors was.
consummated by Scotch non-juring prelates, who, by the stern
mandate of civil law, were inhibited from the performance of
any such act, which, by the sentence of deprivation pronounced
upon its perpetrators on account of their lack of civil qualifi-.
cations, was in English law abd initio null and void. On the
very day this farce was performing in Scotland, Bishop Coke
was administering the sacraments to hundreds in the forests of
America, and the arrangements were perfecting for the calling
of the Christmas Conference to organize the Methodist Epis-.
copal Church.

Evolutionists are fond of emphasizing the undoubted fact of
embryology, that the development of the embryo, from the
moment of the fertilization of the ovum to that of birth, passes,
in the case of a higher mammal, as man, through all the stages
of the lower orders, so that each of these might be represented
as a case of arrested development, giving rise at each stage to
a definite lower order of animal life. This embryonic devel-
opment, the evoiutionist insists, is an epitome in individual

 

1 Bancroft’s History of the United States, Author’s Last Revision, I. 228.
30 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

life of the wider development of all animal life from a few
primordial germs. However this may be (and we are not
now concerned in passing judgment on the value of the
suggestion), certain it is to our mind that episcopal church
government, as it exists in Methodism, is an epitome of the ex-
cellences of the congregational and presbyterial systems, with
the added unity and vigor and compacted energies peculiar to
itself. This highest form of Church life embodies full recog-
nition and use of the lower.

Elsewhere! we have given in full the ordination parchment
of Thomas Coke, the first Methodist bishop. Here we insert
the ordination parchment of Richard Whatcoat, the first Meth-
odist elder:

To all to whom these presents shall come, John Wesley, late Fellow of Lin-
coln College, in Oxford, presbyter of the Church of England, sendeth greeting:

Whereas many of the people in the southern provinces of North Amer-
ica, who desire to continue under my care, and still adhere to the doctrines
and discipline of the Church of England, are greatly distressed for want of
ministers, to administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper,
according to the usages of the said Church: and whereas there does not ap-
pear to be any other way of supplying them with ministers:

Know all men, that I, John Wesley, think myself to be providentially
called, at this time, to set apart some persons for the work of the ministry
in America. And, therefore, under the protection of Almighty God, and
with a single eye to his glory, I have this day set apart for the said work,
as an elder, by the imposition of my hands, and prayer (being assisted by
two other ordained ministers), Richard Whatcoat, a man whom I judge to
be well qualified for that great work. And I do hereby recommend him to
all whom it may concern, as a fit person to feed the flock of Christ, and to
administer baptism and the Lord’s supper, according to the usage of the
Church of England. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand
and seal, this second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thou-
sand seven hundred and eighty-four. JOHN WESLEY.

We have inserted this ordination parchment of the first
Methodist elder for several reasons: (1) On comparing it with
Coke’s, we find the two identical, except as one was the cre-
dentials of a “superintendent,” and the other of an “elder.”
Hence if Whatcoat’s paper is a certificate of orders, no less is
Coke’s; and we have one more indisputable ground for reject-
ing the silly conceit that Father Wesley was simply blessing
his son Coke when he sent him to America as an evangelist.
The identity and dignity of these two parchments demonstrate

1Constitutional History, p. 174.
 

 

 

RICHARD WHATCOAT,
The First Methodist Elder.

 

 
THE PRESIDING ELDERSHIP. 31

great method in Wesley s madness. (2) The references to the
doctrine, discipline, and usages of the Church of England,
contained in Coke’s “Jetters of episcopal orders” (Methodist
Discipline, 1789, Section iv.), are supplemented by one more
in the parchment of Whatcoat, who is “to administer baptism
and the Lord’s supper, according to the usage of the Church
of Ingland.” Coke was qualified to administer the sacraments
before his ordination by Wesley and he was therefore author-
ized “to preside over the flock of Christ.” Thus Whatcoat's
credentials afford one more evidence that the American Metho-
dist Church was to be an Episcopal Church, modeled closely
in doctrine, discipline, and administration of sacraments after
the Church of England, and designed to be the successor of
the Anglican communion, then defunct in America as to epis-
copal regimen. (38) It will be noticed that in Coke’s creden-
tials Mr. Wesley speaks of “being assisted by other ordained
ministers,” while in Whatcoat’s he specifies the number, “be-
ing assisted by two other ordained ministers.” These two, ac-
cording to Whatcoat’s own explicit testimony, were undoubt-
edly Coke himself and the Rev. James Creighton. The direct
evidence usually cited indicates the presence of five men at
these original ordinations—Wesley, Coke, Creighton, What-
coat, and Vasey. It is an interesting and difficult historical
inquiry whether any other presbyter of the Church of England
besides Mr. Creighton assisted Wesley at the episcopal ordina-
tion of Dr. Coke. In an article in our Review for July, 1861,
reviewing the second volume of Smith’s History of Wesleyan
Methodism, Doctor (afterwards Bishop) Wightman says (p.
327): “In connection with Mr. Creighton, another minister of
the establishment, he [the Rev. Peard Dickinson ] was present
and took part with Wesley in the ordination of Dr. Coke as
Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America.” Un-
fortunately Bishop Wightman does not mention any source
whence he derived his authority for this statement. Stevens,
however, says (History of Methodism, II. 316): “Both these
clergymen [Creighton and Dickinson] codperated heartily in
Wesley’s plans, and were his assistant presbyters in his ordi-
nations.” But this remark occurs in connection with Stevens’s
account of the Conference at which Mather, Rankin, and Moore
were ordained (these men were undoubtedly ordained by Wes-
32 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

ley, Creighton, and Dickinson), and it is consequently left
somewhat in doubt whether Stevens means to include the first.
ordinations in 1784, in his two accounts of which he says noth-
ing of Dickinson. The notice of Dickinson in McClintock
and Strong’s Cyclopsxdia (II. 786), declares that his ordination
in the Church of England took place in 1783: if this ordina-
tion was to “priest’s orders,” he was competent to assist Wes-
ley at Bristol in 1784. The sum of this evidence is not con-
clusive: several other trails closely followed have yielded no
decisive result, and we are at present obliged to leave the in-
quiry to be further prosecuted. After his graduation at Ox-
ford, Dickinson became curate to Perronet at Shoreham, and
so continued until the latter’s death. In 1786 he became fully
identified with the Methodists, and was appointed to the new
City Road Chapel, London. He died in 1802.!

The Christmas Conference was called, not as an organ of
government in the new Church, but to organize or create that
Church (as yet nonexistent), in accordance with the plans of
Mr. Wesley communicated through Dr. Coke. Of course as
an organizing Conference, determining by majority vote the
fate of the measures submitted to it, the Christmas Conference,
during the term of its sittings, necessarily exercised the utmost
reach of authority, beyond which there is none conceivable;
but neither the plan of Mr. Wesley nor any act of the body
gave to it vitality after its adjournment; incorporated such a
general or permanent governing body in the constitution of
the new Church; or projected its legislative or electoral powers
one minute beyond the time of its own final dissolution. On
the contrary, though the Christmas Conference elected super-
intendents, elders, and deacons, it confided the future elections
of such officers to the Annual Conferences; though the Christ-
mas Conference enacted laws and issued a Discipline, it left
the Annual Conferences in possession of the powers which had
been used after a fashion for many years before, and which for
many years afterwards were exercised by these bodies in the
enactment of new laws, in the abrogation or amendment of old
ones enacted by the Christmas Conference, in the rejection of
nominees for the episcopacy, and in the revision of the Disci-

1gmith’s History of Wesleyan Methodism, I. 574, 575. Smith spells the
name Dickenson; all the other authors quoted, as in the text above.
THE PRESIDING ELDERSHIP. 33

 

pline and the issue of many new editions of that supreme law
book. The only limitation upon the supreme legislative and
electoral authority of the Annual Conferences incorporated by
the Christmas Conference in the first Discipline of the Church
was the resolution of submission to Mr. Wesley, in which the
Americans acknowledged themselves “ready in matters belong-
ing to Church government to obey his commands.” No won-
der Asbury was “mute and modest” when this resolution
passed, for in form it lodged sovereignty in Mr. Wesley, and
thus came near defeating in fact his object in calling the
Christmas Conference, whose organization of the Church, with
this contradictory exception, left the attributes of sovereignty
in the Annual Conferences. Mr. Wesley’s nominal supremacy
or sovereignty continued until 1787, when the record of it was
expunged from the law book of the Church, and the Annual
Conferences exercised full sovereign power until 1792. The
Christmas Conference was without doubt sovereign. It created
the Methodist Episcopal Church—leaving it without a General
Conference. Later the Church, through its existing sovereign
organs, created its General Conference.

This Christmas Conference elected, and Bishops Coke and
Asbury, assisted by Presbyters Whatcoat and Vasey, ordained,
a number of elders, whose duties and functions we must now
proceed to investigate. The office of presiding elder is not
recognized or defined in the first Discipline of the Church,
which simply assigns the duties of an elder “to administer the
sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, and to perform
all the other rites prescribed by our Liturgy.” In the appoint-
ments of 1785, however, the first made after the Christmas
Conference, and recorded, indeed, in the same Annual Minutes
which officially record the proceedings of that body, the names
of John Tunnell, Henry Willis, Richard Ivy, Reuben Ellis,
Nelson Reed, Enoch Matson, James O’Kelly, Thomas Foster,
Ignatius Pigman, Richard Whatcoat, Caleb Boyer, William
Gill, Thomas Vasey, and Thomas Chew, have the title Elder
affixed to them, and are prefixed to groups of circuits ranging
from two to six in number, and including from one preacher,
Woolman Hickson, in John Tunnell’s care, to nine preachers
in Reuben Ellis’s. Besides these, Beverly Allen is recognized
as an ‘Elder,’ and assigned to the whole of “Georgia,” with

3
34 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

no preachers under him; while John Haggerty, at New York
(probably with Ezekiel Cooper, on Long Island, dependent on
him for the ordinances), Freeborn Garrettson, at Shelburne,
James Cromwell, at Port Roseway, and Jeremiah Lambert
and John Baxter, at Antigua, are similarly recognized as
“Elders,” with no preachers in their charge.' These arrange-,
ments were in accordance with the design of Mr. Wesley, who,
in the beginning, did not intend that all the preachers should
be elders, but only that a sufficient number should be ordained
to supply the people with the sacraments. In 1786, the second
Discipline of the Church adds to the duties of an elder as pre-
scribed in the first: “To exercise within his own district, dur-
ing the absence of the Superintendents, all the powers invested
in them for the government of our Church. Provided that he
never act contrary to an express order of the Superintendents.” ?
So far as we know, this is the earliest use of the term “district,”
as applied to an elder’s jurisdiction, in the official records of
the Church. From that day, it has been in common, not to say
universal, use. This agrees exactly with Bishop Soule’s manu-
script account? of the original legal relations subsisting be-
tween the bishops and the elders, and which continue without
change to this day. The Rev. Thomas Ware, who was a mem-
ber of the Christmas Conference, deposes that “after our
organization, we proceeded to elect a sufficient number of
elders to visit the quarterly meetings and administer the or-
dinances.”’ ¢

Putting together the evidence derivable from the first and
second annual Disciplines of the Church, from Thomas Ware
and from Joshua Soule, we are authorized to conclude that the
presiding eldership, though not at first called by this name, is
virtually. coeval with the Church itself, and that from the be-
ginning the duties lodged with this officer were (1) the admin-
istration of the sacraments; (2) the official visitation of the
Quarterly Conferences; and (3) the exercise within an assigned
district of all the powers of the general superintendents for
the government of the Church during their absence, extending

 

1 Minutes, ed. of 1795, pp. 80-83. O’Kelly’s name is erroneously entered
“Kelly.” 2Discipline of 1786, p. 332. * Printed in Constitutional History,
pp. 211-218. 4Meth. Mag. and Quart. Rev., July, 1832, art., “Christmas
Conference,” by Thos. Ware.
THE PRESIDING ELDFERSHIP. 35

 

to the ordinary enforcement of law and the prompt administra-
tion of discipline.

The first occurrence of the title “presiding elder” in the
official action of the Church is in the plan for the Council
adopted by the Annual Conferences in 1789, three years after
the official term “district” had made its appearance in the
Discipline of 1786. The first provision of the plan for the
Council was as follows:

Our bishops and presiding elders shall be the members of this Council;
provided, that the members who form the Council be never fewer than
nine. And if any unavoidable circumstance prevent the attendance of a
presiding elder at the Council, he shall have authority to send another
elder out of his own district to represent him; but the elder so sent by the
absenting elder shall have no seat in the Council without the approbation
of the bishop, or bishops, and presiding elders present. And if, after the
above-mentioned provisions are complied with, any unavoidable circum-
stance or any contingencies reduce the number to less than nine, the bishop
shall immediately summon such elders as do not preside, to complete the
number.” 1

Here the term “presiding elder,” though still absent from
the Discipline and the Minutes, occurs no less than three times,
showing it to have come into such familiar and common use as
to be universally understood without explanation. ‘ District”
is also reproduced from the Discipline as‘ the usual official
term; and it is evident that even at this early date some elders
were not assigned to districts, but were put in charge of cir-
cuits under the supervision of other elders, now distinguished
as “presiding elders.” But in 1787 it was not usual for the
presiding elder to have charge of other elders. The develop-
ment of the office was evidently very rapid. The provisions
of the first and second Disciplines, 1785 and 1786, have already
been cited. In the Discipline of 1787, which, it will be remem-
bered, was rearranged by Bishop Asbury, appeared for the first
time asection “On the Constituting of Elders and their Duty.”
The duties are defined as follows:

1. To travel through his appointed District.

2. To administer Baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and to perform all
Parts of Divine Service.

3. In the Absence of a Bishop, to take charge of all the Deacons, travel-

ing and local Preachers, and Exhorters.
4. To change, receive, or suspend Preachers.

 

1 Jesse Lee, Short History of the Methodists, p. 149.
36 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

5. To direct in the Transaction of all the spiritual Business of his Circuit.

6. To take care that every Part of our Discipline be enforced.

7. To aid in the public Collections.

8. To attend his Bishop when present, and give him when absent, all
possible Information by Letter, of the State of his District.

N. B. No Elder that ceases to travel without the consent of the Confer-
ence, certified under the Hand of a Bishop, shall on any Account exercise
the peculiar Functions of his Office among us.

The Discipline of 1787 was published after the session of
the Baltimore Conference, the last of that year, for the resolu-
tion of submission to Mr. Wesley, finally rescinded by that
body, is omitted. But the revised Discipline as a whole, ar-
ranged in thirty-one sections “under proper heads, and meth-
odized in a more acceptable and easy manner” by Bishop
Asbury, assisted by John Dickins, was not submitted to the
Conferences, for the title “bishop,” which occurs for the first
time in the Discipline of this year, was not inserted by action
of the Conferences, but was approved by them at their sessions
in 1788. It is highly probable that Bishop Asbury took the
responsibility of expanding the simple provisions of 1786 con-
cerning the elders into the somewhat elaborate section of 1787.
But in so doing it is also probable that he simply made formal
record in the Discipline of functions and duties that the elders
were already actually exercising by appointment of the bishops
and consent of the Conferences. The section of 1787 stood
substantially unchanged until the meeting of the General Con-
ference in 1792. Bishop Asbury and the Annual Conferences
“found that this order of men was so necessary,’ say Coke and
Asbury, in their Notes to the Discipline of 1796, “that they
agreed to enlarge the number, and give them the name by which
they are at present called [the name was doubtless coined by
Bishop Asbury; the Conferences acquiesced, though it does
not appear in the Discipline until 1792], and which is perfectly
scriptural, though not the word used in our translation: and
this proceeding afterwards received the approbation of Mr.

 

1 Discipline of 1787, Sec. V., p. 8. The capitalization of the original has
been retained. In the Constitutional History, p. 215, the date 1789 assigned
for the introduction of this section is an error taken from Emory’s History
of the Discipline, ed. 1844, p.125. Emory was unable to obtain editions of
the Discipline either for 1787 or 1788. This writer is now in possession of
original editions of 1786, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, and 1792, and has the use of
the original editions of 1784-5 (the first), and 1787, the rarest of all.
THE PRESIDING ELDERSHIP., 37

 

Wesley [whose supremacy continued formally until 1787]. In
1792 the General Conference, equally conscious of the necessity
of having such an office among us, not only confirmed every-
thing that Bishop Asbury and the District [Annual] Confer-
ences had done, but also drew up or agreed to the present sec-
tion for the explanation of the nature and duties of the office.”

The chronology of the name is as follows, (1) It occurs first
in the plan of the Council as given by Jesse Lee in 1789; (2)
it occurs nowhere in the first edition of the General Minutes,
published by John Dickins, in 1795, embracing the official rec-
ords of all the Annual Conferences from 1773 to 1794, includ-
ing the Christmas Conference; (3) in the reprint of 1813, the
title is used in the appointments of 1789, probably to conform
the Minutes to the Plan of the Council—it then disappears
from the Minutes until 1797, after which it continues in gen-
eral use; (4) it first appears in the Discipline in 1792; and
(5) it occurs in the first extant journal of a General Confer-
ence, namely, that of 1796.
CHAPTER IV.
Tur PresipING ELDERSHIP (CONTINUED).

As we have seen in part, the first attempt to establish a gen-
eral government in the Methodist Episcopal Church was by
means of the creation of a “ Council,” composed of the bishops
and presiding elders, or of other elders substituting the absent
chiefs of districts. This Asburyan scheme was adopted by the
Annual Conferences as sovereign bodies in 1789. At its second
and last session, December 1, 1790—though another session
was appointed for December 1, 1792—this Council considered
itself invested (1) with full power to act decisively in all tem-
poral matters, and (2) to recommend to the several Confer-
ences any new canons, or alterations to be made in old ones.
But these matters will be somewhat more fully considered
when, in this series of papers, we reach the question of the
genesis and establishment of the General Conference.

At the last session of the Council, James O’Kelly’s district
was not represented. A member of the first Council, and ap-
parently its ardent supporter, he almost immediately became
its most vigorous opponent. In January, 1790, the month
after the adjournment of the first session of the Council,
O’Kelly took it upon himself to address to Asbury a letter of re-
monstrance and complaint, almost inhibitory in its demands,
and not devoid of clearly implied threats. Asbury says he
spoke with the authority of a pope. Accordingly, in Novem-
ber following, when preparations were making throughout the
Church for the second session of the Council, O’Kelly called
a meeting of the preachers of his district, at which twenty-two,
including William McKendree, were present. At this confer-
ence it was speedily agreed “to send no member to Council,”
thus illustrating Bishop Asbury’s assertion of the superior and
controlling influence of the presiding elders over the preachers
of their districts. During 1790 O’Kelly also entered into a cor-

(38)
THE PRESIDING ELDERSHIP. 39

respondence with Dr. Coke, in London, and succeeded in com-
mitting him against the Council and in favor of the General Con-
ference, so that when the two bishops met in February, 1791,
there was a little “heat,” which disappeared when Asbury
promptly “acceded to a General Conference for the sake of
peace.”1 Asbury says in a letter to Morrell that O’Kelly also
wrote to Mr. Wesley, and Dr. Coke declares that he “prevailed
on James O’Kelly and the thirty-six traveling preachers who
had withdrawn with him from all connections with Bishop As-
bury to submit to the decision of a General Conference,” and
that when the Conference met in 1792, “he [Coke] proposed
and obtained that great blessing to the American Connection—
a permanency for General Conferences, which were to be held
at stated times.”? Thus this restless agitator, addressing him-
self to both of the bishops and, to Mr. Wesley, then in the last
year of his earthly pilgrimage, and organizing the preachers of
his district in independence of Mr. Asbury and of the Connec-
tion, ably seconded also, as to the end sought, by Jesse Lee, who
from the beginning had been a sturdy and outspoken opponent
of the Council, so fomented the general dissatisfaction that the
third session, though appointed, was never held, the General
Conference anticipating and superseding it. “Bishop Asbury
proposed the Council,” says Bangs, “which had but an ephem-
eral existence, and did not answer the design of its institution,
to which neither Dr. Coke nor O’Kelly was agreed, the former
submitting to it from deference to Bishop Asbury, proposing
in the meantime a General Conference as a substitute.” ?

O’Kelly’s great contention of an appeal from the bishop
to the Conference on the question of the appointment of the
preachers was fully debated and decisively rejected at the first
session of the General Conference. Back of this lay his per-
sonal grievance with regard to his permanent occupancy of the
South Virginia District. Asbury declares that he stipulated
with him through Dr. Coke to allow him to remain there until
the decision of the proposed General Conference could be had.
An inspection of the appointments from 1784 to 1792 will re-
veal the fact that men like Whatcoat, Willis, Ivy, Ellis, Reed,
and O’Kelly had almost continuously presided over districts

1Asbury’s Journal, II. 95. ?Letter to the General Conference of 1808,
Bangs’s History of the M. E. Church, IT. 207. *Ibid., II. 224,
40 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

since the Christmas Conference, and, for the most part, over
the same districts, or in the same general region. “Mr. O’Kel-
ly,” says Asbury, “being disappointed in not getting an ap-
peal from any station made by me, withdrew from the Connec-
tion and went off. For himself, the Conference well knew he
could not complain of the regulation; he had been located to
the south district of Virginia for about ten succeeding years;
and upon his plan, might have located himself and any preach-
er, or set of preachers, to the district, whether the people
wished to have them or not.”! As it had been only eight
years since the Christmas Conference and the first ordination
of elders, when O’Kelly was ordained, this can only mean that
O’Kelly had done circuit work in that region for two years be-
fore the Christmas Conference. This is confirmed by the min-
utes (1795), which show that O’Kelly was stationed in Bruns-
wick in 1783 and in Sussex in 1784.

The question, therefore, of the appointment and term of the
presiding elders came prominently before this first General
Conference. Of this body we have no journal, the alterations,
as Lee tells us, being entered at their proper place and pub-
lished in the next edition of the Form of Discipline.? But
this Discipline of 1792 and Lee’s History lie before us, and
afford all necessary information. Of the presiding eldership
Lee says:

The fifth section had respect to the presiding elders. Such an order of
elders had never been regularly established before. They had been ap-
pointed by the bishop for several years; but it was a doubt in the mind of
the preachers whether such power belonged to him. The General Confer-
ence now determined that there should be presiding elders, and that they
should be chosen, stationed, and changed by the bishop.

When we consider the section “On the Constituting of Eld-
ers and their Duty” in the Discipline of 1787, cited in our last
chapter, which had stood without change in those of 1788, 1789,
1790, and 1791, it is evident that this language of Lee’s cannot
mean that there was any doubt as to the legality of existing

 

1Journal, II. 147. ?It is probable that this was also the case at the Christ-
mas Conference, the supposed long-lost minutes of this body never having
had any existence asa distinct record. I am well aware of the danger of
the many universal negative judgments which I have been compelled to
express on various points, and stand ready to reverse any of them on proper
evidence. *Short History of the Methodists, p. 183.
THE PRESIDING ELDERSHIP. 41

 

districts and the authority of the bishop to appoint elders to
preside over them. But the dignity and solemnity of the ordi-
nation of the elders to an order which, unlike the diaconate,
was of life tenure; the examples of permanency in the presi-
dency of certain districts, which, as in O’Kelly’s case, had con-
tinued in some instances since the original ordinations at the
Christmas Conference; the exclusive governing functions to
which the elders had been assigned in the constitution of the
Council; the comparative fewness of their numbers, and the
commanding influence which their age, experience, talents, and
permanency speedily enabled many of them to acquire in their
districts and throughout the Church, had begotten a doubt
whether the presiding eldership was not a lifetime estate, like
the episcopate, and whether the bishops had authority to
“choose, station, and change” the solemnly ordained occu-
pants of this sub-episcopal office.

There are many indications that the organization of the Gen-
eral Conference in 1792 was seized upon as a favorable time
for a fresh sifting and settling of the general economy of the
Church. Says Asbury: “The General Conference went through
the Discipline, Articles of Faith, Forms of Baptism, Matri-
mony, and the Burial of the Dead; as also the Offices of Ordi-
nation. The Conference ended in peace after voting another
General Conference four years hence.”! In the address pre-
fixed to the Discipline of 1792, dated Baltimore, November 16,
and signed by Coke and Asbury, the bishops say: “ We think
ourselves obliged frequently to view and review the whole or-
der of our Church, always aiming at perfection, standing on
the shoulders of those who have lived before us, and taking the
advantage of our former selves.”? Since the Christmas Con-
ference, the “Form of Discipline,” remarks Lee, “had been
changed and altered in so many particulars, and the business
of the Council had thrown the Connection into such confusion,
that we thought proper at this Conference to take under con-
sideration the greater part of the Form of Discipline, and
either abolish, establish, or change the rules.” Accordingly,
in 1792 the presiding eldership is formally recognized in the
Discipline; this officer is placed, like other preachers, at the
disposal of the bishop as to his appointment, and his term on

1Journal, II. 147. Discipline of 1792, p. iv.
42 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

a given district is limited to four years. The General Con-
ference confirmed all that Bishop Asbury and the Annual Con-
ferences had done, and drew up a section in which the bishop
in two separate questions and answers is expressly empowered,
first to choose, and then to station and change the presiding
elders. Lee and the Discipline of 1792 are identical in their
phraseology about “choosing, stationing, and changing.” This
section stood unaltered from 1792 until 1804, as follows:

Quest. 1. By whom are the presiding elders to be chosen?

Answ. By the bishop.

Quest. 2. What are the duties of the presiding elder?

Answ. 1. To travel through his appointed district.

2. In the absence of a bishop to take charge of all the elders, deacons,
traveling and local preachers, and exhorters in his district.

3. To change, receive, or suspend preachers in his district during the in-
tervals of the Conferences and in the absence of the bishop.

4. In the absence of a bishop, to preside in the Conference of his district.

5. To be present, as far as practicable, at all the quarterly meetings; and
to call together at each quarterly meeting all the traveling and local preach-
ers, exhorters, stewards, and leaders of the circuit, to hear complaints, and
to receive appeals.

6. To oversee the spiritual and temporal business of the societies in his
district.

7. To take care that every part of our Discipline be enforced in his dis-
trict.

8. To attend the bishop when present in his district; and to give him
when absent all necessary information, by letter, of the state of his district:

Quest. 3. By whom are the presiding elders to be stationed and changed?

Answ. By the bishop.

Quest. 4. How long may the bishop allow an elder to preside in the same
district?

Answ, For any term not exceeding four years successively.

In 1804 to the third item of the presiding elder’s duties were
added the words, “as the Discipline directs;” sundry other
changes were also made at the same time, which do not affect
the essential principles and rules of the administration intrust-
ed to this officer, or his relations to the bishops and to the An-
nual Conferences, all of which have remained as settled in
1792. In 1840 the presiding elder was given the power to “de-
cide all questions of law in a Quarterly Meeting Conference,
subject to an appeal to the president of the next Annual Con-
ference; but in all cases the application of law shall be with the
Conference.”
THE PRESIDING ELDERSHIP. 43

 

The controversies which agitated the Church throughout the
opening quarter of this century concerning the election of pre-
siding elders by the Annual Conferences and their official func-
tions and responsibility in the appointment of the preachers
cannot be entered upon here. Suffice it to say that none of
these agitations resulted in any modification of the underlying
principles finally settled in 1792, and guaranteed by the consti-
tution of 1808 as an integral part of our plan of itinerant general
superintendency. The formative period of the presiding elder-
ship was from 1784 to 1792, since which time, notwithstanding
the persistent efforts of some of the ablest leaders the Church
has had, especially in the Northern Conferences, its material
features have remained unchanged. It is difficult for us to
realize that on this question the Northern opponents of Mc-
Kendree and Soule, authors and defenders of the constitution,
came near disrupting the Church in 1820-24, and by their atti-
tude kept Soule out of the episcopacy fora quadrennium. This
story we have elsewhere told at length. The Annual Confer-
ences have never had @ voice in the selection of presiding eld-
ers. Nobody but the bishop has ever been responsible for the
appointments of the preachers. The “cabinet,” and the func-
tions of the presiding elder in the cabinet, are still without defi-
nition or recognition in the Discipline. Bishop Asbury always
made the appointments without the aid of a cabinet. Bishop Mc-
Kendree is the father of the institution: since his day it has rest-
ed securely on the basis of common consent and general usage.
The regulations of 1792 have worked well for more than a hun-
dred years. They are protected in essentials by the constitu-
tion. The office has been under discussion from its creation to
this day. That it is capable of improvement in various details
—by enlargement of the districts and a more accurate align-
ment of District Conferences with the bodies above and below
them, as some of us think—is no doubt true; that the Church
will modify it in any essential feature is not likely in our day.
THE ITINHRANCY. Ps
CHAPTER YV.
Tur ITINERANOY.

THE first public expounders in America of the gospel accord-
ing to Methodism—Robert Strawbridge, Philip Embury, and
Thomas Webb—were all local preachers, a fact not without its
bearing on present-day discussions. The itinerancy came to
these western shores in the persons of Richard Boardman and
Joseph Pilmoor in 1769; of Francis Asbury and Richard Wright
in 1771; and of Thomas Rankin and George Shadford in 1773,
when the first Conference, composed of ten members, met in the
city of Philadelphia.

Between 1744, the date of the first British, and 1773, the date
of the first American, Conference, the itinerancy had been de-
veloped and fixed as to many essential features in England.
Unlike the episcopacy and the presiding eldership, the itiner-
ancy is not peculiar to American Methodism. Many important
changes, moreover, were made by the British Conference after
the last-mentioned date. For a comprehensive historical expo-
sition of the advantageous practical features and the broad
legal principles exemplified in Methodist itinerancy, it will be
necessary, therefore, in two distinct though closely related pa-
pers, to investigate,

I. The Rise and Growth of Itinerancy in England, and

IL. The Modifications of Itinerancy in America.

At that first London Conference of 1744 the question was
asked, “What may we reasonably believe to have been God’s
design in raising up the preachers called Methodists?” and the
Minutes record the answer, “To reform the nation—more par-
ticularly the Church; to spread scriptural holiness over the
land’’; or, according to the Large Minutes, “As messengers sent
by the Lord, out of the common way, to provoke the regular cler-
gy to jealousy, and to supply their lack of service toward those

(47)
48 ; THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

who are perishing for want of knowledge; and, above all, to re-
form the nation by spreading scriptural holiness over the land.”

The Conference of 1820 reaffirmed and expanded this original
conception of the office and duty of Methodist preachers:

Let us ourselves remember, and endeavor to impress on our people, that
we, as a body, do not exist for the purposes of party; and that we are spe-
cially bound by the example of our founder, by the original principle on
which our societies are formed, and by our constant professions before the
world, to avoid a narrow, bigoted, and sectarian spirit, to abstain from need-
less and unprofitable disputes on minor subjects of theological controversy—
and, so far as we innocently can, “to please all men for their good unto edi-
fication.” Let us, therefore, maintain toward all denominations of Chris-
tians who “hold the Head,” the kind and catholic spirit of primitive Meth-
odism; and, according to the noble maxim of our fathers in the gospel, “be
the friends of all, the enemies of none.” *

It is in full accord with these catholic principles that we find
in the first Discipline of American Methodism, as enacted by
the Christmas Conference, this question and answer:

Q. 47. Shall persons who continue to attend divine service and partake
of the Lord’s Supper with other Churches have liberty at the same time
to be members of our Society?

A. They shall have full liberty, if they comply with our Rules.t

The word full is italicized in the original. When we consider
all the conditions prior to 1784, as they obtained in Mr. Jarratt’s
parish and elsewhere, it is probable that a considerable propor-
tion of the first Methodists were sheltered and protected by
Question 47: it is at least doubtful—though the inquiry would
be more curious than profitable—whether members of other
communions are not to-day entitled to recognition among the
Methodists should they seek it.

In the beginning the usual method of conferring the ministe-
rial character was for the assistant to recommend to Mr. Wes-
ley such young men as seemed suited to the work of the itiner-
ancy, with or without consultation with the quarterly meeting,
and sometimes without the knowledge of the person concerned.
Mr. Wesley then made an appointment, of which the young ap-
pointee might know nothing until the Conference was over.
Bishop Asbury sometimes did the same thing in America. In
the superintendent of the circuit alone, who corresponds to the
old assistant, there is now vested the constitutional right, among

 

1English Minutes, 1820, Vol. V., pp. 148, 149. ? Discipline, 1785, pp. 17,
18 (original).
THE ITINERANCY. 49

 

our English brethren, of nominating candidates for the itiner-
ancy to the quarterly meetings of the circuits; so that if he de-
clines to nominate a local preacher, no other person can assume
this function. The superintendent, however, is required to
counsel with his junior colleagues in the circuit, to examine
the candidate privately on Methodist doctrine and discipline, to
hear him preach, and, as far as possible, to afford the members
of the quarterly meeting an opportunity to do so. The power
of the quarterly meeting is limited to a judgment on these three
points: Has he grace? has he gifts? has God given him fruit
of his labors? Ifa majority decide against the candidate, the
case is dismissed for that year; if a majority decide for him, the
jurisdiction of the quarterly meeting terminates. Its vote of ap-
proval is taken by the superintendent, or preacher in charge, to
the ensuing annual district meeting; and all cases approved by
the district committees are reported to the Conference, which
makes final disposition of them.

Section 1 of Chapter III. of our present Discipline (1894),
“Of the Trial of Those who Think They are Moved by the Holy
Ghost to Preach,” dates back, substantially unchanged, to the
Third English Conference, held in 1746; so that for one hun-
dred and fifty years these have been the tests among all Meth-
odists of entrance upon the duties of the Christian ministry.

The feature of examination before the district meeting was
introduced in 1802. Through the exertions of the Rev. Joseph
Entwhistle, a plan prepared and proposed by him. was recom-
mended by the York and Manchester district meetings to the
Conference of that year, which adopted the following law:

At present the candidate is supposed to have passed the quarterly meet-
ing, from which he is recommended to the district meeting. In addition to
this, let him, if possible, attend the district meeting, and be examined be-
fore all the brethren present respecting his experience, his knowledge of di-
vine things, his reading, his view of the doctrines of the gospel, and his re-
gard for Methodism in general. The preacher who examines him shall be
chosen by the ballot of the district committee. After the examination, the
candidate shall withdraw, and the committee shall deliberate on the propri-
ety or impropriety of his admission on trial, and determine whether he shall
be recommended to the ensuing Conference or not. If it be not convenient
for the candidate to attend the district meeting, three of the committee shall
be chosen by ballot, and appointed to act in this instance for the district.!

 

4 1English Minutes, 1802, Vol. II., p. 140.
50 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

Thus, when the General Conference of 1894 transferred from
Quarterly to District Conferences the duty of recommending
candidates for admission on trial to the Annual Conferences, it
but followed substantially an English precedent which dates
back to 1802; though we do not remember that either the com-
mittee having the measure in charge or any debater on the floor
of the Conference urged this fact in favor of the proposed law,
or in any way called attention to it. The provision of a com-
mittee of examination for such candidates, to be appointed by
the presiding elder, obviously agrees in principle also with the
English usage.

William Pierce, in his “Ecclesiastical Principles and Polity
of the Wesleyan Methodists” (third edition, revised by Fred-
erick J. Jobson, D.D.), gives the following as the substance of
the usual examination conducted by the chairman of a district
for candidates for admission on trial into the Conference. It
is of sufficient importance to be transcribed entire:

Do you believe that the Scriptures reveal a Trinity in unity in the eterna]
Godhead?

How do you define this fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith?

By what line of argument do you prove that this mysterious truth is
taught in the Scriptures? ;

Do you believe that there exists a relation between the persons in the
Trinity? and what is that relation?

How do you further prove the essential divinity of the Son of God?

How do you prove the eternal Sonship of the Second Person in the Trinity?

How do you prove the distinct personality and proper deity of the Holy
Ghost?

What do you understand by original sin? Are the whole posterity of
Adam, in consequence of his sin, involved in guilt and subjects of inherent
depravity?

How do you prove this to be the doctrine of the Scriptures?

In what light do you regard the death of Jesus Christ?

How do you define the nature of that atonement or propitiation which
Jesus Christ made?

For whom did he offer the propitiatory sacrifice?

How do you prove from the Scriptures that our Lord has made atonement
for the sins of the whole world?

In what does repentance for sin consist?

What do you understand by the present justification of a sinner before
God?

Are not pardon, justification, and adoption substantially the same act of
God, viewed under the different relations which he bears to man as a Sov-
ereign, a Judge, and a Father?
THE ITINERANCY. 51

 

By what Scriptures do you sustain this view?

What is the nature of justifying faith?

What are the immediate results of justification?

What is the direct witness of the Spirit?

Is this the privilege of all Christian believers?

What is the new birth, or regeneration?

Although, as we believe, justification, the witness of the Spirit, and regen-
eration are coexistent—that is, they are bestowed upon us in the same mo-
ment of time—is there not, in the order of thinking, a succession of one to the
other? and between the two latter is there not a relation resembling that of
cause and effect?

In what respects does regeneration differ from justification?

How does it differ from sanctification?

What is entire sanctification?

Do you believe that this state of “perfect love” is attainable in the pres-
ent life by all believers?

How do you prove it to be so attainable?

Do you believe that the perseverance of the saints is conditional?

How do you prove that the saints may finally fall from a state of grace?

What do you believe concerning the resurrection of the dead?

Will the same body, in the popular sense of that term, be raised again?

Do you believe that the happiness of the righteous and punishment of
the wicked, in a future state, will be strictly and literally eternal?

Have you read the Large Minutes?

Do you approve of the Methodist discipline?

Will you observe it yourself and enforce it upon others?

Do you believe the Christian Sabbath to be a divine institution of perpet-
ual and universal obligation in the Christian Church?

What are the sacraments which our Lord has ordained in his Church?

Are you under any matrimonial engagement?

Do you take no snuff, tobacco, or drams?

Are you free from debt?

If approved, are you willing to be employed under the direction of the
Conference in any part of the world, or do you restrict your offer? |

Candidates accepted by the Conference are not in all cases
immediately assigned work. Any excess above the number de-
manded for the circuits may be sent to the theological institu-
tion, or placed upon the president’s list of reserves. The Con-
ference of 1785 fixed the term for which preachers should re-
main on trial at four years. As to the studies of these clerical
probationers, several wholesome regulations may be noted: As
early as 1798 it was made the duty of the superintendent of the

 

1Pp. 263, 264. Mr. Pierce’s work is a code or digest prepared from the
entire series of English Minutes under classified titles. Indebtedness is
ucknowledged to this work, but all its references have been verified.
52 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

circuit to see “that the preachers on trial have the eight vol-
umes of [Wesley’s] sermons to read.” It was further enacted
that every probationer, “when received into full connection,
shall have the eight volumes given to him as a present from
the book room.” In 1815 probationers are required to procure
all of Mr. Wesley’s works while on trial, but are allowed to pay
for them in convenient installments. In 1825 the Conference
recommends the “quarterly meetings of these circuits, in which
such preachers are stationed while on trial, to allow them asum
not less than one guinea per quarter in addition to their usual
salary, to be laid out in the purchase of books.” In 1867 the
Conference directed that at each district meeting, annually for
the four years of probation, “three English books shall be fixed
upon as the subjects of such examination, . . . with a sub-
ject in Greek or Hebrew, in addition, for such as read those lan-
guages.”

The Deed of Declaration empowers the Conference to admit
into full connection persons approved as expounders of God’s
word. As early as 1793 it was ordered that “ every preacher,
before he is admitted into full connection, shall draw out a
sketch of his life and experience.” The Conference of 1873 en-
acted that, after the usual reception into full connection by the
president of the Conference, the ex-president should deliver to
the class an appropriate charge. A fear having been expressed
that some of the younger preachers were in danger of departing
from the leading doctrines of Methodism, it was required in 1805
that, “before any preacher be admitted into full connection, he
shall be required to give a full and explicit declaration of his
faith as to these doctrines;” and in 1814 these doctrines were
enumerated and defined as follows:

The following are chiefly the doctrines to which his unequivocal assent is
demanded: A trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead; the total de-
pravity of all men by nature, in consequence of Adam’s fall; the atonement
made by Christ for the sins of all the human race; justification by faith; the

absolute necessity of holiness, both in heart and life; the direct witness of the
Spirit; and the proper eternity of future rewards and punishments.1

It is well known that in 1784 Mr. Wesley ordained Dr. Coke,

Mr. Whatcoat, and Mr. Vasey, and subsequently performed
many other ordinations for Scotland and England. Neverthe-

 

1 English Minutes, 1814, Vol. IV., p. 41.
THE ITINERANCY. 53

 

less, more than half a century elapsed before ordination by the
imposition of hands was adopted by the English Conference.
Not until the year 1836 does this action appear:

The Conference, after mature deliberation, resolves that the preachers who
are this year to be publicly admitted into full connection shall be ordained
by imposition of hands; that this shall be our standing rule and usage in fu-
ture years, and that any rule of a contrary nature which may be in existence
shall be, and is hereby, rescinded.1

Since 1792 the rule had stood: “No ordination shall take
place in the Methodist connection without the consent of the
Conference first obtained.” To it was annexed this severe pen-
alty: “If any brother shall break the above-mentioned rule by
ordaining or being ordained without the consent of the Confer-
ence being obtained, the brother so breaking the rule does there-
by exclude himself.* In the Large Minutes appear these addi-
tions to the rule: “Nor shall gowns or bands be used among us,
or the title of reverend be used at all.” In 1822 a long and an-
imated Conference debate on the subject resulted in nothing. It
was largely through the influence of Jabez Bunting, as Dr. Mudge
points out in his article in the March issue of THE MrrnHopist
Review, 1896, that decisive action was taken in 1836 as indicated
above. In 1841 it was further resolved “that the persons by
whom the Conference shall confer ordination to our ministry,
by imposition of hands, be the president, ex-president, and
secretary of the Conference for the time being, with two of the
senior preachers to be nominated by the president.” It has
been usual, however, to invite visiting bishops of the American
Church to assist in these ordinations. Bishop Soule so assisted
in 1842, placing his hands upon the head of the now venerable
and venerated William Arthur, as did Bishop Galloway at his
recent visit as fraternal messenger from our Church. The or-
dination service used conforms closely to Mr. Wesley’s original
abridgment from the Church of England’s service, and is en-
titled, “The Form and Manner of Ordaining of Elders.” It
does not differ materially from our own, nor do the questions
asked at the time of reception into full connection vary in any
important particular from our own; but the president calls upon
as many of the class as the time will allow to relate briefly the
circumstances of their conversion, their present religious expe-

 

1English Minutes, 1836, Vol. VIII, p. 85.
54 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

rience, their conviction of a divine call to the work of the min-
istry, and their purpose of full devotion to God and his work.
Thus, in their theological examinations, both in private and in
public, and in their written and oral narratives of experience,
the ministers of Methodism in England are thrown back upon
their living, personal knowledge of the things of God as the first
qualification for their life work.

The Deed of Declaration invests the Conference with an un-
qualified right to expel from the connection any preacher for
any cause which, in the judgment of the Conference, may jus-
tify such a penalty. Nevertheless, regulations have been adopt-
ed from time to time which furnish a safe check upon arbitrary
expulsions. In 1791 it was ordered that a district meeting shall
investigate all critical cases; in 1793 that a copy of the charges
should be sent the accused—the tribunal known as a minor dis-
trict meeting was also constituted, and its function to suspend a
preacher until Conference defined; and in 1795 the somewhat
elaborate provisions of the “Plan of Pacification” went into
effect. The general principles involved have been reasserted
by the Conference from time to time, and many details of ad-
ministration have been added as emergencies demanded them.

The Deed of Declaration also enacts that “the Conference
shall not, nor may, appoint any person for more than three
years successively to any chapel,” the clergymen of the Church
of England affiliating with the Methodists being exempted from
the operation of this rule. But in 1791, immediately after Mr.
Wesley’s death, when the Deed became the supreme civil char-
ter of the connection, the Conference ordained that “no preach-
er shall be stationed for any circuit above two years succes-
sively, unless God has been pleased to use him as the instru-
ment of a remarkable revival.”! In 1804 it was reaffirmed that
“no preacher shall be permitted to remain more than two years
successively.” But in 1818 it was agreed:

Whenever it is proposed to station any preacher in the same circuit for a
third year in succession, the reasons assigned for such triennial station shall
be specially stated to the Conference before the appointment is confirmed.2

In 1801 it was ordered that no preacher should be returned
to a circuit where he had served for even a single year until
after an interval of seven years. In 1807 the period of neces-

1English Minutes, 1791, Vol. I. p. 254. ? Ibid., 1818, Vol. IV., p. 455.

 
THE ITINERANCY. 55

sary absence was increased to eight years; but in 1866 the pe-
riod for Scotland was reduced to three years.

In 1830 the Conference ordained that where there were two
or more circuits in the same city, no preacher should be stationed
so as to remain for above six years in succession in such place.
But in 1872 the May district committees were given jurisdic-
tion in the premises during the presence of the lay members.

The provisions of the British Conference concerning super-
numerary and superannuated preachers are not unworthy of at-
tention. In 1793 the Conference resolved that “every preach-
er shall be considered as a supernumerary for four years after
he has desisted from traveling, and shall afterwards be deemed
superannuated.” In 1800 this safeguard was erected: “Let no
preacher be declared superannuated, or stationed as a super-
numerary, without the recommendation of the district meeting
to which he belongs.” And in 1806 this statute was enacted:

The mode of supplying the wants of our supernumerary [and superannu-
ated?] preachers shall be left to the discretion of the Committee of Eleven,
annually appointed, who shall determine the measure of relief that ought to
be afforded to the respective claimants, in addition to their annuity from the
legal fund; and shall also decide, according to circumstances, from what
source the additional allowance should be derived.

As early as 1787 the subject of permitting strangers to preach
in the chapels engaged the attention of the Conference, and
the following minute was adopted: “ Let no person that is not
in connection with us preach in any of our chapels or preach-
ing houses without a note from Mr. Wesley, or from the assist-
ant of the circuit from whence he comes; which note must be re-
newed yearly.” This action of 1807 will be of special interest
to Americans:

We, therefore, again direct that no stranger from America or elsewhere,
be suffered to preach in any of our places, unless he come fully accredited,
if an itinerant preacher, by having his name entered on the minutes of the
Conference of which he is a member; and if a local preacher, by a recom-
mendatory note from his superintendent.!

The following very judicious and carefully elaborated reso-
lution of 1847, reaffirmed in 1862, is so pertinent to present-day
conditions among us, and so fertile of wise suggestion, that we
make no apology for transcribing it here:

That while this Conference have alu ays been, and are, sincerely and cor-

1Englixzh Minutes, 1807, Vol. IT, p. 405.
56 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

dially thankful for those genuine and scriptural revivals of religion with which
God has been graciously pleased so often to visit many of our circuits, and by
which he has from time to time refreshed and extended his heritage among
us, they feel themselves bound in conscience and in fidelity to the sacred
trust specially committed to them, as the recognized ministers and pastors
of the connection, to declare in the strongest terms their disapprobation of
the occasion which certain persons have taken from some recent movements,
designed for the promotion of religious revivals, to encourage a spirit of un-
holy dissension, strife, and disorder. The Conference fully believe that, in
very many instances, this has occurred without any evil intention, and in-
advertently, or without due consideration; but it is their deliberate judg-
ment that the tendency and operation of the proceedings, to which refer-
ence is here made, have been to produce serious discords of opinion, feeling,
and conduct among brethren, and to create that internal disunion which is
truly and scripturally condemned as divisive and schismatical. In connection
with this great evil, the Conference regret to perceive, not indeed generally,
but yet in too many instances, a disposition to adopt (perhaps unawares)
views and sentiments which, on the alleged ground of concern: for special
and extraordinary revivals, have the effect of alienating, in some degree, the
affections of our people from the well-accredited, long-tried, and officially re-
sponsible ministers and pastors of our churches; of lessening them in pub-
lic estimation; of diminishing their legitimate and beneficial influence; of
substituting something new and irregular for the ordinary ministry and
standing institutions of the gospel; and of leading some individuals, most
injuriously to themselves, to undervalue the authority and eventual effi-
ciency, under the promised blessing of the Holy Spirit, of the stated preach-
ing of the word, and of other appointed means of grace.

Then follow a republication and reénactment of the minute
of 1807 cited above, with a resolution approving the adminis-
tration of the ex-president in these delicate matters.

Thus have we passed in review the essential regulations of
the British Conference concerning the itinerancy which for a
century and a half has certified its usefulness among Metho-
dists as their chief evangelizing agency. There is little or noth-
ing in this long history that suggests the necessity or expedi-
ency of the abolition of the “time limit,” or the modification
of any of the essential principles of Methodist itinerancy.
Such a change would be in the strictest sense an experiment,
to our mind rash and hazardous, contrary to the universal ex-
perience of Methodism, and unwarranted by any special condi-
tions of our times. But to these points we shall return in our
next chapter on the modification of itinerancy among the Ameri-
can Methodists.

 

1 English Minutes, 1847, Vol. X., pp. 551-553,
 

 

 

 

 

FRANCIS ASBURY,
Apostle of American Methodism.
CHAPTER VI.

THE Irinerancy (ConrTINvED).

In our study of American itinerancy, it will be expedient
first of all rapidly to sketch the development of the system
from the arrival of the earliest itinerant preachers to the as-
sembling of the Christmas Conference. Though disturbed
outwardly by the War of the Revolution, which falls wholly
within this period, and which occasioned the return home of
all the English itinerants except Asbury; and though inwardly
convulsed by nearly fatal schism within the Conference itself,
this period of our Church life and administration is not nearly
so chaotic as might at first be supposed, and will be found
richly to repay a more patient and minute study than has often
been bestowed upon it.

When Francis Asbury landed at Philadelphia, in the last
week of October, 1771, he was fully convinced, theoretically
and practically, that the Methodist doctrine and discipline
were the purest and most efficient then taught and enforced
anywhere in the world. He confidently anticipated that this
world-wide Arminian plan of salvation, and this world-wide
scheme of itinerant evangelization, would be greatly honored
of God in the wilds of America. In 1784 Coke said, “ He will
carry his gospel by thee [Asbury] from sea to sea, and from
one end of the continent to another;” and some such prophetic
assurance seems to have been granted to the soul of Asbury
himself, if we may judge from several entries in his Journal, at
the beginning of his apostolic labors. He was “fixed to the
Methodist plan,” and when, less than a month after his arrival
on the continent, he found his itinerant predecessor and chief
of administration, Boardman, lax in the use and enforcement
of itinerancy, he determined “to stand against all opposition
as an iron pillar strong, and steadfast as a wall of brass.” He

(57)
58 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

sought (1) a circulation of the preachers to avoid partiality
and popularity, and (2) to hinder the confinement of the
labors of the itinerants to the cities, chiefly New York, Phila-
delphia, and Baltimore. These convictions abode with him
and guided his administration for forty-five years, 1771-1816.
He never yielded to popular demands for the relaxation of
Methodist law and usage; nor accepted the estimates of lazy or
unconsecrated preachers as to what was feasible or desirable,
In his “ Valedictory Address to William McKendree, Bishop
of the Methodist Episcopal Church,” written in August, 1813,
he said: “Guard particularly against two orders of preachers—
the one for the country, the other for the cities. . . . You
know, my brother, that the present ministerial cant is that we
cannot now, as in former apostolical days, have such doctrines,
such discipline, such convictions, such conversions, such wit-
nesses of sanctification, and such holy men. ButI say that we
can; I say we must; yea, I say we have.” The stuff was in the
man, and we need not wonder that one year after his arrival in
America, in October, 1772, Asbury, by Mr. Wesley’s appoint-
ment, succeeded Boardman as the American assistant and head
of the itinerant forces. Thomas Rankin, who in the summer
of 1773 relieved Asbury as assistant, was a man of like loyalty
to Methodist doctrine and discipline, and of like persistence if
not like ability. ‘To these two thorough disciplinarians,” well
remarks Abel Stevens, “we owe the effective organization of
the incipient Methodism of the new world. Without them it
seems probable that it would have adopted a settled pastorate,
and become blended with the Anglican Church of the colonies,
or, like the fruits of Whitefield’s labors, have been absorbed in
the general Protestantism of the country.”

Until 1778 and the arrival of Rankin, the oversight and reg-
ulation of the work and the appointment of the preachers were
attended to in Quarterly Conferences. The primitive Ameri-
can Methodist organism was unicellular, so to speak, and the
quarterly meetings were the seats of ‘initial governmental life
in the Church. So great an advance was made in 1773 that
Asbury says of the Conference of that year: “Our general con-
ference began: in which the following propositions were agreed
to,” etc.! The first Quarterly Conference in America of which

 

1 Journal, I. 55.
THE ITINERANCY. 59

 

any record remains was held during Asbury’s administration,
and under his presidency, on the western shore of Maryland,
December 23, 177% He preached from Acts xx. 28, recording
in his Journal an outline of the very practical sermon, and sta-
tioned Strawbridge and Owen in Frederick; King, Webster,
and Rollins on the other side of the bay; and himself in Balti-
more. Thus the quarterly meeting was a very effective center
for the distribution of itinerant laborers, who might be nomi-
nally local preachers: if a little more of the primitive energy
could be infused into both the modern bodies and the modern
preachers of this class, it might be well for modern Metho-
dism. The better use of the machinery we have might prove
wiser than the manufacture of new. At Presbury’s, Straw-
bridge, a married man, received £8 quarterage, and Asbury
and King, bachelors, £6 each. At this Conference Asbury
also resisted the pleadings of the sanguine and large-hearted
Strawbridge, and refused to depart from the Methodist plan
by granting permission to the preachers to administer the
sacraments.

Asbury enjoyed less than a year of this primitive but effect-
ive administration, when he was superseded by the appoint-
ment and arrival of Thomas Rankin with Mr. Wesley’s com-
mission as “ general assistant” for America. In the middle of
July, 1773, about six weeks after his landing, Rankin assem-
bled for the first time the preachers of all the American cir-
cuits in the city of Philadelphia, in what Asbury, as we have
seen, calls a “general conference,” though this institution did
not come into existence or acquire legal definition and fixa-
tion in the Discipline or in the Church until nearly twenty
years afterwards, in 1792. The body, though exercising lim-
ited legislative functions and supervising the whole work,
more nearly resembled what is now known as an Annual
Conference; and as such assemblies continued to be held once
a year, it is usual to designate them, though with considera-
ble inexactness, Annual Conferences. As to itinerancy, Mr.
Rankin exercised without challenge the appointing power in
this Conference, as Boardman and Asbury bad previously done
in the quarterly meetings; “the preachers were stationed in
the best manner we could,” he says. Asbury and Strawbridge,
with two colleagues, were sent to Baltimore; Wright to Nor-
60 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

folk; Williams to Petersburg; King and Watters to New Jer-
sey; Shadford to Philadelphia; and Rankin to New York, with
the express proviso that the two latter were “to change in four
months.”? This is tne first formal imposition of a “time lim-
it” in the history of American itinerancy. At the Conference
of 1774 we find a list of six standard Annual Conference ques-
tions introduced, and to the appointments this note is append-
ed: “All the preachers to change at half the year’s end.”?
From the minutes of the next year, 1775, it is evident that
quarterly and possibly more frequent changes were often made;
but “to change in one quarter” and “at half the year’s end”
seem to have become standing formulas of ministerial appoint-
ment.? Six months, however, became the first. normal time
limit in American Methodism: in 1782, Question 7 is, “How
are the preachers to change after six months?” and full direc.
tions are given at the Annual Conference session for the bien-
nial change.* So far as we have noted, these are all the refer-
ences to the subject in the minutes from 1773 to 1784. For
the period now under review, however, the Rev. John Lednum
declares that the quarterly meeting which Superintendent Coke
and Presbyter Whatcoat attended at Barratt?s Chapel in Dela-
ware, where Asbury and Coke first met and fell into each oth-
er’s arms, was the regular fall quarterly meeting at this chap-
el, at which it was the custom for the semiannual change to
take place among the preachers laboring on the Peninsula.®
At this quarterly meeting Asbury proposed and the preachers
present united in calling the Christmas Conference for the or-
ganization of the Church.

In 1776 the Conference met for the first time in Baltimore,
and we have some indications of how a young itinerant began
his career. Freeborn Garrettson records that he passed an ex-
amination, and received from Mr. Rankin a written license.
The Conference of 1777 closed the energetic Rankin’s admin-
istration; that year he made the appointments for the fifth and
last time. He left thirty-six itinerant preachers where he had
found ten, and just six times as many members as composed
the infant Church when he became general assistant or super-
intendent. Mr. Wesley had “clothed Mr. Rankin with powers

 

1 Minutes, Ed. of 1795, p.6. ?Ibid., p.10. *Ibid., pp. 14,15. 4 Ibid. p.52
+ History of the Rise of Methodism in America, Ed. of 1862, p. 410.
THE ITINERANCY. 61

 

superior to any which had been vested in his predecessors in
oftice,’ remarks Dr. Bangs, “in the faithful exercise of which
he set himself to purifying the societies from corrupt members,
and restoring things to order. It was soon found that the dis-
charge of this duty, however painful, instead of abridging the
influence of ministerial labor, greatly extended it, and exert-
ed a most salutary effect upon the societies.” ’ Mr. Asbury’s
testimony is: “Though he will not be admired as a preacher,
yet as a disciplinarian he will fill his place.”

In 1778 Asbury was in enforced retirement in Delaware, and
the Conference was held in May under the presidency of Wil-
liam Watters, the first American itinerant preacher. The ir-
regular Delaware Conference of 1779 recognized Asbury as
general assistant on account of his seniority in America and
original appointment by Mr. Wesley, and formally accorded
him supreme control: “On hearing every preacher for and
against what is in debate, the right of determination shall rest
with him according to the minutes.”? The regular Conference
assembled at Fluvanna, probably under the presidency of Phil-
ip Gatch, to whom we are indebted for the later rule for the
trial of members which substituted the original clerical right
of excommunication. From the beginning, as is evident from
the record of the quarterly meeting of 1772, and particularly
during the Revolutionary War, which was now actively waging,
the need of the administration of the Christian sacraments had
pressed heavily on the American Methodists, who could no long-
er command the services of the English clergy, many or most of
whom as loyalists had retired from the colonies. Strawbridge
had probably been ordained: it is certain he was the first
Methodist preacher to administer the sacraments in America.
Few Methodists of to-day would doubt the right, or even the
expediency, of the origination of orders by the Fluvanna Con-
ference, composed of public and recognized ministers of the
gospel, who had long labored in word and doctrine among the
people. Their action was as valid as that of the British Con-
ference of 1836, which, as was pointed out in the last chapter, in-
dependently initiated ministerial orders by the imposition of
the hands of chief Conference officers who had not themselves

1Bangs’s History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Ed. of 1839, I. 80,
81. *Minutes, Ed. of 1795, p. 29.

 
62 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

been ordained, thus cutting completely loose from all preten-
sion to any sort of tactual succession, whether episcopal or
presbyterial. This Fluvanna Conference appointed a presby-
tery composed of Gatch, Ellis, and Foster, to be assisted by
Cole, if his services were needed, and authorized these breth-
ren to administer the sacraments themselves, and jointly to or-
dain. Jesse Lee declares:

The committee thus chosen first ordained themselves, and then proceed-
ed to ordain and set apart other preachers for the same purpose, that they
might administer the holy ordinances to the Church of Christ. The preach-
ers thus ordained went forth preaching the gospel in their circuits as for-
merly, and administered the sacraments wherever they went, provided the
people were willing to partake with them. Most part of our preachers in
the south fell in with this new plan; and as the leaders of the party were
very zealous, and the greater part of them very pious men, the private

members were influenced by them, and pretty generally fell in with their
measures. However, some of the old Methodists would not commune witb

them, but steadily adhered to their former customs.)

The Asburyan Conference of the following year strongly and
unanimously disapproved this Virginia departure from the orig-
inal Methodist plan, and resolved that “we look upon them no
longer as Methodists in connection with Mr. Wesley and us until
they come back.” ? All the loyal itinerants were required to hold
a license annually renewed by Asbury; the trusteeships of the
preaching houses were carefully guarded; and Asbury, Garrett-
son, and Watters were appointed commissioners to the southern
Conference to negotiate a union on the condition that the south-
erners “suspend all their ministrations for one year, and all
[north and south] meet together at Baltimore.”® These com-
missioners attended the regular Conference at Manakintown
in May, 1780, and were successful in their mission: American
Methodist ordinations and sacraments ceased until Dr. Coke’s
arrival and the meeting of the Christmas Conference in 1784.

At the Conference of 1781 the itinerants resolved “to preach
the old Methodist doctrine, and strictly enforce the discipline
as contained in the notes, sermons, and minutes as published by
Mr. Wesley.” 4 The Fluvanna (or regular) Conference of 1779
had enacted that the ministerial probationers of that year should
be continued on trial a second year until the next Conference: ®

1Short History of the Methodists, 1810, pp. 69, 70. 2 Minutes, Ed. of 1795,
p. 38. 3 Ibid. p.39. *Ibid., p.41. *Ibid., p. 33.
THE ITINERANCY. 63

the reunited Conference of 1781 resolved that it would be bet-
ter, “considering how young they [the preachers] are in age,
grace, and gifts, to try them two years, unless it be one of dou-
ble testimony, of whom there is a general approbation.”! This
period of probation for admission into full connection with Con-
ference has never been changed: for one hundred and fifteen
years American Methodist preachers have been subjected to
this two years’ trial of their ministerial character and efficiency
before admission to full Conference rights and standing. At
this Conference assistants, or preachers in charge, were also
forbidden to employ local preachers without consultation with
Mr. Asbury or the senior assistants. The germs of a Confer-
ence course of study also appear in the direction to the preach-
ers “often to read the Rules of the Societies, the Character of
a Methodist, and the Plain Account.” 2

Since the schism of 1779 and 1780, in each of which years
two Conferences were held, the Conference, justifying its course
by Mr. Wesley’s precedent in holding a Conference in Ireland,
had continued to meet in two sections, the first session of 1781
being held at Choptank, in Delaware, and of 1782 at Ellis’s, in
Virginia, while the final sessions of both years were held in
Baltimore. There are indications of a growing legislative and
electoral independence on the part of the preachers, which
fully asserted itself as early as 1782. It will be remembered
that the Delaware Conference of 1779 had given Mr. Asbury
the decision of all questions introduced and debated in Con-
ference: the Conference of 1782 framed its question recogniz-
ing Mr. Asbury’s station and authority somewhat differently:
“Do the brethren in Conference unanimously choose broth-
er Asbury to act according to Mr. Wesley’s original appoint-
ment, and preside over the American Conferences and the whole
work?” To the question thus modified an affirmative answer is
recorded. The American general assistant no longer exercised
the absolute authority formerly accorded him, like that Mr. Wes-
ley used in England and exercised by Mr. Rankin during his
administration in the colonies. Mr. Asbury held office by the
double tenure of Mr. Wesley’s appointment and Conference
election; but the last was immediate and essential, though em-
bodying a recognition of the former. Majority rule thus began

 

1 Minutes, Ed. of 1795, p. 42. ? Lbid., pp. 42, 43.
64 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

to manifest itself. Accordingly, at the Christmas Conference in
1784 Asbury himself insisted on election to the episcopal office by
the Conference, notwithstanding Mr. Wesley’s designation, and
in that body all measures were decided by a majority of votes.
As late as 1787 there was trouble between the Americans and
Mr. Wesley on this point. “Mr. Wesley had appointed Mr.
Whatcoat a superintendent,” deposes Thomas Ware, “and in-
structed Dr. Coke to introduce [1%. ¢, to reintroduce] a usage
among us, to which, I may say, there was not one of the
preachers inclined to submit, much as they loved and honored
him. Mr. Wesley had been in the habit of calling his preach-
ers together, not to legislate, but to confer. Many of them he
found to be excellent counselors, and he heard them respectful-
ly on the weighty matters which were brought before them;
but the right to decide all questions he reserved to himself.
This he deemed the more excellent way; and, as we had volun-
teered and pledged ourselves to obey [in 1784], he instructed
the doctor, conformably to his own usage, to put as few ques-
tions to vote as possible, saying: ‘If you, brother Asbury and
brother Whatcoat, are agreed, it is enough.’ To place the
power of deciding all questions discussed, or nearly all, in the
hands of the superintendents, was what could never be intro-
duced among us—a fact which we thought Mr. Wesley could
not but have known, had he known us as well as we ought to
have been known by Dr. Coke.” !

Under the head of this same year 1782, which we have now
reached, Jesse Lee gives an exact account of the legislative
powers and relations of the two Conference sessions, Virginia
and Baltimore:

The work had so increased and spread that it was now found nec-
essary to have a Conference in the south every year, continuing the Con-
ference in the north as usual. Yet, as the Conference in the north was
of the longest standing, and withal composed of the oldest preachers, it was
allowed greater privileges than that in the south; especially in making
rules and forming regulations for the societies. Accordingly, when any-
thing was agreed to in the Virginia Conference and afterwards disapproved
of in the Baltimore Conference, it was dropped. But if any rule was fixed
and determined on at the Baltimore Conference, the preachers in the south
were under the necessity of abiding by it. The southern Conference was
considered at that time as a convenience, and designed to accommodate the

 

1 Sketches of the Life and Travels of Rev. Thomas Ware, Kd. 1842, pp. 129, 130.
THE ITINERANCY. 65

 

preachers in that part of the work, and to do all the business of a regular
Conference, except that of making or altering particular rules.

This all-important passage of Lee’s, in immediate connection
with the Conferences of 1782, together with the modified ques-
tion concerning Mr. Asbury in the minutes of the same year,
indicates very fully and accurately the legislative and electoral
powers of the Conferences and their president’s relation to them
—all of which differ very widely from what we now know as An-
nual Conferences—and the governmental regimen under which
the American Methodists lived from at least the year 1782 for-
ward, The itinerant preachers had steadily acquired legislative
independence and authority, and in 1784 responded cheerfully
and generally to Asbury’s call to attend the organizing Christ-
mas Conference and consider the plans of Mr. Wesley. Three
remaining questions and answers in the minutes of 1782 indicate
increasing organization and solidification of the itinerant system:

Quest. 12. What shall be done to get a regular and impartial supply for
the maintenance of the Preachers?

Answ. Let everything they receive, either in money or clothing, be valued
by the preachers and stewards at quarterly meeting, and an account of the
deficiency given in to the Conference, that he may be supplied by the prof-

its arising from the books and the Conference collections.
Quest. 13. How shall we more effectually guard against disorderly travel-

ing Preachers?
Answ. Write at the bottom of every certificate, The authority this conveys

is limited to next Conference.
Quest. 14. How must we do if a Preacher will not desist after being found

uilty?
. ae Let the nearest Assistant stop him immediately. In brother As-
bury’s absence, let the preachers inform the people of these rules.2

From even those days of primitive organization antedating
the Christmas Conference till these, “ the profits arising from the
books and the Conference collections” have continued a source
of supply for the commissary of the ceaselessly moving army
of American itinerants; and the regulations of the Church for
controlling her disorderly representatives have gone on multi-
plying. Here the first period in the history of American itin-
erancy naturally ends: such were the general conditions in
which the convening of the Christmas Conference found the
American Methodists.

1Short History of the Methodists, 1810, pp. 78, 79. *Minutes, Ed. of
1795, p. 54
CHAPTER VII.
Tae [ringeRancy (CoNCLUDED).

Tae chief significance of the Christmas Conference for Amer-
ican itineraazy and for American Methodism is its initiation
of ministerial orders among the American preachers, and its
bestowal of the Christian sacraments upon the American Soci-
eties. This was in effect, as we have before seen, to constitute
a Church. That these orders and sacraments were Mr. Wes-
ley’s chief design in sending over Coke and his companions is
clearly evident, both from the oft-quoted Bristol circular letter
and from the parchments of Coke and Whatcoat. The Christ-
mas Confereace made no change in the system of Conference
government under which it found the American preachers and
Societies. All the electoral powers exercised by itself it ex-
pressly confided to the Annual] Conference, which continued the
usé of the legislative powers which it had begun to exercise
before the Christmas Conference met. The necessities of
government, particularly of adequate and prompt legislation,
which gave birth to the General Conference, did not then ex-
ist, and did not actually produce this organ and system of gov-
ernment until after the Council had been tried and found want-
ing. After a brief session, this organizing body expired—to
live no more forever. That it was not itself a General Confer-
ence, in any legal or Disciplinary sense, is evident, not only from
the fact that no such institution is known to American Meth-
odist law, as recorded in the Minutes and Disciplines from 1773
to 1791; but, among a score or more of other reasons which we
need not tarry to recite in this connection, because it did not
sustain the relation of a supreme and final lawmaker to the
Annual Conferences which met in the interval, 1785 to 1791,
between its own adjournment and the assembling of the Gen-
eral Conference of 1792. Such unchangeable legal supremacy

(66)
THE ITINERANCY. 67

 

over the Annual Conferences till the meeting of its successor
is an essential characteristic of every General Conference.
Since its legislation was alterable and altered by the Annual
Conferences from 1785 to 1791, resulting in the issue of annual
editions of the Discipline of the Church, each of which super-
seded the authority of its predecessor, it is plain to a demon-
stration (1) that the Christmas Conference was not a General
Conference; (2) that the General Conference of 1792 was not a
successor of the Christmas Conference, since it sustains no
such relation to that body as all subsequent General Confer-
ences, from 1796 to 1894, sustain to their predecessors; (3)
that the interval from 1785 to 1792 cannot be included within
the period of the government of our Church by the authority
of General Conferences; (4) that the General Conference of
1792 was the first; and (5) that the Christmas Conference is
not entitled to recognition in the series of General Conferences.

The Church thus organized was an Episcopal Church: (1)
by expressly chosen title; (2) by the sure and certain testimo-
ny of contemporary documents and witnesses; (3) by the pre-
ceding affiliations of the Societies and their founder and
American leaders; (4) by its threefold ordinations, first in
England and then in America; (5) by virtue of the nonexist-
ence of an Episcopal Church in this country at the time of the
organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church, this nonex-
istence being expressly assigned as the sufficient reason for
creating this Church. It was not a secession. There was
nothing to secede from. It was not a schism. There was no
episcopally organized body of Christ in America in which to
create a schism. Since it did not exist, the American Metho-
dists could not be in communion with any such body. If the
single point be allowed that presbyters can make a bishop, and
that when he is made he is made, the subsequently organized
Protestant Episcopal Church is itself, according to its own
principles, a schismatic body in this New World. The dea-
cong, elders, and superintendents of the Methodist Episcopal
Church were the American equivalents, in name and fact, of
the deacons, priests, and bishops of the English Church. The
Fluvanna orders and sacraments, though rational and scrip-
tural, had lapsed and ceased; repudiated at the time by As-
bury and those acting with him, and abandoned by those who
68 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

promoted and originated them, the action of Mr. Wesley and
the Christmas Conference was the final exclusion of the Flu-
vanna plan and conception, with its results, from the organiza-
tion of American Methodism. This exclusion proceeded to
the extent of reordaining men who had been ordained by the
Fluvanna presbytery, and the episcopal idea was emphasized
by the three ordinations of Asbury on as many successive
days. Acknowledging with all our heart the validity of those
Fluvanna ordinations, and of all presbyterial and congrega-
tional orders, we must still cling as an historian to the un-
doubted fact that Mr. Wesley and the Christmas Conference
fully intended the organization of a valid American Episcopal
Church, and deliberately conformed, according to their convic-
tions of scriptural teaching and views of ancient precedent, to
all the conditions necessary to effect the legitimate and perma-
nent founding of such a Church to succeed the Church of En-
gland in the American states. The result was the Methodist
Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

In this fully constituted Episcopal Church itinerancy contin-
ued to be a distinguishing feature, as it had been in the Amer-
ican Societies from 1773 or earlier to 1784. Its history through-
out that period we have carefully traced. A rapid survey of the
facts and principles of its continued existence and develop-
ment to the present day will complete our task. The episco-
pacy and the presiding eldership, as related to each other, to
the itinerancy, and to the Church, have already passed under
review. No slightest modification of the appointing power has
ever taken place. O’Kelly’s proposal of liberty of appeal from
the bishop to the Conference when the appointment was not
satisfactory was overwhelmingly defeated in the first General
Conference of 1792. In 1800, when, on the election of What-
coat, many attempts, some of them fathered by Coke, were
made variously to modify the appointing power of the new
bishop before his election, nothing was done. In 1820-1824
a like failure attended all the efforts of the radical reformers
to engraft the presiding eldership on the episcopacy as a legal
element of the appointing power. The bishop does not share
this responsibility with cabinet or laymen. Relief comes in
the changing presidency of the Annual Conferences. The in-
alienable remedy, moreover, of the dissatisfied itinerant is loca-
THE ITINERANCY. 69

 

tion. The itinerancy rests upon a voluntary compact of mutual
satisfaction, which may be dissolved at the will of either party,
exercised according to law made and provided. The Church
does not lay upon any one of her members or local preach-
ers the duties of an itinerant preacher. The initiative is with
the individual who seeks a recommendation from the proper
lower court, and becomes a candidate for admission on trial—
not into a particular Annual Conference, which is merely one
of a number of coérdinate agents of the Church for perform-
ing this function, but into the “ traveling connection.” Hence
the itinerant’s vow on reception into full connection to “do
that part of the work which we advise, at those times and
places which we judge most for his [God’s] glory.” Hence
the prerogative of transfer to be freely exercised by the epis-
copacy in fixing the appointments of the preachers. Since the
obligations of itinerancy are freely assumed and continued by the
individual preacher, and since the Church assumes through the
Annual Conference the prerogative of annually determining the
“relation” of the preacher, whether it shall be that of an “ ef-
fective” preacher, a superannuate, a supernumerary, or merely
that of a local preacher, if in the judgment of the Conference
he becomes “so unacceptable, inefficient, or secular as to be nu
longer useful in his work,” there resides also in the blameless
itinerant the power and right of discontinuing these voluntari-
ly assumed duties of itinerancy whenever for reasons satisfac-
tory to himself he becomes unwilling, or judges himself un-
able, to continue their discharge. The Church does the itin-
erant no injustice whenever for the Disciplinary reasons she
locates him without his consent. He cannot force himself on
an unwilling Conference and people. The itinerant does the
Church no injustice when, having completed the faithful per-
formance of the work assigned him, and maintained his integ-
rity as a minister of Christ, he, at the annual season when the
Church measures, judges, and readjusts him in his ministerial
relations, gives notice of his desire to retire to the local ranks.
The Church cannot force a blameless, unwilling man to con-
tinue his itinerancy.

The advantages of Methodist itinerancy may be summed up

under the following heads:
1. Every variety of talent is made available. Our churches
70 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

vary greatly; so do our ministers. Ifa fit junction of preach-
er and people can be effected by a wise appointing power, all
classes of people are served, and all classes of ministers, even
those capable of but limited usefulness, are brought into serv-
ice. The Lord of the harvest calls many men of many minds;
the itinerancy sends them into his harvest.

2. Each itinerant’s life work is made to cover a wider field,
and probably in a large majority of instances to yield larger
results. Careful statistics show that the average Methodist
pastorate is longer than that of most denominations with the
so-called “settled’’ pastorate. If a Methodist pastorate among
us is never longer than four years, it is seldom shorter than
one. Presbyterian and Baptist pastorates of six months, three
months, one month, are not rare. Most men who have spent
four years in a single field can accomplish more for the next
four years in a new field; and a new man of no greater ability
will be likely to do more in the field just abandoned by his
equal.

3. No Methodist itinerant preacher is left without an as-
signed sphere of ministerial duty or denied the means of sup-
port. In contrast with the many idle ministers of other de-
nominations, this is no mean excellence of itinerancy.

4. No Methodist Church can be left above a few weeks with-
out a pastor. The pastorless flock is practically unknown in
Methodism.

5. Separations of preachers and people the continuance
of whose relations has become unprofitable or undesirable
are effected in the easiest manner by the interposition of
an external authority whose jurisdiction is acknowledged by
both. Ministers do not linger on for years in charge of partic-
ular congregations after their usefulness is ended. Congrega-
tions are not rent into factions over the calling, continuance,
or dismissal of ministers.

A few items of general interest may be gathered up here in
concluding our history of itinerancy. In 1804 the General Con-
ference limited the appointing power of the bishops by fixing
the extent of the pastoral term at two years. So it remained
among us until 1866, when the General Conference extended
the limit to four years, at which it has now remained for thirty
years. There is very general satisfaction with the law as it
THE ITINERANCY. 71

stands, and it is safe to predict that no change will be made
for many years to come. Some notions of the exclusive valid-
ity of episcopal ordinations lingered in the Church until quite
alate date. In 1824 Roszel moved in the General Conference
that when a minister “has been regularly ordained by a bishop
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, such ordination shall be,
and hereby is, considered valid.” In 18386 John Early moved,
and it was carried, “that the bishops be requested to select
some suitable and competent person to prepare for publica-
tion a vindication of our episcopal ordination.” The validity of
presbyterial and congregational orders has long since ceased
to be a question in Methodism; but the history and legis-
lation, actual and proposed, from the founding of our Church
down to as late as 1836, demonstrate the historical falsity of
the note prefixed to the office for the consecration of a bishop
by order of the Northern General Conference of 1884. 1884
has no standing against 1784 as a witness to the history of the
making of Methodism, and however accurately the note of 1884
may represent the present sentiments of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church in the North, it is demonstrably without histor-
ical foundation.
THE GENESIS OF THE GHNERAL
AND ANNUAL CONFERENCHS.

I. THE ORIGIN oF THE CHRISTMAS CONFERENCE.
IL. Tur Organization, MEMBERSHIP, AND MINUTES OF THE
CHRISTMAS CONFERENCE.
III. Sources or THE HisToRY oF THE CHRISTMAS CONFER-
ENCE.
IV. THe HistoritcaL DEVELOPMENT.
V. Toe BaLTIMORE CONFERENCE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
In AMERICAN METHODISM.

(73)
CHAPTER VIII.

Tut GENESIS OF THE GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES.

I. Toe ORIGIN oF THE CHRISTMAS CONFERENCE.

THE history of the calling of the body generally known as the
Christmas Conference, at which the Methodist Episcopal Church
was organized, may be briefly, but completely and precisely,
given. When Dr. Coke, whom John Wesley had previously
“set apart as a superintendent, by the imposition of” his
“hands, and prayer,”! with Richard Whatcoat and Thomas
Vasey, each of whom the same scriptural episcopus had “set
apart for the said work [of the ministry in America], as
an elder,”? landed in New York, Wednesday, November 3,
1784, the new American “joint superintendent,”® thus or-
dained and commissioned, makes the following entry in his
Journal:

I have opened Mr. Wesley’s plan to brother Dickins, the travelling-preacher
stationed at this place, and he highly approves of it, says that all the preach-
ers most earnestly long for such a reformation, and that brother Asbury, he
is sure, will consent to it. He presses me earnestly to make it public,
because, as he most justly argues, Mr. Wesley has determined the point,
though Mr. Asbury is most respectfully to be consulted in respect to
every part of the execution of it. By some means or other, the whole con-
tinent, as it were, expects me. Mr. Asbury himself has for some time ex-
pected me.! :

So far as appears from the record, Dr. Coke declined Mr.

 

1The language of Coke’s “letters of episcopal orders” (so entitled in the
Discipline of 1789, p. 4): see the facsimile reproduction of Coke’s parchment:
London, 1881.

2 Whatcoat’s Certificate of Ordination: Life of Whatcoat, by Benjamin St..
James Fry, pp. 43, 44.

880 styled in Mr. Wesley’s circular letter, dated September 10, 1784.

4 Arminian Magazine, Philadelphia, May, 1783, p. 242; Taz Mernopisr
Review, September, 1896, p. 7; Tigert’s edition of Coke’s Journal, p.7. The
italics of the original are retained.

(75)
76 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

Dickins’s advice to make public “Mr. Wesley’s plan” at New
York; but at Philadelphia, Sunday, November 7, after preach-
ing to the Methodists in the evening, having preached morning
and afternoon at St. Paul’s for the Episcopalians, the doctor
“opened to the society our new plan of church-government,”
and, he adds, “I have reason to believe that they all rejoice in
it.” On the following Sunday, November 14, 1784, Dr. Coke
and Mr. Asbury met for the first time at Barratt’s Chapel, in
Delaware. The following is Coke’s account of the steps then
and there taken for the calling of the Christmas Conference:

After dining in company with eleven of the preachers at our sister Bar-
ret’s, about a mile from the chapel, I privately opened our plan to Mr, As-
bury. He expressed considerable doubts concerning it, which I rather ap-
plaud than otherwise; but informed me that he had received some intima-
tions of my arrival on the continent; and as he thought it probable I might
meet him on that day, and might have something of importance to commu-
nicate to him from Mr. Wesley, he had therefore called together a considera-
ble number of the preachers to form a council; and if they were of opinion
that it would be expedient immediately to call a conference, it should be
done. They were accordingly called, and, after debate, were unanimously of
opinion that it would be best immediately to call a conference of all the
travelling-preachers on the continent. We therefore sent off Freeborn Gar-
retson like an arrow, the whole length of the continent, or of our work, di-
recting him to send messengers to the right and left, and to gather all the
preachers together at Baltimore, on Christmas-Eve?

Mr. Asbury’s entry concerning the communications of Dr.
Coke and the calling of the Conference, under the same date, is
as follows:

I was shocked when first informed of the intention of these my brethren
in coming to this country: it may be of God. My answer then was, if the
preachers unanimously choose me, I shall not act in the capacity I have
hitherto done by Mr. Wesley’s appointment. The design of organizing the
Methodists into an Independent Episcopal Church was opened to the preach-
ers present, and it was agreed to call a general conference, to meet at Balti-
more the ensuing Christmas; as also that brother Garrettson go off to Vir-
ginia to give notice thereof to our brethren in the South.’

These contemporary records of the two chief participants in
the “council” at Barratt’s, which called the Christmas Confer-

See the same page of all the publications mentioned in the preceding
footnote. * Arminian Magazine, Philadelphia, May, 1789, pp. 243, 244; THE
Merxopist Review, September, 1896, p. 8; Tigert’s edition of Coke’s J ournal,
p.8. *Asbury’s Journal, edition of 1821, i. 376. Asbury’s date is Sunday,
November 15, but the day of the month is clearly wrong by one day.
 

 
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 17

 

ence, take us to the fountain head of information, whence all the
authorities draw. A simple analysis of these primitive accounts.
of the genesis of the Christmas Conference by Dr. Coke and
Mr. Asbury yields these results:

(1) The Christmas Conference was not of appointment in
“Mr. Wesley’s plan” for “organizing the Methodists into an
Independent Episcopal Church,” but Mr. Asbury, expecting the
interview with Dr. Coke, had “called together a considerable
number of the preachers to form a council.” These preachers
“were accordingly called, and, after debate, were unanimously
of opinion that it would be best immediately to call a confer-
ence of all the traveling preachers on the continent”; or, sub-
stituting Mr. Asbury’s language for Dr. Coke’s, Mr. Wesley’s.
“design of organizing” having been “opened to the preachers
present,” “it was agreed to call a general conference.” Here it
may be added that Mr. Wesley’s documents sent by the hand of
Coke, and Coke’s and Whatcoat’s parchments, are silent as to.
any new Conference, either for the organization or for the gov-.
ernment of the American Church, whose first superintendent
and elders Mr. Wesley had taken the liberty, if liberty it was,
of selecting and ordaining. In view of Mr. Wesley’s ordina-
tions, parchments, circular letter, and liturgy, his directions con-
cerning Mr. Asbury’s joint superintendency, and his silence as
to any general gathering of the preachers to pass on these
measures and plans, well might Mr. Dickins “most justly
argue,” when informed of the character in which, and the in-
structions with which, Dr. Coke and his attendant presbyters
came, that “Mr. Wesley had determined the point,” and, since
it was scarcely evident that anything more needed to be done,
“earnestly press” Superintendent Coke “to make it public”
and proceed to the execution of it. This publicity to “our new
plan of church-government”’ Dr. Coke actually gave at Phila-
delphia November 7, 1784: an act of unpardonable indiscretion
if the execution of the plan hinged in Mr. Wesley’s instruc-
tions upon the approval of it by a conference of the preachers.
yet to be assembled.?

1In the London edition of extracts from Dr. Coke’s Journal (1793) the
language is stronger: “He presses me most earnestly to make it public, bee
cause, as he most justly argues, Mr. Wesley has determined the point, and

therefore it is not to be investigated, but complied with.” We here content
ourself with the milder but sufficient statement of the American edition.
78 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

(2) Dr. Coke, having been ordained and commissioned, did
not take the initiative for assembling a called Conference: that
it was a called body is now evident from both of these con-
temporary accounts. Neither in his personal or official posi-
tion, nor in his instructions from Mr. Wesley, does it appear that
he discovered any ground for calling a “conference of all the
traveling preachers on the continent.”

(3) That the twelfth and last Conference before the Episco-
‘pal organization of American Methodism, which was “begun at
Ellis’s Preaching-House, Virginia, April 30th, 1784, and ended at
Baltimore May 28th, following,” ! had nothing to do with the orig-
ination, calling, or organization of the Christmas Conference, itis
scarcely necessary to state. That conference adjourned to meet
in three sections—what we may call the Carolina, Virginia, and
Baltimore divisions, in 1785—and these three meetings were all
held accordingly, though not at the dates specified in the spring
of 1784. The Christmas Conference was clearly a called meet-
ing unexpectedly interpolated between the, regular sessions of
the American Conference. It was not appoimted by the Con-
ference which preceded it; nor did it appoint the Conference or
Conferences which followed it.?

(4) Mr. Asbury did not assume the personal responsibility of
calling the Conference in his official capacity as general assist-
ant. Since the irregular Delaware Conference of 1779, and the
reconciliation of the Virginia Conference in 1780, and particu-
larly since the action of the Conference of 1782, when he was
unanimously chosen to “ preside over the American Conferences
and the whole work,” Mr. Asbury’s powers as general assist-
ant had been very great; and had he chosen to exercise them
in calling the whole body of preachers together, there is little
doubt that he might have done so in full confidence of prompt
and implicit obedience. That the project of a called Conference
originated with him ample evidence has been adduced. That
there were delicacies of personal relationship and official po-
sition which made it improper for him to call the Conference on

1P. 65 of “ Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, Annually held in Amer-
ica, From 1773 to 1794, inclusive”: 1795. ?In the “Minutes of the Metho-
dist Conferences, Annually held in America, From 1773 to 1794, inclusive,”
the proceedings of the Christmas Conference are recorded under one series

of minute questions with those of the other three Conferences of the year
1785. The last question appoints the Conferences for 1786. See p. 83.

 
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 79

his sole personal and official responsibility seems equally clear.
His situation and motives will appear under the next head.

(5) In the context of the passage cited above from Mr. As-
bury’s Journal, he says that after Dr. Coke’s sermon at Barratt’s,
Sunday, November 14, he “ was greatly surprised to see brother
Whatcoat assist by taking the cup in the administration of the
sacrament.” Immediately follows the language: “I was shocked
when first informed of the intention of these my brethren in
coming to this country: it may be of God. My answer then
was, if the preachers unanimously choose me, I shall not act in
the capacity I have hitherto done by Mr. Wesley’s appointment.”
Dr. Coke confirms: “I privately opened our plan to Mr. Asbury.
He expressed considerable doubts concerning it, which I rather
applaud than otherwise.” There were thus two delicacies or
difficulties in Asbury’s situation: (a) this introduction of the
sacraments among the American Methodists; and (b) his own
ordination as a joint superintendent—the joint superintendent
being in his view only the ordained general assistant—by Mr.
Wesley’s sole appointment, without the unanimous choice of the
preachers. His record on the sacramental question is well
known and need not detain us, especially as the acceptance of
the ordination proposed carried with it the acceptance of the
validity of the sacraments administered by those in the orders
bestowed by Mr. Wesley through Coke, Whatcoat, and Vasey.
Asbury had stoutly withstood and conquered the Fluvanna
brethren, and was an avowed Episcopalian in principle and
practice. He had known Whatcoat in England, and was fully
aware that he was not in orders then; though he had never met
Dr. Coke before, he was doubtless cognizant that he was a cler-
gyman of the Church of England. He was “surprised,” there-
fore, at- Whatcoat’s taking the cup, and needed time for investi-
gation and reflection, when informed of what Mr. Wesley had
done, before he could assimilate this ordination with the prin-
ciples he had long cherished—just as Dr. Coke himself simi-
larly needed and took time when Mr. Wesley first proposed to
bestow a third ordination on him. Asbury’s second trouble
was more serious. Dr. Coke, in his widely different situation,
might accept appointment and ordination as a joint superin-
tendent by Mr. Wesley’s sole authority. Mr. Asbury could not.
He had long enjoyed his official station of general assistant, out
80 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

of which the general superintendent was a development, by
election of what Mr. Wesley-himself had styled the American
Conference,! as well as by Mr. Wesley’s concurrent appointment.
His tenure of office and his relation to the American Conference
differed widely, therefore, from that of Dr. Coke, a total stranger
appearing as Mr. Wesley’s “foreign minister.” Asbury could
not with a good conscience put himself in the proposed position, .
accepting the proposed tenure. Hence the necessity of a called
Conference. How was it to be brought about?

There was to be a Quarterly Meeting at Barratt’s Chapel, in
Kent county, Delaware.? Mr. Asbury had received some inti-
mations of Dr. Coke’s arrival in America. It was not difficult
to “call together a considerable number of the preachers” at
Barratt’s “to form a council.” ‘They were accordingly called,”
says Coke, “and, after debate, were unanimously of opinion that
it would be expedient immediately to call a conference of all
the traveling preachers on the continent.” ‘The design of or-
ganizing the Methodists into an Independent Episcopal [the
episcopal feature evidently impressed Asbury] Church,” says
Asbury, “was opened to the preachers present, and it was
agreed to call a general conference.” The Christmas Confer-
ence was called, not, indeed, by a Quarterly Conference, but
by a body of preachers assembled for Quarterly Meeting pur-
poses, convened as a special “council,” Mr. Asbury initiating,
and both he and Dr. Coke concurring, while the large number
of laity present—Dr. Coke says there were five or six hundred
communicants present at this first administration of the Lord’s
Supper among the American Methodists by their own minis-
ters—took no part in the proceedings. When we shall come to

 

1Letter to America, October 3, 1783: Lee’s History, pp. 85, 86. %Eze-
kiel Cooper, who was present, in a volume published thirty-five years
afterwards, says: “On the 14th of the same month, November, they [Dr.
Coke and Mr. Whatcoat] met Mr. Asbury, and about fifteen of the American
preachers, at a Quarterly Meeting held in Barratt’s Chapel, Kent county,
State of Delaware.”’—P. 104 of the Funeral Discourse of Asbury, enlarged:
1819. Ledmun, Rise of Methodism in America, ed. 1862, p. 410, says that this
Quarterly Meeting was “the fifth regular fall quarterly meeting held in the
chapel, at which the semi-annual change took place among the preachers la-
boring in the Peninsula. Most of the preachers were present, and a large at-
tendance of the laity.” Freeborn Garrettson also testifies that he went with
Dr. Coke “to a quarterly meeting held in Kent county,” and that “about
fifteen met in conference.”—Bangs’s Life of Garrettson, fifth ed., p. 184.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 81

 

consider whether the Christmas Conference possessed any of
the features of a convention, and, if possessing such features, in
what sense it was a convention, and in what sense it was not
such a body, reason will be found for our express mention of
the non-action of the laity at this point.

This we judge to be a sufficiently exhaustive analysis of the
evident facts, motives, principles, and purposes involved in the
calling of the Christmas Conference. Further than the calling of
the body we do not intend to proceed in the present section, and
all after considerations based on the acts and records of the body
itself are for the present excluded. If we have overlooked any
data which would materially modify the foregoing analysis, it has
been unintentional. Other sources have been searched—as the
Minutes of the British Conference for 1784, at which the mis-
sion of Coke, Whatcoat, and Vasey was determined on—without
yielding any evidence that the notion of the Christmas Confer-
ence had any being before it was born of the brain of Asbury
and bodied forth in the action of the “council” at Barratt’s. We
are fully aware that no historical writer is called upon to prove
a negative, as the four negative heads of the analysis given
above might seem to imply; but when such an historian as Abel
Stevens declares that the Christmas Conference was “held at
the instance of Wesley,” ! we may expect pardon for taking pains
to dislodge so baseless an error. The positive proof of the ac-
tual method of the calling of the Conference might be taken,
indeed, as a sufficient exclusion of the possible alternatives sug-
gested bya knowledge of the existing historical situation, namely,
that the Conference might have been called (1) by Mr. Wesley,
(2) by Dr. Coke, acting under Mr. Wesley’s instructions, (3) by
the existing American Conference, or (4) by Mr. Asbury in his
official capacity. This is practically what has been done above,
though, in view of the numerous questions that have been or
might be debated in this connection, it has been thought allow-
able formally to embrace the negative alternatives in the
analysis and to call attention to the absence of evidence in
these several directions. A much fuller and more vivid back-
ground of the ecclesiastical situation of the American Metho-
dists on Coke’s arrival might have been furnished; but, so far
as this is necessary, it will be supplied later in this narrative,

1 History of the M. E. Church, iii. 11,
6 .
82 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

and, for the rest, the reader must be satisfied that we have not
written in ignorance by reference to other writings of this pen.
Here, once for all, we may be permitted to point out that in
denying the appointment of the Christmas Conference to Mr.
Wesley or Dr. Coke or Mr. Asbury or the American Conference,
and in assigning it to the “council” at Barvatt’s, there is no
design of casting any shadow upon the nature, the degree, or
the legitimacy of the authority exercised by the Christmas Con-
ference, but only, by accurately and historically determining the
source whence it sprang into being, so far to define the charac-
‘ter of the body itself. That its great powers were self-derived
will appear sufficiently at a later stage of our inquiry.

Concerning the Conference thus originated and called, the
question arises whether it was a General Conference in the
sense of the Discipline, 7. e., in the only sense which the term
legally bears. If so, it should undoubtedly stand at the head
of the series of the general legislatures of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church and of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the
series beginning thus in 1784 and continuing to the present
time. Of this question an historical examination, final, if we
can make it so, will be made in the following sections of this
series of papers. But it is too early in this historical survey to
raise, definitively, the question of the legal or Disciplinary status
of the Christmas Conference—its historical position from the
standpoint of organic Methodist government in America. Not
‘until we shall have examined the acts and records of the body,
and the contemporaneous reports of its doings, can we rightly
raise the question, whether Abel Stevens weighs his words when
he calls the Christmas Conference “an extraordinary convention
of the ministry,” ! or whether the body is properly denominated
the General Conference of 1784. These are intricate questions,
and we must postpone their definitive consideration.’ At this
stage of our inquiry we can only, at the risk of a little repetition,
sum up the conclusions derivable from our survey of the facts
and circumstances of the call of the body, as certified by con-
temporary evidence, namely:

(1) The Christmas Conference was a called Conference, un-
expectedly intercalated between the regular sessions of the
American Conference for 1784 and 1785;

1 History of the M. E. Church, iii. 11.

 
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 83

 

(2) It was no part of “Mr. Wesley’s plan” for the organiza-
tion or government of the American Methodist Church;

(3) It was not provided for by the American Conference;

(4) Its necessity was not felt by Coke, either on the basis of
his instructions or on that of his personal or official position;

(5) It was not called by Asbury individually and officially;

(6) It was called by a council of preachers, from eleven to
fifteen in number, at Barratt’s Chapel, Delaware, November 14,
1784, Asbury and Coke concurring;

(7) Its purpose was to pass on “the design of organizing the
Methodists into an Independent Episcopal Church,” 7. ¢., to
take action on “Mr. Wesley’s plan,” involving a decision upon
the appointment and ordination of superintendents, elders, and
deacons—some of them already made and some of them yet to
be made—and the acceptance of Mr. Wesley’s provision of the
sacraments for the American Methodists.

On this last-mentioned point, if we consider the antecedent
sacramental controversy; the correspondence of the Americans
with Mr. Wesley; his Bristol circular letter; his liturgy, con-
taining forms, founded on those of the Church of England,
for the ordination of superintendents, elders, and deacons; his
ordinations with the attesting parchments, and his directions
for ordinations; and last of all, the express words of Dr. Coke
and Mr. Asbury, dated on the day of the calling of the Christ-
mas Conference, we suppose it will not be questioned that that
Conference was called to take action on AIr. Wesley’s “plan ”—
the appointments, orders, and sacraments which he had provid-
ed for the American Church; that Mr. Asbury particularly saw
and expressed the necessity for this action; and that, if all the
elements of the “plan” were accepted and approved, it would
result in the organization of an American Methodist Episcopal
Church on this continent.

The sentence of the Bristol circular letter, ‘They [the Amer-
ican Methodists] are now at full liberty, simply to follow the
Scriptures and the primitive church,” does not in its connection
imply more or otber than that, being free from all civil and ec-
clesiastical control in England, the Americans could now, with-
out schism, receive the orders and sacraments which Mr. Wes-
ley, following the Scriptures and the primitive Church, had
provided, thus organizing themselves into a Church. The pre-
64 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

ceding sentence is, “As our American brethren are now totally
disentangled, both from the state and the English hierarchy, we
dare not entangle them again, either with the one or the other.”
The two sentences are part of Mr. Wesley’s fourth objection to
desiring “the English bishops to ordain part of our preachers
for America,” and their clear import is that without breach of
civil or ecclesiastical law or order, the Americans could now
scripturally and according to pure, primitive precedent accept
Mr. Wesley’s orders and sacraments. Apart from these deci-
sive considerations of the context, the language is entirely too
general to be construed as directing or suggesting the calling
of such a body as the Christmas Conference, evidently unantic-
ipated by Dr. Coke, the bearer of the letter. If it were in evi-
dence that Mr. Wesley anticipated a meeting of the American
preachers, the most that can be said of the circular letter is that
it contains no prohibition from Mr. Wesley of such a gathering.

No further question is raised at this point, unless it be by
Mr. Asbury’s employment of the words “general conference.” -
Naturally they would be taken as the equivalent of Coke’s
phrase, “a conference of all the traveling preachers on the con-
tinent.” In this sense it has never been disputed that the Christ-
mas Conference was intended to be general—a gathering of all
the preachers. Perhaps no one would attribute to these words
a precise legal signification before the meeting of the Christmas
Conference, no matter what the character of that body might
prove to be. An examination of Asbury’s use of the term “gen-
eral conference” seems to confirm its wide, general meaning in
this case. Of the first American Conference in 1778 he says,
“Our general conference began.”} Asbury’s employment of
even legally fixed terms is sometimes unique. As late as 179s,
for example, he says: “Some of our local preachers complain
that they have not a seat in the general annual conference.” ?
But perhaps the most decisive passage in Asbury’s Journal on
his view as to the time of the establishment of the General Con-
ference is found under date of Thursday, July 19, 1798. Re-
ferring to some accusations of James O’Kelly’s, previous to the
General Conference of 1792, he says:

It was talked over in the yearly conference, for then we had no general
conference established. . . . There was no peace with James, until Doctor

 

1 Journal, i, 55, ed. 1821, 2Zbid., ii. 218, ed. 1821.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 85

 

Coke took the matter out of my hands, after we had agreed to hold a general
conference [in 1792] to settle the dispute: and behold when the general con-
ference by a majority (which he called for) went against him, he treated the
general conference with as much contempt, almost, as he had treated me.

Here, after declaring that no General Conference had been
established before, he applies the term three times in a precise
sense contrasted with the previously existing government of the
Church to the General Conference of 1792. “Then we had no
general conference established’’: the name is denied to any pre-
viously established governing body of the Church, while in the
same connection it is at once thrice applied to the body that we
know met in 1792. In 1798, when this entry in his Journal was
made, two General Conferences had certainly been held; the
term had had legal definition in the Discipline since 1792, and
Asbury in this case seems to discriminate in his use of legal lan-
guage. Hence it would be premature, to say the least, to use
his language of November 14, 1784, as determining in advance
and of itself the legal character and status of the Christmas
Conference, or even Asbury’s opinion of it. Its general char-
acter was doubtless very prominent in his mind, and, in jotting
down his daily record, he may have lighted on a form of words,
very naturally expressive of this feature, which subsequently ac-
quired a technical and legal force, just as he had done in 1773.
Accordingly we leave that question for the present undecided.’

JJournal, ii. 321,ed. 1821. ?The difficulties and dangers of a merely verbal
proof, i. e., one based upon the employment of particular words, especially
when we have any reason to believe that the terms may subsequently have
acquired a technical meaning, in contrast with a real proof, i. e., one based upon
an historical examination of the facts of the existing situation, when the ma-
terials exist for arriving at those facts, may be further illustrated by the cir-
cumstance that Asbury was probably familiar with the application of the
term “general Conference” to the conferences annually held by Mr. Wesley
in England. For in the text of “A Plain Account of Christian Perfection,
as Believed and Taught by the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, From the Year 1725
to the Year 1765,” as inserted in the Disciplines of 1791 and 1792, occurs this
language: “To cast a fuller light on this important subject, I shall lay before
the reader the Minutes of several of our general Conferences on this weighty,
this momentous doctrine.”—Discipline of 1791, p. 103; of 1792, p. 108. See,
also, Discipline of 1801, p. 114; of 1805, p. 101; and of 1808, p.99. This is evi-
dently Mr. Wesley’s language; but it should be added that in the texts of the
Plain Account in the Disciplines of 1789 and 1790, it does not occur. Whether
the omission was occasioned by the insertion of some hymns in these edi-
tions, omitted in the later, we cannot say. Nor are the means at hand for de-
termining how esrly the language appeared in the English editions of the
Plain Account. The point is unimportant save as an illustration of the pos-
sible dangers of merely verbal proof.
CHAPTER IX.
Tux GENESIS OF THE GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES.
II. Orcanization, MemBersuIP, AND MINUTES oF THE CHRISTMAS CONFERENCE,

THE net results of our historical inquiry into the origin of the
Christmas Conference, as certified by contemporary evidence,
were enumerated in the last chapter, and may be here recapitu-
lated as follows: (1) The Christmas Conference was a called
Conference, unexpectedly intercalated between the regular an-
nual sessions of the American Conference of 1784 and 1785;
(2) it was no part of Mr. Wesley’s plan either for the organi-
zation or the government of the American Methodist Episcopal
Church, that government continuing to rest, after the Christmas +
Conference as before, as we shall presently see in detail, in an
annual assembly known as the “Conference”; (3) it was not
provided for by any action of this existing American Confer-
ence; (4) its necessity was not foreseen by Dr. Coke, either on
the basis of his instructions from Mr. Wesley or on that of his
personal or official position; (5) it was not called by Mr. Asbury
acting individually and officially; (6) it was called by a council
of preachers, assembled for Quarterly Meeting purposes, but
specially convened asa council, at Barratt’s Chapel, Kent county,
Delaware, Sunday, November 14, 1784, Asbury and Coke both
concurring; (7) its purpose was to pass on “the design of
organizing the Methodists into an Independent Episcopal
Church,” or to take action on “Mr. Wesley’s plan,” brought
concretely to the notice of the council by the presence of a joint
superintendent and an elder, appointed, ordained, and commis-
sioned by Mr. Wesley—the nature and finality of which acts on
his part might well call for examination by the Americans—by
their administration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and
subsequently of baptism, by their parchments of ordination, by
a circular letter from Mr. Wesley to be hereafter more particu-

(88)
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES, 87

 

larly noticed, and by a Sunday Service compiled by Mr. Wesley
and brought over in sheets by Dr. Coke. Thus this Council,
according to strictly contemporary evidence, did not attempt to
act on “Mr. Wesley’s plan,” nor to pass on the official charac-
ter or acts of Dr. Coke and his associates, nor to accept, nor yet
to organize, a government or a Church, but only “to call a con-
ference of all the traveling preachers on the continent,” which
possessed inherent and rightful power to act, and which, when
it had done substantially these things, as we shall presently see
in full detail, dissolved, leaving the government of the Church
in the hands of the annual Conference, still subject, as before,
to an oversight and direction of Mr. Wesley.

In the interval between the call and the meeting of the Christ-
mas Conference, 7. e., between November 14 and December 24,
1784, we find the following relevant notices in Asbury’s Journal:

Friday 26 [November]. I observed this day as a day of fasting and
prayer, that I might know the will of God in the matter that is shortly to
come before our conference; the preachers and people seem to be much
pleased with the projected plan; I myself am led to think it is of the Lord.
I am not tickled with the honor to be gained—I see danger in the way.—My
soul waits upon God. O that he may lead usin the way we should go! Part
of my time is, and must necessarily be, taken up with preparing for the con-
ference.

Observe: “projected plan” —the “Independent Episcopal
Church,” to use Asbury’s own definite and vivid phrase of No-
vember 14, still sleeps in the womb of the future, and is yet to
be called thence by a sovereign voice; “our conference,” the
Christmas Conference, is shortly to become, in an unshared and
unique sense, the maker of American Episcopal Methodism and
its government, legitimating by its free and full and adequate
consent its episcopacy, its orders, and its sacraments, as emanat-
ing from Mr. Wesley himself.

Tuesday, November 30, Mr. Asbury “had an interesting con-
versation” with a clergyman “on the subject of the Episcopal
mode of church-government,” now so deeply engrossing his at-
tention; and Saturday, December 18, makes this final entry:

Saturday 18 [December]. Spent the day at Perry Hall, partly in prepar-
ing forconference. . . . Continued at Perry Haii until Friday the twenty-
fourth. We then rode to Baltimore, where we met a few preachers.”

 

1 Kdition, 1821, i. 377.
2Journal, ed. 1821, i. 877; the remainder of this entry is reserved for citation else-
where.
88 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

Coke had reached Perry Hall, the palatial mansion of Mr.
Gough, the day before, and Whatcoat followed the day after:
here, in comfort and with all necessary conveniences, Coke and
Asbury and Whatcoat—the three English bishops of our Meth-
odism—with Vasey, Mr. Wesley’s other elder, and Black, from
Nova Scotia, spent a delightful week immediately preceding
the convening of the Christmas Conference, revising the Large
Minutes (which in 1781 and again in 1784 had been accepted as
binding by the American Conference, and which were to be
taken as the basis of the First Discipline), and in making other
preparations for the great task of Church-making that lay im-
mediately before them.

The Christmas Conference convened in Lovely Lane Chapel,
Baltimore, at 10 a.m. Friday, December 24, 1784.1 There were
but few preachers present on the first day, as we have seen on
the testimony of Asbury cited above. But the number was sub-
sequently largely increased. Coke writes, ‘ We had near sixty
of them present. The whole number is 81.”? The Minutes of
1784, the last Conference preceding the organization of the
Methodists into an Episcopal Church, show eighty-three
preachers receiving appointments;* but of these eighty-three,
notice of the decease of Caleb Pedicord and George Mair ap-
pears in the Minutes of 1785,* which include the minute busi-
ness of the Christmas Conference recorded in one series of ques-
tions with the other Conferences of that year. This satisfacto-
rily verifies Coke’s exactness. The membership thus consisted
of about three-fourths of all the traveling preachers on the con-
tinent. Jesse Lee, who was among those who failed to receive
timely notice, and who was consequently not present, complains
of Freeborn Garrettson’s discharge of his duty as the messen-
ger of the council at Barratt’s:

Mr. Freeborn Garrettson [says he] undertook to travel to the south, in or-
der to give notice to all the travelling preachers of this intended meeting. But
being fond of preaching by the way, and thinking he could do the business by

writing, he did not give timely notice to the preachers who were in theextrem-
ities of the work; and of course several of them were not at that conferences

 

1¥For the evidence for this date as against that appearing on the title-page of the
Minutes or Discipline issued by this Conference, see Tigert’s Constitutional History, p. 195.

Journal, Arminian Magazine, Philadelphia, June, 1789, pp. 290, 291; THE METroDIST
Review, September, 1896, p. 18; Tigert’s edition of Coke’s Journal, p. 138.

8 Pp. 66-69 of ‘* Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, Annually held in America, from
1773 to 1794, inclusive,” Philadelphia, 1795. 4 Ibid., p. 70.

5A Short History of the Methodists, 1810, pp. 93, 94,
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 89

There is satisfactory evidence of the presence of the follow-
ing twenty-nine persons at the Christmas Conference: Francis
Asbury, William Black, Caleb Boyer, Le Roy Cole, Thomas
Coke, James O. Cromwell, John Dickins, Edward Dromgoole,
Iva Ellis, Reuben Ellis, Joseph Everett, Jonathan Forrest,
Freeborn Garrettson, William Gill, William Glendenning, Lem-
uel Green, John Haggerty, Richard Ivey, Jeremiah Lambert,
James O’Kelly, William Phoebus, Ignatius Pigman, Francis
Poythress, Nelson Reed, John Smith, Thomas Vasey, Thomas
Ware, William Watters, and Richard Whatcoat. The Rev.
John Lednum nearly forty years ago identified a list of twenty-
one names of ministers who “were certainly in attendance.” +
Dr. John Atkinson has since added eight names to the list, and
drawn out at length the evidence for the presence of the whole
twenty-nine.”

As to the organization of the Conference we have the evi-
‘dence of the title-page of the Discipline of 1787, “arranged”
and “methodized” by Asbury himself, that “The Reverend
Thomas Coke, Li.D., and the Reverend Francis Asbury, pre-
sided.” ® Jesse Lee, whose careful accuracy is unsurpassed by
any subsequent historian, declares that Thomas Coke and Fran-
cis Asbury presided. Neither Coke nor Asbury mentions the
point in his contemporary journal; nor elsewhere, so far as we
have been able to discover. Whether they presided conjointly
or alternately is a point on which there seems to be no evidence.
Dr. John Pearson declares that “as Mr. Wesley’s representative
Dr. Coke took the chair, and read the terse and comprehensive
letter of Mr. Wesley,” but he cites no contemporary or early
source for the statement, which seems to be his inference from
the known circumstances.° Long years afterwards Asbury

 

1Rise of Methodism in America, ed. 1862, p. 418. The first edition of
Lednum’s History was issued in 1859.

2 Centennial History of American Methodism, 1884, pp. 36-49. The orig-
inal sources whence this evidence is taken are largely, if not mostly, accessible
to the present writer; but it would needlessly encumber these pages to cite it.

8 But two copies of this Discipline are known to be in existence, one the
property of Mr. R. T. Miller, of Covington, Ky., and the other in the li-
brary of the Drew Theological Seminary. We have before us, besides Mr.
Miller’s original, three different reprints: one of Ketcham’s fifty, No. 47;
Nutter’s, 1890; and Ingham’s.

4Short History of the Methorists, 1810, p. 94.

5 Methodist Review (New York), March, 1896, p. 265.
90 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

wrote to Joseph Benson concerning the Annual Conferences,
“Té was also my pleasure, when present, always to give Dr.
Coke the president’s chair.”1 Considering Coke’s position as
an already ordained “joint superintendent” with credentials
from Mr. Wesley, to which position Asbury had not yet been
elected and ordained, and his character as Mr. Wesley’s agent
for the impartation of orders and the organization of the Church,
it is not improbable that he opened the Conference and gave in-
itial direction to its business.

We have found nowhere the slightest trace of the election of
any person to serve as secretary of the body. Such an officer
seems to have been unknown in the early Methodist Confer-
ences. From the first British Conference in 1744 to the last
held by Mr. Wesley in 1790, the Minutes, as far as we can dis-
cover, contain no record of the appointment, election, or service
of such an officer. From 1791 to 1896 the secretary’s signature,
with the president’s, is appended to the Minutes annually, the
succession of secretaries being Thomas Coke (1791-95, 1799,
1801-4, 1806-8, 1810-13); Samuel Bradburn (1796-98, 1800);
Joseph Benson (1805, 1809); Jabez Bunting (1814-19, 1824-27),
who may be said to have been the first permanent successor of
Dr. Coke in the secretary’s office; G. Marsden (1820); Robert
Newton (1821-23, 1828-31, 1834-39, 1842-47), who must be re-
garded as the third permanent secretary; Edmund Grindrod
(1832, 1833); John Hannah (1840, 1841, 1849, 1850, 1854-58);
Joseph Fowler (1848); John Farrar (1851-53, 1859-69); J. H.
James (1870); L. H. Wiseman (1871); George T. Perks (1872);
Gervase Smith (1878, 1874); Henry W. Williams (1875-77); M.
C. Osborne (1878-80); Robert N. Young (1881-85); David.J.
Waller (1886-94); and M. Hartley (1595, 1896).

The business throughout Mr. Wesley’s lifetime presidency
from 1744 to 1790 is recorded in the question and answer form:
these questions and answers are the “ Minutes of the Methodist
Conferences.” There are no minutes in our modern sense, from
which may be gathered the hours of meeting and adjournment,
the day of the Conference session on which any particular bus-
iness was done, or the general order in which the business was
brought forward, or the resolutions, motions, or other parlia-
mentary steps by which action was matured and concluded, ete.

1Paine’s McKendree, ii, 294,
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 91

 

The conclusion reached, whether doctrinal or governmental, the
things done and tc be done, were entered briefly under a stand-
ing or newly-devised minute question, and, so far as appears
from the extant records, the early Methodists felt the need of,
and made, no other record. In the absence of evidence, we are
reduced to silence or more or less probable conjecture as to how
and by whom this simple record was kept. It appears to us not
unlikely that Mr. Wesley in the president’s chair jotted down
these questions and answers—as Bishop Keener continues to
do on his blanks to this day, returning his report to the book
editor’s office—probably reading them over to the Conference at
the close for the sake of accuracy; and that was the end of the
matter until the preachers received the printed minutes from
Mr. Wesley’s press where they had been published under his
own eye.

Such had been the uninterrupted custom in England from
the time of the first Conference until the meeting of the Christ-
mas Conference and for some years afterwards. In America, as
late as 1796, the General Conference still adhered to the ques-
tion and answer form of transacting and recording its business;
the Minutes proper for 1796, after the record of two addresses
prefixed, open abruptly with “Question 1. Are there any direc-
tions to be given concerning the yearly conferences?” without
note of time, place, members, or officers, and continue without
any parliamentary notice of presidency, sittings or adjourn-
ment, or other mark of time, without any record of committees,
resolutions, or motions, through to “Question 22. When and
where shall our next General Conference be held?” There are
no signatures of presidents or secretary, and, so far as we have
been able to discover, there is no trace of the election or service
of such an officer as a secretary in the entire proceedings of the
General Conference of 1796. Before the two addresses men-
tioned above, occurs a formal caption mentioning the time of
meeting and the presidents of the Conference, but giving no
hint of a secretary.1_ In 1800 the minutes are first denominat-
ed a Journal, the daily sessions of the Conference are for the
first time noted, Nicholas Snethen is elected secretary, and his
signature appears with Coke’s at the end of the proceedings.”

 

1General Conference Journals, i. 7-29,
3Tlid., i. 31-46,
‘92 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

Of the General Conference of 1792 no official minutes are ex-
tant. “The Minutes of the General Conference of 1792,” says
Dr. McClintock, the editor of the first published collected Jour-
nals, “were never printed to my knowledge, nor can I find the
original copy”? !—probably because none was ever made. For
here steps to the front the tried and trusty Jesse Lee, the earli-
est historian of Methodism whose work attained general recog-
nition,’ who constantly aims at the nicest accuracy and the ut-
most attainable exactness on points of this kind. Says Lee:

On the first day of November, 1792, the first regular general conference
beganin Baltimore. . . . At that general conference we revised the form
of discipline, and made several alterations. The proceedings of that confer-
ence were not published in separate minutes, but the alterations were en-
tered at their proper places, and published in the next edition of the form
of discipline, which was the eighth edition?

Here, though Lee at first says no more than that the pro-
ceedings had not been published as separate minutes—as the
Minutes of the Annual Conferences had been since 1785—the
latter part of his sentence seems to imply that no separate and
distinct record was made at the time, “but the alterations were
entered at their proper places” in the Form of Discipline, and
thus published in the next edition thereof. Asbury also de-
clares, “The general conference went through the Discipline,
Articles of Faith,” etc.‘ The title-page of this Discipline,
which lies before us, is, “The Doctrines and Discipline
of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America, Revised and
Approved at the General Conference held at Baltimore, in

 

1General Conference Journals, i. 4.

2Tt is a mistake, however, which we believe we are the first to detect and
correct, to say that Jesse Lee’s History was the earliest. We have in our
possession “A Comprehensive History of American Methodism,” appended
to a Life of John Wesley, whose Preface bears date “Baltimore, June 13,
1807.” Lee’s Preface is dated “ Petersburg, Virginia, October 28, 1809.” Nor
is this Life of Wesley mentioned in any of the attempted complete lists that
we have seen.

5Short History of the Methodists, 1810, p. 176 et seg. The first sentence
of the above quotation is on p. 176: the only copy we have now at hand,
having been the property of Bishop McTyeire when he wrote his History, is
so mutilated by clipping that we cannot give the exact page of the remain-
der. Anyone wishing to verify, however, will meet no difficulty in finding
the passage.

4 Journal, ed. 1821, ii. 147.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 93.

the State of Maryland, in November, 1792: in which Thomas
Coke and Francis Asbury presided.” Though this was the
eighth edition, there having been a new Discipline issued every
year since the meeting of the Christmas Conference, this was
the first Methodist Discipline that bore on its title-page the
approval of a body denominated “the General Conference.”
This fact is not without significance, especially when taken in
connection with the accurate and pregnant language of Jesse
Lee, who did not insert the term “regular” as mere ballast,
“On the first day of November, 1792, the first regular general
conference began in Baltimore.” But this point will come up
for fuller consideration in another connection, when we shall
make some attempt at a more precise determination of the sense
in which Jesse Lee employed this legal-looking word “regular.”

It is not necessary for our present purpose to determine the
exact time of the introduction of secretaries into the Annual
Conferences, though it not improbably shortly preceded or fol-
lowed the introduction of that officer into the General Confer-
ence of 1800!—the “third regular General Conference,” as Lee
(p. 264) calls it. There is no evidence of the existence of this
officer in the Conferences of the people called Methodists on the
continent of America in their Minutes from 1773 to 1794, first
collected and published in a single volume in 1795, nor, so far as
our search has revealed, in the writings of Lee, Asbury, and other
of their contemporaries. Moreover, so far as we can appeal from
printed to manuscript sources, the manuscript journal of the
Rev. Philip Gatch, which was in the hands of the Rev. Leroy M.
Lee, D.D., when he wrote his Life of Jesse Lee, shows, if proof
is necessary, that the original records of the American Con-
ferences were kept, as we might well suppose, in the simple

 

 

1Since the preceding was written, we find, on examining the printed Min-
utes of the South Carolina Conference for 1896, that for the sessions from
the first in 1787 to 1798, the entry concerning the secretary is “ Not known,”
while Jesse Lee was the first in 1799. This is unexpected confirmation of
the conjecture of the text, based on the probability that the General Confer-
ence of 1800 simply imitated an example set shortly before by the Annual
Conferences—which turns out to have been the case, at least so far as South
Carolina was concerned—or, if the General Conference originated the cus-
tom, its example would be speedily followed in the Annual Conferences.
The General Conference of 1800 (Journal i. 43), on motion of Bishop Asbury,
first ordered the proceedings of Annual Conferences to be kept by a secre-
tary, and this record sent to the General Conference.
w

94 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

question and answer form universal in England. This contem-
porary manuscript journal preserves Minutes, in the question
and answer form, of the American Conferences of 1777 and 1779,
which are chiefly valuable, of course, because they include a
record which has been stricken or edited out of the printed Min-
utes. But they are also valuable as higher evidence on the point
in question, confirming the oldest printed Minutes.1_ Thus up
to the time of the meeting of the Christmas Conference, and until
long afterwards, this simple question and answer form of record-
ing Conference business was universal in England and America,
and, indeed, has been continued to this day in the Minutes of
the Wesleyan Conference in England, in the business of our
own Annual Conferences, though with additions, and through
all the editions of our Book of Discipline.

Now it so happens that with respect to the Christmas Con-
ference American Methodism enjoys the extraordinary, if not
unique, advantage of possessing, and of having always pos-
sessed, since the year of the adjournment of the Conference,
two printed records of the business done in the Christmas Con-
ference, both of them, in formal titles, called “Minutes,” and
both of them in this then universally current question and an-
swer form. What more could one ask? What more could be
r-tionally expected? Are we not, concerning the records of this
body, singularly fortunate? And yet from time to time a wail
goes up concerning the “lost minutes” of the Christmas Con-
ference, or a confident hope is expressed that they may yet be
recovered, or a shout is raised over the announcement of their
actual discovery. Recover—discover—what? We have entered
on this wide investigation of the forms of Conference organiza-
tion, business, and record in England and America, and, with the
patient indulgence of the reader, shall detain him on the point a
little longer, to show that we have no reason to believe that the
Christmas Conference ever put to record any form of “Minutes”
other than those which have been transmitted to us,? and that
consequently nothing has been lost and nothing is to be found.

Let us now sum up the state of the case. In England, until
the death of Wesley in 1791, there is no record in the Minutes

 

1Dr. L. M. Lee’s Life of Jesse Lee, pp. 78-81.
2A full description and examination of the two records, or “ Minutes,” of
the Christmas Conference will fall naturally a little later in our narrative.
GENESIS OF GENEKAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES, 95

 

of the election or service of a secretary of the Conference.
Moreover, these Minutes were kept in the simple question and
answer form, without notice of the parliamentary processes by
which the body was organized or conclusions were formulated
and reached, which, indeed, continues substantially in England
to this day. In America there is no record of the existence of
a secretary of the General Conference until 1800; and this body
was still adhering to the question and answer form of transact-
ing and recording its business as late as 1796—twelve years
after the Christmas Conference. The Annual Conferences, so
‘far as appears, had no such recording officer until long after the
Christmas Conference, and in these bodies, as we have uniform
evidence, both ; rinted and manuscript, from the very beginning
until a period long subsequent to the Christmas Conference,
the minutes were kept in the question and answer form, with-
ont other record. In 1792, in “the first regular General Con-
ference,” “the alterations were entered in their proper places”
in the Form of Discipline, and thus published. This, as we
shall immediately see, was doubtless in imitation of the exam-
-ple previously set by the Christmas Conference, and thus, for
the same reasons, we have no such separate record of either
body as that of 1796. In 1784, Coke and Asbury, during the
week before the opening of the Conference spent at Perry Hall,
prepared, assisted by the friendly counsel and aid of the other
guests, a revision of the “rules or minutes,” that is, a draft of
‘questions and answers, based on the current edition of the
Large Minutes, freely curtailed or supplemented, if we may
judge from the final form adopted,! to be submitted to the ap-
proaching Conference. That the Conference altered largely
the draft submitted by its presidents, we have no reason to
suppose. The “conversations”—note the word—on the revi-
sion of Discipline did not begin until Monday morning, Decem-
ber 27, and continuing but a week, were interrupted by the
elections of the elders and deacons, and the numerous preach-

1¥For a detailed comparison throughout of the Minutes of the Christmas
Conference whose title runs “ Minutes of Several Conversations between The
Rev. Thomas Coke, LL.D., The Rev. Francis Asbury, and Others,” etc., with
the Large Minutes, the title of whose several editions runs in similar strain,
“ Minutes of Several Conversations between the Rev. Mr. John and Charles
Wesley, and Others,” see Robert Emory’s History of the Discipline, 1844,

pp. 25-79.
96 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

ing and ordination services. Coke preached every day at noon,
“except on the Sundays and other ordination days, when the
service began at ten o'clock, it generally lasting on those occa-
sions four hours.” So far as we have discovered in a careful
perusal of Jesse Lee’s entire History, it contains no hint of any
“lost” or “missing” records of the Christmas Conference. It
is improbable to the last degree, amounting to moral certainty,
that any “minutes” in the modern parliamentary sense were
ever kept. If Coke did not use the manuscript draft prepared
by himself and Asbury at Perry Hall the week before, as finally
adopted by the Conference, for printing his ‘‘ Minutes” (the
first Discipline)—-which he put to the press in Philadelphia,
between January 8 and January 19, 1785, within about two
weeks of the adjournment of the Conference 1—surely only the
most captious objector could assert with the smallest degree
of probability that these “ Minutes,” so promptly published by
one of the presidents of the Conference, did not conform with
precision to the actual doings of the body. Together with the
pamphlet of annual minutes, first published later in this year,
and subsequently incorporated in the volume of Minutes first
collected and published in 1795,? which we have before us, these
“Minutes” or “Discipline” of the Christmas Conference, con-
tain, there is every reason to suppose, all the proceedings of the
Christmas Conference that were ever officially put to record.
In a most unusual degree these two forms of “Minutes,” par-
ticularly the publication of Coke’s at Philadelphia, in January,
1785, “composing a Form of Discipline,” fulfill the most rigid
conditions of official and contemporary records. In the present
state of the evidence it is entirely safe to say that no historical
inquirer need give himself the smallest concern about any sup-
posed “lost minutes” of the Christmas Conference. Only the
actual production of a hitherto unknown record of the body, of
whose existence there is not the slightest proof or presumption,
or direct contemporary, or approximately contemporary, testi-
mony ad rem can shake the mass of presumptions and practi-
cally decisive evidence to the contrary. The probability of the
production of such record or evidence, after an interval of one

1See Coke’s Journal, January 8-19, and January 22, 1785, Tigert’s ed., pp.
15, 16. Cf. Bishop Emory’s Defense of our Fathers, p. 70.
?Lee’s Short History of the Methodists, pp. 89, 118,
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 97

hundred and thirteen years, each reader may judge for himself.
Until they are produced, the historian may safely rest in the
conclusion that in the two records called “ Minutes ”—particu-
larly in the one which became the First Discipline of the Church,
for the earliest printed form of the other with which we are ac-
quainted dates ten years later,! though it was first printed in
1785 —we have the official, contemporaneous reports of the
transactions of the Christmas Conference, and that there is no
prospect that the revelations of the future will put us in posses-
sion of any other official, contemporary record of that historic
body. Except for the prevalent notion, without historical foun-
dation, to the contrary, it might not have been necessary to enter
upon this investigation. But in addition to the entire absence
of evidence for the existence of a missing record, we have in
this instance many converging lines of evidence, based both
upon a general and quite complete and exact knowledge of the
practices of Methodist Conferences in those times, and also
upon the circumstances attending the preparation for the
Christmas Conference and the publication of its transactions,
that none such was made; and, if not made, of course, not lost.

1 How far this modities the evidence derivable from this record will later
come under review.

 

Nors.—Further investigations, with some new materials, have but con-
firmed the doubts indicated in the text and footnote above. It is highly
improbable that the original printed minutes of 1785 contained a record of
the Christmas Conference. The assertion (p. 94) that we have had more
than one record “since the year of the adjournment of the Conference,” is
not warranted by the evidence. See Chapters X. and XIII.

7
CHAPTER X.

THE GENESIS OF THE GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES.
ITI. Sources or tor History oF THE CHRISTMAS CONFERENCE,
Historica inquiry into the character and proceedings of the
Christmas Conference must be based primarily upon contem-
poraneous, or approximately contemporaneous, sources. These
sources are divisible into two classes, Public and Private. The
Public embrace two or, at most, three records. In the Public
Contemporaneous Sources, the first place must be assigned to
the “Minutes” or “ ier vl of the Christmas Conference
(i. e., “Minutes” . . . “Composing a Form of Discipline” *),
put to the press, as we hve seen, by Thomas Coke, one of the
presidents of the Conference, at Philadelphia, between January
8 and January 19, 1785, immediately upon the adjournment of.
the Conference.? This document, being of official and strictly
contemporaneous character, is the highest historical evidence
we have of the nature and transactions of the Christmas Confer-
ence. With it must be considered the Sunday Service compiled
by Mr. Wesley and brought over by Dr. Coke. The second
place must be given to the earliest volume of what we now call
the General Minutes, whose preface bears date, May, 1794, and
which was published in 1795. It embraces the proceedings of
all the Conferences held from 1773 to 1794, including the
Christmas Conference. To these may be added the earliest
Disciplines, especially the series of annual Disciplines following
that of the Christmas Conference, six in number, from 1786 to
1791 inclusive, and the first Discipline which had quadrennial
force, unrevisable by annual Conferences, ordained by the Gen-
eral Conference of 1792. In so far as these Disciplines contain
references to the Christmas Conference, or other data from

1Title-page of the first Discipline, 1785.
2See the preceding chapter, p. 95.
(98)
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 99

which its character may be gathered or concluded, they of
course possess very high value as historical evidence, both be-
cause of their official character and because men who partici-
pated in the proceedings of the Christmas Conference were also
members of the annual Conferences, and of the General Confer-
ence of 1792, which ordained these Disciplines.

In the Private Contemporaneous Sources are to be included
the writings of persons who were participants in, or eyewit-
nesses of, the proceedings of the Christmas Conference. These
writings are treated in general as contemporary sources because
they are, as noted, the work of eyewitnesses and participants.
Their dates of publication are later, and vary considerably.
Notice of these variations will be taken, and so far as they affect
the value of evidence on particular points, due consideration
will be given them in the proper connection. So far as our re-
searches have revealed, the following persons, participants in the
proceedings of the Christmas Conference, have put to record
more or less formal accounts of the doings of the body: Fran-
cis Asbury (Journal); Thomas Coke (Journal and Ordination
Sermon); Freeborn Garrettson (Journal; Articles in Methodist
Quarterly Review, July, 1830; and notices in Bangs’s Life of Gar-
rettson); James O’Kelly (Apology and Vindication of Apology,
both answered by Snethen); William Phoebus (An Essay on the
Doctrine and Order of the Evangelical Church of America, as
Constituted at Baltimore in 1784; and Memoirs of Bishop
Whatcoat); Thomas Ware (Autobiography, and Article on the
Christmas Conference in the Methodist Quarterly Review, for
January, 1832); William Watters (A Short Account of the
Christian Experience and Ministerial Labors of William Wat-
ters, Drawn up by Himself); Richard Whatcoat (extracts and
notices in the Memoirs by Phoebus noted above). To these may
be added the Funeral Discourse of Ezekiel Cooper preached on
the death of Asbury, for while Cooper was not a member of the
Christmas Conference, he was present at Barratt’s Chapel when
the steps were taken for calling it, and thus he becomes a first-
hand source for that portion of the history of the body.

Jesse Lee occupies a unique position, and his History has a
value all its own. He failed to get Garrettson’s call to attend
the Christmas Conference in time, and so was not present. But
his History evinces on every page the most painstaking care to
100 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

procure, and the most literal exactness in the use of, all availa-

ble sources of information concerning the history of the Church.

As a contemporary historian of this character, therefore, he

stands apart from all later historians; and we think we but voice

the conviction of every careful student of his pages in declaring
that his record is entitled to the highest respect and confidence,
and ought to be recognized among the sources.

Let us now undertake a formal enumeration of these Public
and Private Contemporaneous Sources of the History of the
Christmas Conference. Such a catalogue has not before been
undertaken. In a piece of pioneer work of this sort, we must
crave the reader’s indulgence. At best, though based upon the
studies of a good many years, it is only a first draft, to be com-
pleted or, if necessary, corrected as opportunity may offer. It
has not been possible to visit any of the historical libraries of
Methodism: our sole dependence has been upon our own private
collection of sources and authorities for Methodist history
(which, perhaps, will compare not unfavorably with others) to-
gether with several volumes very kindly placed at our disposal
by friends.

Our catalogue of sources, with appended remarks, is as fol-
lows:

I.
Pusiic CoNTEMPORARY SOURCES.

1. Minutes of Several Conversations between The Rev. Thomas
Coke, LL.D. The Rev. Francis Asbury and others, at a Con-
ference, begun in Baltimore, in the State of Maryland, on
Monday, the 27th. of December, in the year 1784. Compos-
ing a Form of Discipline for the Ministers, Preachers and
other Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Amer-
ica. Philadelphia: Printed by Charles Cist, in Arch-Street,
the Corner of Fourth-Street. M,DCC,LXXXYV.

This First Discipline, though quite rare, is not so scarce as
that of 1787 (known to exist in only two copies), or, probably,
that of 1788, which is very difficult to secure. The title-page
above is taken directly from the original. It consists of an un-
broken series of eighty-one questions and answers. It is bound
up with the Sunday Service compiled by Mr. Wesley, and
brought over in sheets by Dr. Coke, whose title-page reads as
follows:
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 101

The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. With
other Occasional Services. London: Printed in the year
MDCCLXXXIV.

The contents of this Sunday Service, as indicated by separate
headings, after the tables of proper lessons, are as follows:
; (1) The Order for Morning Prayer Every Lord’s Day. (Pp.

-14.)

(2) The Order for Evening Prayer Every Lord’s Day. (Pp.
14-19.)

(3) The Litany. (Pp. 20-26.)

(4) A Prayer and Thanksgiving to be used every Lord’s Day.
(Pp. 26, 27.)

(5) The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, To be used through-
out the year. (Pp. 27-124.)

(G) The Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper.
(Pp. 125-139.)

(7) The Ministration of Baptism of Infants. (Pp. 189-143.)

(8) The Ministration of Baptism to such as are of Riper
Years. (Pp. 143-149.)

(9) The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony. (Pp. 149-
155.)

(10) The Communion of the Sick. (Pp. 155, 156.)

(11) The Order for the Burial of the Dead. (Pp. 156-161.)

(12) Select Psalms. (Pp. 162-279.)

(13) The Form and Manner of Making and Ordaining of
Superintendants, Elders, and Deacons. (Pp. 280-305.)

(a) The Form and Manner of Making of Deacons.

(b) The Form and Manner of Ordaining of Elders.

(c) The Form of Ordaining of a Superintendant.

(14) Articles of Religion (twenty-four in number). (Pp.
306-314. )

These titles are all verbally exact, being taken directly from
the book itself. The preface is signed by John Wesley and
dated Bristol, September 9, 1784. Bound up with the “Min-
utes” and the “Sunday Service” is also “A Collection of Psalms
and Hymns,” whose contents do not here concern us.

 

 

2. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, annually held in
America, From 1778 to 1794, inclusive. Philadelphia: Printed
102 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

by Henry Tuckniss, No. 25 Church-Alley, and sold by John
Dickins, No. 44, North Second Street, near Arch Street.

M DCC XCV.

The preface of these “Minutes” bears date “ Botetourt, May
24th, 1794.” In Asbury’s Journal, under date of May 21, 1794,
we find this entry: “Came to M—— on Mill-Creek, in Bote-
tourt’s county, where I was met by brother J. E. who assisted
me next day in preparing the minutes.”! As John Dickins, the
first book agent, was the publisher, so doubtless Bishop Asbury
was the editor, of this first volume of collected Minutes. We
know that it was he that edited the Discipline of 1787, arrang-
ing it “under proper heads” and methodizing it “in a more
acceptable and easy manner.” ? And scarcely any other person
would have assumed the responsibility of eliminating from the
Minutes of the Conferences of 1777 and 1779 the questions per-
taining to the ordinances and the threatened schism, which we
are able to supply from Gatch’s manuscript Journal as published
by Dr. L. M. Lee.

That the volume was a compilation, partly of printed, and
partly of manuscript, documents is also evident from the preface,
where an objection to the purchase of the new volume is antic.
ipated and answered: “It may be objected (as it has been by
some on similar occasions) that ‘many of these minutes have
been already printed, and we have to purchase the same books
twice’;” to which the second answer is, “Although many of
our yearly minutes have been printed, yet many others have
not, and those that are published being in small pamphlets are
more liable to be lost, and we have found only one person in
whose hands a complete collection of the said minutes was to
be found.” @

But for the exactness and completeness of Jesse Lee, this
would be about all we should know about this interesting and
important volume. In particular we should be unable to tell
which of the annual minutes had been previously printed in
pamphlet form, and which had been preserved only:in manu-
script. But at the close of his account of the twelfth Confer-
ence, which met in the spring of 1784—the last Conference be-

1Journal, ii. 192.

2Journal, Nov. 27, 1785, and April 5, 1786; Title-page Discipline of 1787,

3 Preface, pp. iti, iv.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 1038

 

fore the meeting of the Christmas Conference—Lee carefully
adds this Note:

Here end the minutes that were formerly taken and kept in manuscript,
and not printed until 1795. After this all our annual minutes were printed
every year. In the following part of this history the printed minutes will
be attended to as they came out year after year.}

In connection with his account of the Conferences immedi-
ately following the Christmas Conference, in the spring of 1785,
Mr. Lee again says: “And for the first time we had the annual
minutes printed; which practice we have followed ever since.” ?
Thus when Asbury and Dickins, in 1794, as editor and publisher,
undertook the issue of the first volume of collected General
Minutes, they had before them the manuscript minutes of the
Conferences from 1778 to the spring of 1784 inclusive, and the
annual pamphlet minutes of the Conferences from the spring
of 1785 to 1794 inclusive. They may have had also the manu-
script records of these last Conferences; but it is of importance
to notice, as will appear in the sequel, that printed annual min-
utes had been issued during these years.

“The business of the three Conferences [held in April, May,
and June, 1785],” says Mr. Lee, “was all arranged in the min-
utes as if it had all been done at one time and place—’’’ and
that time and place were “ Baltimore, January, 1785,” according
to the caption in the Minutes.* But here Mr. Lee’s statement
varies from the record of 1795, for the minute business of
the Christmas Conference, which is thus made, though inexactly,
to give date to the other three, is recorded in answer to ques-
tions which record also the business done at the three Confer-
ences of 1785, without in any way distinguishing what business
was done at each of these four Conferences. To this extent the
business of four Conferences, including the Christmas Confer-
ence, was amalgamated, and all treated as annual Conferences
of 1785 in the minutes which contain the only official record of
the ordinations of the Christmas Conference.

The only fact that gives the Minutes of 1785, as printed in the
General Minutes of 1795, less historical value than those “ Min-

 

1Short History of the Methodists, p. 89.
2 Ibid., p. 118.

8 Tbid., p. 118.

4P. 75,
104 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

utes ” of the Christmas Conference, “composing a Form of Dis-
cipline” which, as we have seen above, Coke printed immediately
on the adjournment of the Conference, is that we cannot be
certain that the reprint of 1795 is an exact reproduction of the
original pamphlet minutes of 1785: in particular we cannot by
certain evidence carry the introductory note, giving a brief ac-
count of the Christmas Conference and the organization of the
Church, higher than 1795. For our own part we should be very
glad to date this note 1785, and, without due consideration, we
once so assumed.1 We have some knowledge of the editorial
liberties which Asbury allowed himself in the compilation of
this volume; there is one appended footnote which could not
have been written in 1785; the word “bishop” is used as an
alternative for “superintendent,” though it occurs nowhere in
Wesley’s ordination office contained in his Sunday Service, and
was not introduced into the Discipline until 1787, when it excited
some comment, until confirmed by the Conference; and the
tenor and tenses of the few lines devoted to the organization
seem to indicate a subsequent record. None of these consider-
ations demoustrate that this note could not have been written in
1785; but taken together they seem to throw considerable doubt
on that date, and as our earliest printed copy bears date of
1795, when all the annual minutes from the beginning to that
date were collected and edited by Asbury, we cannot, by indu-
bitable evidence, carry the introductory note higher than this.
The most important verification of the existing records of the
Christmas Conference that can well be anticipated from the dis-
closures of the future is the possible discovery of the original
pamphlet minutes of 1785, by which our copy of 1795 may be
either confirmed or corrected.

These considerations do not apply fully to the titles under
which the minutes of 1785, 1786, and 1787, were republished in
1795. Jesse Lee, referring tothe pamphlets of annual minutes to
which he had promised to pay particular attention, says:? “This
year [1785], and the two succeeding years, the minutes were

1See Constitutional History, footnote, p. 197.

2Short History, p. 118. Singularly overlooking these words of Lee’s,
though we had occasion to consult the page on which they occur in the prep-
aration of the article, we fell into the error of denying a higher date than
1795 for these titles, in our paper in Taz Mersopisr Review for July, 1895,
p. 389. This error is now corrected above.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 105

called, ‘Minutes of the General Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in America.’” Turning to the General Min-
utes of 1795, we find the full title for 1785 in that volume to be,
“Minutes of some Conversations between the Ministers and
Preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, at a General
Conference held at Baltimore, January 1785.”! Without turn.
ing aside now to discuss the significance of this variation from
Lee, we simply note here that titles identical with Lee’s were
employed for the Conferences of 1786 and 1787, the proceedings
of the former appearing under the caption, “Minutes of the
General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the
year 1786,” and of the latter under that of “Minutes of the
General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, for the
year 1787,”

 

 

3. In the third place we class as Public Contemporary Sources
the annual Disciplines from 1786 to 1791 inclusive, and the first
quadrennial Discipline of 1792.4 We append the exact and full
titles of these volumes, taking all from the title-pages of the books
themselves, including the original of the Discipline of 1787, where
the agreement of all three of the reprints may also be noted.

1786. The General Minutes of the Conferences of the Metho-
dist Episcopal Church in America, forming the Constitution
of the said Church.

These “General Minutes” fill pp, 322-355 of a volume usually
known as the second edition of the Sunday Service. There is
no distinct title-page for the “Minutes” constituting the Disci-
pline, or “forming the Constitution” of the Church; the title
cited above is simply a general heading at the top of page 322.
The title-page of the Sunday Service which includes this Disci-

pline is as follows:

‘The Sunday Service of the Methodists In the United-States of
America. With other Occasional] Services. London: Printed

1 Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, annually held in America, From
1778 to 1794, inclusive: 1795, p. 75.
2 Ibid., p. 85.

8 Ibid., p. 95.
4 We do not mean to exclude later Disciplines from proper consideration;

‘but this seems the right limit for this catalogue.
106 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

by Frys and Couchman, Worship-Street Upper-Moorfields,
1786.

1787. A Form of Discipline, for the Ministers, Preachers, and
Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America.
Considered and approved at a Conference Held at Baltimore,
in the State of Maryland, On Monday the 27th of December,
1784: in which The Reverend Thomas Coke, L.L.D. and the
Reverend Francis Asbury, presided. Arranged under proper
Heads, and methodized in a more acceptable and easy Man-
ner. New-York: Printed by W. Ross, in Broad-Street.
M. DCC. LXXXVITI.

1788. A Form of Discipline, for the Ministers, Preachers, and.
Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America.
Considered and approved at a Conference Held at Baltimore,
in the State of Maryland, On Monday the 27th of December,
1784: in which The Reverend Thomas Coke, L.L.D. and the
Reverend Francis Asbury, presided. Arranged under proper
Heads, and methodized in a more acceptable and easy Man-

ner. With some other useful Pieces annexed. Elizabeth-
Town: Printed by Shepard Kollock. M. DCC. LXXXVIII.

The “useful pieces annexed” are the General Rules (nine-
‘eenth edition, signed by Coke and Asbury, and dated May 28,
1787), the Articles of Religion, and An Address to the Friends
and Annual Subscribers to the support of Cokesbury-College,
all three with separate title-pages, with publisher and.
date as given above. This Discipline contains also two
other “pieces”: “The Scripture Doctrine of Predestina-
tion, Election, and Reprobation” (with a separate title-page),
and “Serious Thoughts on the Infallible, Unconditional, Per-
severance of all that have once experienced Faith in Christ,” 2

1789. A Form of Discipline, for the Ministers, Preachers, and
Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America,
Considered and Approved ata Conference Held at Baltimore,
in the State of Maryland On Monday the 27th of December,
1784: in which Thomas Coke, and Francis Asbury, Presided:

 

1¥or an account of this “arranging” and “ methodizing” see Tigert’s Con-
stitutional History, pp. 239-241.

* These “useful pieces,” in this and the following Disciplines, are omitted
from the reprints.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 107

Arranged under proper Heads, and methodized in a more ac-
ceptable and easy Manner: With some other useful Pieces
annexed. The Fifth Edition. New-York: Printed by Wil-
liam Ross, in Broad-Street. M. DCC. LXXXIX.

The “useful pieces annexed” are the Articles of Religion,
and the Scripture Doctrine of Predestination, etc., with separate
title-pages, publisher and date as given above, and, with distinct
headings but no title-pages, “Serious Thoughts,” etc., and “A
Plain Account of Christian Perfection, as believed and taught by
the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, From the year 1725, to the year 1765.”

1790. A Form of Discipline for the Ministers, Preachers and
Members (now comprehending the Principles and Doctrines)
of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America, considered
and approved at a Conference Held at Baltimore, in the State
of Maryland On Monday the 27th of December, 1784: In
which Thomas Coke, and Francis Asbury, Presided: Arranged
under proper Heads, and methodized in a more acceptable and
easy manner. The Sixth Edition. Philadelphia: Printed by
R. Aitken & Son, No. 22. Market Street and sold by John
Dickins, No. 43. Fourth Street. M. DCC. XC.

The principal new feature of this title-page—“ now compre-
hending the Principles and Doctrines’’—marks the transforma-
tion of the “useful pieces annexed” into sections of the Disci-
pline itself: Section XXXV. is the Articles of Religion; Section
XXXVI. Scripture Doctrine of Predestination, etc.; Section
XXXVII. Serious Thoughts, etc.; Section XXXVIII. A Plain
Account of Christian Perfection; and Section XXXIX. An Ex-
tract on the Nature and Subjects of Christian Baptism: this.
last Section has a separate title-page.

1791. A Form of Discipline, for the Ministers, Preachers, and
Members (now comprehending the Principles and Doctrines)
of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America, considered
and approved at a Conference Held at Baltimore, in the State
of Maryland, on Monday, the 27th of December, 1784: in
which Thomas Coke, and Francis Asbury, Presided: Arranged
under proper Heads, and methodized in a more acceptable
and easy Manner. The Seventh Edition. Philadelphia:
Printed by Joseph Crukshank, No. 91, High-street; and sold
108 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

by John Dickins, No. 48, Fourth-street, near the corner of
Race-street. MDCCXCI.

In this Discipline the General Rules constitute Section
XXXYV.; the Articles of Religion, Section XXXVL.; the Scrip-
ture Doctrine of Predestination, etc., Section XXXVIL.; the
Serious Thoughts, etc., Section XXXVIITL; the Plain Account
of Christian Perfection, Section XXXIX.; and An Extract on
the Nature and Subjects of Christian Baptism, Section XL.—
the same doctrinal sections being continued, as in the Discipline
of 1790.

1792. The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal
Church in America, revised and approved at the General Con-
ference Held at Baltimore, in the State of Maryland, in No-
vember, 1792: in which Thomas Coke, and Francis Asbury,
Presided: Arranged under proper Heads, and methodized in
a more acceptable and easy Manner. The Highth Edition.
Philadelphia: Printed by Parry Hall, No. 149. Chesnut street,
and sold by John Dickins, No. 182. Race street, between fifth
and sixth street. M.DCC.XCII.

Here for the first time the title “Doctrines and Discipline,” and
the approval by a body styled “the General Conference,” meet us.
From the evolution of the title and of the book itself, as noticed in
the preceding pages, it is very evident that whatever may be
meant by the phrase, “present existing and established stand-
ards of doctrine” in the Restrictive Rule of 1808,! the word
“Doctrines” when it first appeared on the title-page of the
Discipline referred to the doctrinal sections incorporated in
the book itself. Thus in the Discipline of 1792 the Articles
of Religion are brought forward to the position of Chapter I.,
Section II.; Chapter ITI., Section IV. is “Of Christian Per-
fection”; Section V. “Against Antinomianism”; Section VI.
“Scripture Doctrine of Predestination,” etc.; Section VIL.
“Serious Thoughts on the infallible, unconditional Persever-
ance,” etc.; Section VIII. “A Plain Account of Christian Per-
fection,” etc.; and fection IX. “An Extract on the Nature and
Subjects of Christian Baptism.” Section X. is headed “Sac-
ramental Services,” etc.,-and contains the offices for the admin-

 

'Discipline of 1808, p. 15.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 109

 

istration of the sacraments, for the ordination of deacons, elders,
and bishops, for the solemnization of matrimony, and for the
burial of the dead. Thus three Disciplines, 1790, 1791, and
1792, completely incorporated sections on doctrine in their con-
tents, and this fact was acknowledged on their title-pages. But
this is not the connection in which to pursue further the impli-
cations of these facts.

IT.

PRIVATE CONTEMPORARY SOURCES.

‘We may now rapidly survey the Private Contemporary
Sources, arranging them, for convenience of consultation, in al-
phabetical order, but indicating, as far as possible, the dates of
publication.

1. Francis Asbury.

The Journal of the Rev. Francis Asbury, Bishop of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church, from August 7, 1771, to December 7,
1815. In Three Volumes. Vol. I, from August 7, 1771, to
July 4, 1786. Vol. II, from July 15, 1786, to November 6,
1800. Vol. III, from November 8, 1800, to December 7, 1815.
New-York: Published by N. Bangs and T. Mason, for the
Methodist Episcopal Church. Abraham Paul, Printer, 182
Water-Street. 1821.

The earliest printed Journal of Bishop Asbury which we have
been able to discover is contained in Volume I. of the Arminian
Magazine, published in Philadelphia, in 1789. In the May num-
ber, pp. 184-198, is published “The Journal of Francis Asbury,
Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, from August 7th,
1771, to February 27, 1772.” No further installment is given in
this volume; but in Volume ITI., for 1790, the publication of the
Journal is resumed, under the same title given above, and with
a formal note, “To the Reader,” prefixed. The issues for Feb-
ruary, pp. 85-90; for March, pp. 141-146; for April, pp. 193-
199; for May, pp. 245-251; for June, pp. 297-3802; for July, pp.
349-354; for August, pp. 401-407; for September, pp. 453-458,
all for the year 1790, contain together the Journal “From March
26, 1772, to April 14,1773.” At the close of the installment for
September, 1790, the notice is appended, “To be continued in
Vol. III.” We have not instituted a comparison between the
110 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

Journal of 1821 and the installments thus published in 1789
and 1790. It will be noticed that they begin at the same date,
and in quoting it is desirable to verify the later by the earlier
record.

In addition to the note, “To the Reader,” published in Feb-
ruary, 1790, referred to above, the volume for 1790 contains at
the beginning an address “To the Subscribers for the Armin-
ian Magazine,” with this signature: “Signed in behalf of the Coun-
cil, Francis Aspury.” The Council was at that time, it will be
remembered, the organ of the general government of the Church,
and had charge of the publishing interests; but it was expressly
provided that “In the intervals of the Council, the bishop shall
have power to act in all contingent occurrences relative to the
printing business.”! A similar address (though differing, since
the “former volume” is referred to in the second) must have
been prefixed to the first volume, for the date of the address in
the volume for 1790 is “ Baltimore, Dec. 8, 1789,” which must
have been carried over from the first volume, from the copy of
which before us the title-page and address are missing. As the
address refers to the whole contents of the volume, it seems to
imply that Asbury sustained an editorial relation to the Armin-
ian Magazine, similar to Mr. Wesley’s position in England. We
quote one sentence of his allusion to his own Journal:

As no other satisfactory account can be procured, this journal will be the

more acceptable to many, as it contains a brief relation of the progress of
Methodism, step by step, through the Continent of America.?

Of the general scope of the Magazine itself, Asbury says:

It is worthy of observation that, in time, this Magazine may form a com-
plete American library; as most of our publications will be included therein.
Unbound tracts are soon damaged or lost: but here all is secured in good
binding. And this Magazine may serve the next generation?

The full title of the second volume of this Magazine is as fol-
lows:

The Arminian Magazine: Consisting of Extracts and Original
Treatises on General Redemption. Volume II. For the Year
1790. Printed in Philadelphia, by Prichard & Hall, in Mar-

 

1See Tigert’s Constitutional History, p. 246, citation from Lee,
2 Arminian Magazine, Philadelphia, Vol. IL., page iii, 1790.
8 Ibid, p. iv.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 111

ket Street, and sold by John Dickins, in Fourth Street (Hast
side) near the corner of Race Street. M. DCC. XC.

Between these publications in the Arminian Magazine and the
issue of the edition of 1821 (since often reprinted), an attempt
was made to issue the Journal. “The Preface which Mr. As-
bury prefixed to the first number of the second volume of his
Journal, which was printed during his lifetime,” is reproduced
in Vol. I. of the edition of 1821. In it he says:

The first volume of the extract of my journal was published, many years
after it was written, under the management of others, it being out of my
power to attend the press, or even to read over the copy before it was printed:
several inconveniences attending that volume will be avoided in this [the
second volume of that edition].

For many years I did not determine to publish a second volume of the
extract of my journal: but the advice of my friends, and the prospects of my
approaching dissolution, have determined me on its publication.

Appended footnotes to this passage inform us that the first
volume of that edition, “now reprinted” in the edition of 1821,
“was corrected by the author”; and that the “determination”
to publish a second volume of the former edition “was not car-
ried into effect, except one small number, which is now repub-
lished with the corrections of the author.”

Where this corrected printed material ends, and where the
sole manuscript matter begins, in the edition of 1821, we have
a clew for determining, in the fact that Francis Hollingsworth,
the “transcriber” of the Journal published in 1821, in giving
assurance that “the work is the author’s” (Asbury’s), adds: “I
must be understood to mean from the year 1780 to the end of
the journal; the original manuscript of all that preceded that
date I never saw: I only know that when printed it did not please
the author.” It may be concluded, therefore, that the printed
portion of the Journal contained in the earlier edition,’ corrected
by Asbury, extended from 1771 to 1780. We are further told
by Hollingsworth that “he presumes he has been enough ob-
servant of this [Bishop Asbury’s style ] to satisfy most readers,
inasmuch as the bishop himself, when he examined what had
been transcribed up to 1807, altered but once, and then not

much.’’?

1 Journal, ed. 1831, I. pp. iii, iv.
2 Tbid., p. vii.
8 Tbid., p. vii, of. footnote on p. ¥.

 
112 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

On Thursday, July 1, 1815, Asbury makes the following en-
try in his Journal:

We came to son Francis Hollingsworth’s, Little-York. My kind coun-
trywoman gave me up her own room. . . . I sit seven hours a day,
looking over and hearing read my transcribed journal; we have examined
and approved up to 1807. As a record of the early history of Methodism,
my journal will be of use; and accompanied by the minutes of the Confer-
ences, will tell all that will be necessary to know. I have buried in shades all
that will be proper to forget, in which I am personally concerned; if truth
and J have been wronged, we have both witnessed our day of triumph.

Thus, in the edition of 1821, we have Asbury’s Journal as re-
vised and approved by himself down to the year 1807; while
from 1807 to December 7, 1815, the date of the last entry, we

have Hollingsworth’s transcription of Asbury’s manuscript.
Bishop Asbury died March 21, 1816.

 

1 Journal, ed. 1821, iii. 382.
 

 

 

 

THOMAS COKE,

Foreign Minister of Methodism.
CHAPTER XI.
Tur GENESIS OF THE GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES.

III. Sources or tHE History or roe Curisrmas CoNrERENCE (CoNTINUED).

WE continue the alphabetical catalogue of the Private Contem-
porary Sources of the History of the Christmas Conference be-
gun in the last chapter.

2. Thomas Coke.

The Journal of Thomas Uoke, Bishop of the Methodist-Episco-
pal Church, From September 18th, 1784, to June 3, 1785.

Under the title given above, the Journal of Bishop Coke, cov-
ering minutely the entire period of his first visit to America,
from the date of his sailing from England to that of his depart-
ure from America, is published in the Arminian Magazine, Phil-
adelphia, for May, June, July, and August, 1789: May, pp.
237-244; June, pp. 286-297; July, pp. 339-346; and August, pp.
391-398. Like the “Minutes” or “Discipline” of 1785 and
Asbury’s Journal, Coke’s Journal is a strictly contemporaneous
source for the history of the Christmas Conference, embracing
Coke’s account of the calling of the Conference, of the work of
the body, of the ordinations of Bishop Asbury and of the first.
American Methodist deacons and elders, and of the organiza-
tion of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This entire Journal
was republished in THe Mertuopist Review for September-
October, 1896, pp. 3-82, the editor taking the utmost care “to se-
cure exact conformity to the original; this conformity extending
to all italicized words, spelling, punctuation, and most of the
typographical peculiarities.” It has also been reprinted as a
separate pamphlet, which may be procured of the editor, with the
following title-page:

The Journal of Thomas Coke, Bishop of the Methodist Episco-
8 (113)
114 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

pal Church, From September 18, 1784, to June 3, 1785. Re-
printed from the Arminian Magazine, Philadelphia, for May,
June, July, and August, 1789. Carefully conformed to the
original under the Editorial Supervision of Jno. J. Tigert,
Book Editor, Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Nashville,
Tenn.: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South. Barbee and Smith, Agents. 1896.

In addition to the foregoing, there was published in London,
in 1793, a volume entitled, “Extracts of the Journals of the
Rey. Dr. Coke’s Five Visits to America.” It will be noticed
that this volume on its face purports to be no more than “ Ex-
tracts.” So far as we are aware no material discrepancies have
been brought to light as to statements of fact between the por-
tion of this volume which covers the period of Dr. Coke’s first
visit to America and the complete Journal of that visit as orig-
inally published in the American Arminian Magazine for 1789.
There are, however, additions, omissions, and alterations of lan-
guage, such as, for the most part, are naturally accounted for
as justifiable or necessary editorial adaptations of “ Extracts”
intended for a new audience beyond seas reading this portion
of the Journal nine years after it was put to record and four
years after its original publication. For example, in the Ar-
minian Magazine for June, 1789, p. 293, it is said of the Church
in New York in January following the Christmas Conference:
“We expected this society would have made the greatest oppo-
sition to our plan, but on the contrary they have been the most
forward to promote it. They have already put up a reading
desk, and railed in a communion table,” etc. Now this passage
has been omitted from the volume of “ Extracts.” The motive
is obvious. It would have been a grave imprudence and a use-
less particularity to have republished in England in 1793 that
the New York Society had been suspected of disaffection in
1784—especially when the suspicions proved to be altogether
groundless!1_ Nevertheless, charges of a vague but sufficiently
grave nature have been formulated or hinted from time to time
by persons, outside and inside of Methodism, who, apparently in-
spired by hostile or destructive motives of one sort or another,

 

14 more important variation, often brought forward, is discussed in Ti+
gert’s Constitutional History, pp. 180, 181.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 115

 

have sought to cast some shade of discredit upon what we believe
to be the historically demonstrable facts of the organization of
the Methodist Episcopal Church by Coke and Asbury and their
compeers of the Christmas Conference. These attacks have been
continued to our day, and the modern have one unvarying char-
acteristic in common with the earliest assaults: they make the
same efforts at arraignment of the motives and character of the
chief actors in these momentous transactions, basing their ac-
cusations upon insinuations and alleged proofs of insincerity,
vanity, ambition, and double dealing, and hardly stopping short
of the impeachment of the veracity and integrity of the first
bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This is a ques-
tion about which we have had something to say elsewhere, and
of which we may have more to say hereafter, but into which
we cannot enter here. In the matter of the two editions of
Coke’s Journal, and their variations, a few general remarks muy
be here recorded: (1) The London edition of 1793 never pro-
fessed to be complete: on its face it purported to be an abbrevi-
ation; (2) Its changes could not have been intended to deceive
Mr. Wesley, for at the date of its publication Mr. Wesley hal
been in his grave two years—a rather material fact, which some
of Coke’s maligners, in their ignorance or disregard of chronol-
ogy, seem to have overlooked; (3) Vague charges intended to
affect Coke’s sincerity or veracity, or his value as a witness, su
far as they do not fall of their own weight, are to be set at rest
by a detailed comparison throughout of the variant passages in
the texts of the two editions, a work which we have not had the
opportunity to do, and which, so far as we know, has never been
systematically and exhaustively performed: when done, as it
ought to be, we believe it will constitute a final historical vin-
dication of Coke’s record; (4) There is nowhere any hint of any
editing done on the original American edition of Coke’s Jour-
nal published in the Arminian Magazine in 1789: as an original
unmutilated contemporaneous record, standing in date of pub-
lication within five years of the events it describes, and appear-
ing four years before the London edition of “ Extracts,” it must
be regarded, in any event, as the primary and most valuable
witness.

In addition to his Journal, published as noticed above, Dr.
Coke printed at Baltimore, between February 26 and March 6,
116 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

1785, “the substance of a sermon,” “ preached at the ordination
of brother Asbury to the office of a bishop.” It consists of two
parts, (1) “A vindication of our conduct”; and (2) “The char-
acteristics of a Christian bishop.” When copies of this ser-
mon, preached before an American audience, on occasion of the
ordination of the first Protestant bishop on American soil, and
at the organization of the first American Episcopal Church,
reached England, a passage arraigning the English Episcopal
Establishment gave great umbrage, especially to Charles Wes-
ley, who is understood to have been the author of certain anon-
ymous strictures upon it; but when he wrote his brother John
challenging his attention to Dr. Coke’s “ordination sermon”
(Sept. 8, 1785), John deliberately replied (Sept. 13, 1785), “I
believe Dr. Coke is as free from ambition as from covetousness.
He has done nothing rashly that I know,” thus putting the final
stamp of his approval on the acts of his American ambassador.?

3. Freeborn Garrettson.

There seem to be. three separate publications from the pen
of Garrettson himself: (1) An autobiography entitled “ Experi-
ence and Travels,” published in Philadelphia in 1791; (2) His
Journal, possibly issued later as a separate volume, but first pub-
lished in the Arminian Magazine (English) for 1794;? (3) Gar-
rettson’s “Semi-Centennial Sermon,” published in 1826. Utter-
ances of Mr. Garrettson’s are also cited in two papers in the
Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review for July, 1830, one en-
titled “A> Reply to Mr. Alexander McCaine,” pp. 325-341, and
the other a review of Bangs’s “ Life of the Rev. Freeborn Gar-

 

1Arminian Magazine, Philadelphia, June, 1789, p. 294.

? The éxpression in the sermon which gave chief offense in England was
as follows: “The Church of England, of which the Society of Methodists in
general have till lately professed themselves a part, did for many years
groan in America under grievances of the heaviest kind. Subjected to a
hierarchy, which weighs everything in the scale of politics, its most impor-
tant interests were repeatedly sacrificed to the supposed advantages of En-
gland.”

It was expected that two volumes, both ascribed to Garrettson, would be
in hand before this volume went to press, but they have been delayed. One
correspondent refers to the volume in his possession as an autobiography,
the other as a journal. As Bangs, in the preface to his Life of Garrettson,
calls Garrettson’s “account of his experience and travels” a journal, it is
probable that these volumes are identical.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 117

rettson,” pp. 341-360. To these sources must be added: “The
Life of the Rev. Freeborn Garrettson: Compiled from his Print-

ed and Manuscript Journals, and other Authentic Documents.
By Nathan Bangs, D.D.”

4. James O’ Kelly.

This great schismatic, ordained elder at the Christmas Con-
ference, published two pamphlets, both replied to by Nicholas
Snethen, which are freely quoted in the histories and biogra-
phies under the title of O’Kelly’s Apology and Vindication of
Apology. O’Kelly’s first pamphlet was signed “Christicola,”
and its full title was “The Author’s Apology for Protesting
against the Methodist Episcopal Government.” Its style imi-
tated that of the Book of Chronicles. Snethen promptly issued
“A Reply to an Apology,” to which O’Kelly made answer in “A
Vindication of an Apology,” to which Snethen in turn replied
with “An Answer to James O’Kelly’s Vindication of his Apol-
ogy.” Jesse Lee also prepared a manuscript reply to O’Kelly
which Dr. L. M. Lee inserts in his Life of Jesse Lee, pp. 278-
282.

5. William Phoebus.

Dr. Phoebus gave to the Church two publications of consid-
erable value for the history of the Christmas Conference. The
full title-page of the first is as follows:

An Essay on the Doctrine and Order of the Evangelical Church
of America; as Constituted at Baltimore in 1784, Under the
Patronage of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., Rev. Thomas Coke,
LL.D., Rev. W. F. Oterbine, D.D., Principal of the German
Reformed Collegiate Church in America, Rev. F. Asbury,
V.D.M., Rev. Martin Boehm, a Bishop of the Menonists, Two
Presbyters from the British Conference, and Sixty Itinerant
Preachers, Raised in the United States. By William Phoe-
bus, M.D., one of said itinerant preachers. New York: Print-
ed for the Author, by Abraham Paul, 182 Water Street.
1817.

Phoebus’s other and perhaps more important publication is
the “Memoirs of the Rev. Richard Whatcoat; late Bishop of
the Methodist Episcopal Church,” New York, 1828.
118 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

6. Thomas Ware.

The Rev. Thomas Ware has also left two publications, as fol-
lows:

Sketches of the Life and Travels of Rev. Thomas Ware, who
has been an Itinerant Methodist Preacher for more than Fifty
Years. Written by Himself. Revised by the Editors. New
York: Published by G. Lane and P. P. Sandford, For the
Methodist Episcopal Church, At the Conference Office, 200
Mulberry Street. J. Collord, Printer. 1842.

 

So reads the title-page of our copy, but the copyright is dated
1839, and the preface is signed “T. W. Salem, N. J., March
28, 1839.”

In the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review for January,
1832, pp. 96-104, Mr. Ware also contributed a valuable article
entitled, “The Christmas Conference of 1784.1 °™

7. William Watters, one
This first American itinerant published a volume entitled:

A Short Account of the Christian Experience and Ministerial
Labors of William Watters. Drawn up by Himself. Alex-
andria;—Printed by 8. Snowden.

The title-page bears no date, but the preface is dated, “ Fair-
fax, May 14, 1806.”

8. Richard Whatcoat.

If the Journal of Bishop Whatcoat has been separately pub-
lished, we have seen no notice of it; but it is freely used in the
Memoirs by Phoebus noticed above. There is one Life of
Whatcoat, which contains original materials (e. g., a copy of
John Wesley’s certificate of Whatcoat’s ordination to the elder-
ship, pp. 43, 44), entitled:

The Life of Rev. Richard Whatcoat, one of the Bishops of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. By Benjamin St. James Fry.
Edited by Daniel P. Kidder. New York: Published by Lane
& Scott, For the Sunday-school Union of the Methodist

1There is also a letter of Ware’s, December, 1828, published in Defense
of Truth, Baltimore, 1829, and quoted by some of the historians and biogra-
phers.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. i119

 

Episcopal Church, 200 Mulberry Street. Joseph Longking,
Printer. 1852.

In our preliminary sketch, contained in the last chapter,
it was said that Ezekiel Cooper and Jesse Lee, though not
members of the Christmas Conference, were, for reasons as-
signed, entitled to be recognized among the primitive sources
for the history of the Conference. With a copy of the title-
pages of their works, this somewhat hurried catalogue of the
Private Contemporary Sources of the History of the Christmas
Conference will accordingly close.

9. Ezekiel Cooper.

The Substance of a Funeral Discourse, Delivered at the Re-
quest of the Annual Conference, on Tuesday, the 23d of
April, 1816, in St. George’s Church, Philadelphia: on the
Death of the Rev. Francis Asbury, Superintendent, or Senior
Bishop, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Now Enlarged.
By Ezekiel Cooper, Presbyter of the Methodist Episcopal
Church. Philadelphia: Published by Jonathan Pounder,
No. 134, North 4th street, opposite St. George’s Church.
1819.

10. Jesse Lee.

A Short History of the Methodists, In the United States of
America; Beginning in 1766, and Continued till 1809. To
Which is Prefixed a Brief Account of Their Rise in England,
in the Year 1729, etc. By Jesse Lee, Author of Lee’s Life,
and Chaplain to Congress. Baltimore, Printed by Magill
and Clime, Book Sellers, 224 Baltimore Street. 1810.

Postscript—Since the preceding was put in type, one of the volumes
ascribed to Garrettson has been received. The title is: “The Experience
and Travels of Mr. Freeborn Garrettson, Minister of the Methodist Episco-
pal Church in North-America. Philadelphia: Printed by Joseph Cruk-
shank, No. 91, High Street, and Sold by John Dickins, No. 182, in Race
Street, near Sixth Street. M.DCC.XCI.” The Journal, published in the
English Arminian Magazine, 1794, is almost certainly a reprint of the “ Ex-
perience and Travels.” A third work is attributed to Phoebus (Myles,
Chronological History, ed. 1813, p. 164) entitled, “An Apology for the Right of
Ordination, in the Evangelical Church of America, called Methodists,” pub-
lished in 1804. Myles quotes extensively from it, and has been much followed.
CHAPTER XII.
Tar GENESIS OF THE GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES.
IV. Tue Historica, DEVELOPMENT,

So far in our attempt at an objective and historical account of
the Christmas Conference, we have considered (1) its origin;
(2) its organization, membership, and minutes; and (3) the
sources for its history. Recognizing the results of these pri-
mary inquiries—which exact students will do well to review in
this connection—as solid historical ground beneath our feet, we
are now prepared (4) to undertake a similar investigation of
the character and enactments of the Christmas Conference so
far as they affect or determine our present theme, namely, the
genesis of the General and Annual Conferences of Episcopal
Methodism.

The Christmas Conference lodged the government of the
Church which it had just organized in a body designated sim-
ply “the Conference”; and on the title-page of its own Min-
utes, published by one of its presidents immediately on its ad-
. journment, was itself designated with equal simplicity “a Con-
ference.” A body so designated had been the only governing
assembly known in English or American Methodism up to this
time. The Christmas Conference organized “an Episcopal
Church under the direction of Superintendents, Elders, Dea-
cons, and Helpers” (Ques. 3). But “no person shall be or-
dained a Superintendent, Elder, or Deacon, without the consent
of a majority of the Conference” (Ques. 26, italics ours); the
Superintendent is amenable for his conduct “to the Conference:
who have power to expel him for improper conduct, if they see
it necessary” (Ques. 27); and if a superintendent “ceases from
traveling without the consent of the Conference, he shall not
thereafter exercise any ministerial function whatsoever in our

Te 28). Moreover, if elders or deacons cease
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 121

from traveling, “unless they have the permission of the Confer-
ence declared under the hand of a Superintendent, they are on
no account to exercise any of the peculiar functions of those
offices among us” (Ques. 35). These quotations will suttice to
show that “the Conference,” in which the Christmas assembly
lodged the government of the Church, had supreme and final
electoral and disciplinary authority over all the officers and
agents, great and small—superintendents, elders, or deacons—
who administered the affairs of the newly organized Methodist
Episcopal Church. :

The legislative authority of “the Conference” was equal to its
electoral and disciplinary powers. There was no other body to
legislate. It is true that there is no explicit-deposit or defini-
tion of legislative powers confided to “the Conference” to be
found in the proceedings of the Christmas Conference. For
this very reason the Christmas Conference, though an organiz-
ing convention, since it created the Methodist Episcopal Church,
was not a constitutional convention, since it extended no unre-
pealable enactments of its own over the authority of the supreme
governmental body which it constituted. The legislative activ-
ity of “the Conference,” though exercised at great inconvenience
and with some degree of irregularity, owing to circumstances
not necessary now to be considered, is witnessed by the issue of
annual Disciplines from 1786 to 1791, inclusive; or, from the
adjournment of the Christmas Conference—which in its full
consciousness of its organizing function and of its coming to-
gether under the extraordinary call of the preachers at Barratt’s,
has left no trace that it even dreamed of perpetuating its own
powers, or of the appointment of a “General Conference” as
its “successor”’—to the meeting of the General Conference of
1792, whieh met, not by virtue of any act or authority of the
Christmas Conference, but on the call of “the Conference” (or
Conferences, since “the Conference” was then meeting in sev-
eral sections) to which the organizing convention had commit-
ted the government of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

All of these six Disciplines from 1786 to 1791 (all of them, in-
cluding 1787, in the original) lie before us. It would be inter-
esting but tedious to trace through them all the legislation of
“the Conference” in the yearly meetings. We shall have to be
content with two or three summary and typical examples.
122 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

At the first sessions of the three sections in which “the Con-
ference”—still so designated in the Discipline of 1786, in all
the passages corresponding to those quoted above from the first:
Discipline—met in 1785 the enactments of the Christmas Con-
ference on the subject of slavery contained in Question 42, a
very voluminous and precise piece of work, were repealed. Not
only was Question 42 omitted, but Questions 23, 53, 63 (on the
trial of preachers), and 64 were expunged, while some of the
additions will possibly be found quite as significant as the omis-
sions. Confining attention to the omission of Question 42, we
cannot suppose that its omission was due to the exercise of any
revisionary authority in England, where the Discipline of 1786.
was published, for Dr. Coke expressly informs us (Journal,
June 1, 1785) that “we thought it prudent to suspend the min-
ute concerning slavery for one year.” (So also Minutes, ed.
1795, p. 83.) This occurs in Coke’s account of the final Con-
ference session of the year held at Baltimore which, as we
know from other sources, had authority to take final action.
Again: in 1789 and 1790 Asbury carried through all the ses-
sions of those years, with great difficulty and anxiety, the meas-
ures relative to the creation and empowering of the “Council”!
as a central, though not supreme, organ of administration and
government—a temporary expedient which did not long post-
pone the creation of the General Conference. Once more: the
General Conference of 1792, which it is now beginning to be
evident we shall be compelled to call the Jirst, was called to-
gether by the authority of these same yearly assem blies,? which,
as we have seen, also used their sovereign legislative powers in
the creation of the Council and the definition of its powers.

Finally: we may take the testimony of Jesse Lee as to the na-
ture and extent of the changes effected by legislation between
the adjournment of the Christmas Conference and the assem-
bling of the General Conference in 1792. Lee says:

It was eight years from the Christmas conference, where we became a
regular Church, to this general conference. In which time our form of dis-
cipline had been changed, and altered in so many particulars; and the busi-
ness of the council had thrown the connection into such confusion, that we

1For 1789 see Lee’s History,
which establish this for 1790 wil
tutional History, pp. 248, 249.

2 Minutes of 1792 (ed. 1795), p. 178

p. 149. The numerous references to Asbury’s Journal
1 be found conveniently summarized in Tigert’s Consti-
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 123

thought proper at this conference to take under consideration the greater
part of the form of Discipline, and either abolish, establish, or change the
rules, so that we might all approve of, or be reconciled to, whatever might

be found in the discipline.

From this survey, it is now abundantly evident that the gov-
ernment of the Church from 1784 to 1792 was not by “General”
Conferences at all. No suggestion of any such body occurs any-
where in the enactments of the Christmas Conference, and no.
hint that it took to itself any such character. The Christmas
Conference differed from all General Conferences from 1792 to
1894 in this capital respect—decisive of its exclusion from the
category of General Conferences, if no other reason existed—
that its legislative enactments did not continue inviolate and
inviolable until the meeting of a successor (so called), the Gen-
eral Conference of 1792. The facts of our history are, as will
be shown in detail in the sequel, that General and Annual Con-
ferences are complementary: each implies the other, and nei-
ther, in the sense of the Discipline, exists without the other.
The body in which were lodged, and which actually exercised,
the supreme governmental powers of the Methodist Episcopal
Church—electoral, disciplinary, legislative—between 1785 and
1792 was neither a General nor an Annual Conference. It was
a yearly assembly or assemblies which combined the functions
of both. General and Annual Conferences, in the sense of the
Discipline from 1792 to the present, had no existence prior to
that date. The functions of the two—General and Annual—
have been differentiated and defined out of the undivided powers
of a primitive body known as “the Conference,” recognized and
set up—constituted if one please, since many powers necessary
to its supremacy were added, previously unknown in American
Methodism—by the Christmas Conference at the time and in the
act of organizing the Church. This division and differentiation
was brought about, partly by the progress of events and the
urgent necessities of the growing Church between 1784 and
1792—much of which we have clearly traced in other pages—
and partly by legislation which first took decisive form in 1792,
as we shall presently see, and has been continued on the main
lines then marked out to the present day. No such differentia-
tion, division, and definition of powers is to be found anywhere

 

1Short History of the Methodists, pp. 192, 193.
124 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

‘in the law book of the Church—the Disciplines from 1784 to
1791 inclusive—until the Discipline of 1792 is reached. In the
interval between 1784 and 1792 the yearly Conferences exercised
freely all the powers afterwards confined to General Conferences,
issuing a Discipline annually, engaging in the election of super-
intendents—as when the Conference of 1787 put its veto upon
Wesley’s nomination of Whatcoat and Garrettson to the super-
intendency—and directing all the officers and operations of the
‘Church. Indeed, the Conference of 1787 exercised the highest
conceivable act of sovereignty when it expunged from the
Discipline the only enactment which could be regarded as a
limitation upon its sovereignty which the Christmas Confer-
ence had placed in that book—namely, the resolution of sub-
mission to Mr. Wesley. The Christmas Conference made the
elected superintendent amenable “to the Conference” (Ques-
tion 27, cited above). The Minutes of 1795—back of which
date we cannot with certainty carry the language, as we have
previously seen—declare this officer “amenable to the body of
ministers and preachers.” So be it. “The body of ministers
and preachers” is “the Conference”; and “the Conference” is
“the body of ministers and preachers,” organized not as a
“General” Conference, not as an “Annual” Conference—these
are terms of legal determination ata later date, which have no
meaning or application here—but simply and only as “the Con-
ference.” Whether “the Conference,” “the body of ministers
and preachers,” assembled in one place or many, was a mere ac-
cident in the legislative exercise of its sovereignty, which did
not in any wise affect its character or validity, so a majority of
“the body” was secured. The details of this period of our
government will be presently considered so far as our space will
allow, but must not now interrupt our study of the principles
involved. To speak of the Christmas Conference as a General
Conference—using the language in the sense of the Discipline
from 1792 to the present, the only sense in which it has any
legal significance—and thus inevitably to imply that the au-
thority of its legislation extended unimpaired over the whole in-
terval from 1784 to 1792, is to falsify the history of the Church
in many particulars: (1) it ignores the series of annual Disci-
plines, with their multiplied changes, issued during this inter-
val; (2) it implies that the Christmas Conference was an organ
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 125.

 

in and for the government of the Church, which it never was,.
since government implies permanency, and the Christmas Con-
ference—as appears from its call, its acts, and its dissolution—
was an organ, not for government, but for organization; (3) it.
unhistorically cancels the government of the Church by yearly
assemblies which had as full sovereignty as belonged to the
General Conferences from 1792 to 1808 inclusive, and to the
Christmas Conference itself, since the Conference of 1787 can-
celed the only enactment of the Christmas Conference which
could be regarded as a prohibitory or constitutional limitation
of its own sovereignty—the resolution (Question 2) of obedience-
to the commands of Mr. Wesley in matters of church govern-
ment; (4) it fails to appreciate the complementary character
and necessary coexistence of General and Annual Conferences,
and gives no recognition to the decisive movement and moment
in the history of the Church which brought both species of Con--
ferences simultaneously into legal and disciplinary existence and
definition in 1792.

These positions are simply historical, not controversial.
They are susceptible of much more abundant corroboration
than we have space to give them here.! The relative and deci-
sive facts cannot be denied, nor their significance repudiated.
The controversies of later years have absolutely no proper place
in the construction of this history, which must be critically
drawn directly and purely from the sources enumerated in
preceding papers: to consider these controversies is a violent
infringement of universally accepted canons of historical meth-
od and a certain index of more or less vicious results.

The truth of the foregoing conclusions may become further
evident from a slightly variant angle of vision. The question,
Was the Christmas Conference of 1784 a General Conference?
is identical with the question, Is 1784 the date of the beginning
of General Conference government in the Methodist Episcopal
Church? For, if the Conference of 1784 was a General Confer-
ence—the first—it follows as the night the day that the General
Conference of 1792—the second—was its successor. And if

 

1The writer indulges the hope that he may soon command the leisure to
incorporate these fuller expositions in a completely revised edition of his
Constitutional History, fully sustaining the main positions of that work, orig-
inally worked out from the sources then accessible,
128 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

1792 was the successor of 1784, then the legislative—nay, the
sovereign—authority of the Conference of 1784 covered the in-
tervening period until the meeting of its successor as a sovereign
in 1792, and was directly transmitted, whole and entire, to that
sovereign successor, without fracture, change, or diminution, by
any intervening sovereign; just as the authority of 1792 covered
the intervening period and was so transmitted to 1796, and so in
general throughout the series of intervals between General Con-
ferences. The annual Disciplines from 1785 to 1792 and other
sources tell plainly the story of the electoral and legislative
acts of that other sovereign—the yearly Conferences, completely
adequate to the government of the Church without the aid of a
General Conference. If it be said that the yearly Conferences
governed by virtue of a charter conferred by the Christmas Con-
ference, so that the sovereignty of the Conference of 1784 really
extended to the meeting of its successor as a sovereign, the
‘General Conference of 1792, the answer is, in general, that such
a doctrine clothes the Christmas Conference with the powers of
a constitutional convention—a position which we repudiate as
utterly unhistorical—and, in particular, that every element of
such an alleged charter was alterable by the chartered body,
which entirely deprives the legislation of the Christmas Confer-
ence of the nature or force of a charter or constitution; .and,
finally, that the yearly Conference of 1787 repealed the only act
of the Christmas Conference that could be construed as a con-
stitutional limitation on the sovereignty of “the Conference ’—
namely, the resolution that “during the life of the Rev. Mr.
Wesley, we acknowledge ourselves his sons in the gospel, ready
in matters belonging to church-government to obey his commands.”
(Italics ours.) The question is not as to the full powers of the
Christmas Conference during the period of its session—which,
so far as we know, has never been disputed——-but as to the ex-
tension of its enactments over the period until the meeting of
its alleged successor. On the first point, the powers of the
Christmas Conference were as great and unlimited as the pow-
ers of the General Conferences from 1792 to 1808; though the
truth of history requires us to add the very material statement
that in this respect the yearly Conferences from 1785 to 1791
were the peers of the Christmas Conference and of the succeed-
ing General Conferences. Thus, on the second point, it is un-
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 127

 

deniable that the Christmas Conference differed in toto from all
General Conferences. Hence, it appears once more that it was
not a General Conference, for the simple reason that the period
from 1785 to 1792 was a period of the government of the Church,
not by the Christmas Conference, but by the yearly assemblies.
Neither by those who called it, nor by those who composed it,
was the Christmas Conference designed as an organ of govern-
ment. It was called together simply and only as an organizing
body. As a mass meeting designed to include all the American
itinerants, who had been meeting in Conference since 1773,
its powers were in the nature of the case unlimited. But
all these powers expired with its adjournment—which was
indeed its dissolution—since it committed the whole govern-
ment of the Church, without charter or constitution, to the body
described as “the Conference.” So far are we from occupying
the position ascribed to Mr. Choate, that the Christmas Con-
ference was a constitutional convention, constructing an organi-
zation, or system of government, which the General Conferences
could not alter or modify, that in our view a leading and de-

 

1T say “ascribed,” relving upon the accuracy of the quotations made in
a recently published volume, which it was my editorial duty to read both in
MS. and in proof. For, though I have had for many years several copies of
the work known as “The Methodist Church Property Case” in my:posses-
sion, I have not as yet, for reasons assigned in the text, felt it my duty to
read it. The reasonings of litigants in courts of law are not used by histo-
rians for the construction of history of more than half a century before; on
the contrary, that history, drawn objectively and uncontroversially from its
proper contemporary sources, is to be brought forward as the only final and
competent judge to determine the merits of controversies whether in courts
or elsewhere. I shall not,at present read Mr. Choate’s speech, unless a
further examination of criticisms of my views in the volume referred
to should oblige me to do so. I desire to add that I have purposely
avoided reading controversial matter on the Christmas Conference, except
such as has necessarily come under my eye editorially, having no intention
of engaging in controversy which might even unconsciously affect my his-
torical work, and believing that I had at my command better sources for
the positive construction of history, which has been my only aim. The
positions in the Constitutional History were worked out without reference
to differences of opinion which I now know to exist, and were taken and pub-
lished before they were developed. After going over again and again the his-
torical foundations upon which the main conclusions of that book rest, I stand
by them; though I trust that a new edition may soon afford me opportunity
to correct errors of detail which my further studies have revealed.
128 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

cisive reason for denying to the Christmas Conference the title
of a General Conference is that its enactments were freely modi-
fied by the yearly Conferences. So far was its sovereignty from
being constitutionally projected over General Conferences and
the entire Church until 1844 and the present day, that the true
state of the case is that its authority was not so much as pro-
jected over the yearly Conferences of 1785 to 1791 until the
meeting of its so-called successor. And here for the present
may be dismissed this aspect of the case.

We are now in a position to inquire on what grounds, and in
what sense, the Christmas Conference may properiy be described
as a convention; though it called itself neither a convention nor
a General Conference, one of its presidents, on publishing its
Minutes, styling it simply “a Conference,” which continued to
be its designation on the title-page of the Disciplines down to
1792, when, for the first time in the history of the Church, its
law book bore on its face the notice that it was “revised and
approved” by a body styled “the General Conference,” whose
functions, likewise for the first time, were defined and described
in the law book itself. We trust that we do not lack the breadth
and the fairness to appreciate the position of those who are
able to reach a short, simple, and easy solution of this prob-
lem. ,The Christmas Conference exercised the supreme powers
of, and was identical in membership with, the General Coufer-
ence of 1792, and, though there were some subsequent limita-
tions of membership, this equality practically continues through
all the General Conferences down to 1808. Moreover, it is not
unusual to designate the General Conferences from 1792 to
1808 as conventions, or as General Conferences with “conven-
tional” powers, since there was no limitation upon the authority
of these bodies. In particular, the General Conference of 1808,
which created the delegated General Conference, issued its
charter of perpetuity to the episcopacy as against alteration or
abolition by the delegated body, and ordained the “ constitution,”
is often called a “convention.” Bishop Soule, the author of the
constitution, so designated it in a speech before the General Con-
ference of 1844. There were, it is argued, five of these conven-
tions, with powers as great as those of the Christmas Conference,
and it is mere strife about words whether we call the Christ-
mas Conference a convention with General Conference powers,
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 129

or the Conferences of 1792-1808 General Conferences with con-
ventional powers. These six bodies were thus identical in their
supreme powers, and the difference between the Conference of
1784 and the other five is the difference between tweedledum and
tweedledee. Such seems to be the inevitable conclusion, and we
do not wonder that this short and easy solution by its very sim-
plicity commends itself to the minds of many as summing up
the essentials of the problem and ending the questions at issue.
But the factors which enter into the reconstruction of an his-
torical picture, or the revivification of an historical past, are
often very complex, and more careful inquirers might regard
this simplicity, not as raising a presumption of truth, but, con-
trariwise, as suggesting a suspicion of omission or error. If
the problem is so simple, it is difficult to see how any difference
of view could have arisen.

Let us indulge a preliminary examination of this simple so-
lution. The first thing that must strike even a casual observer
is that the Conference of 1784 in this series of six is an isolated
phenomenon. The five General Conferences of 1792-1808 are
bound together in a continuous governmental structure from
which the Conference of 1784 is excluded. The legal links of
unbroken sovereignty which stretch from any one of these five
to its successor, and bind them all in one organic whole, do not
stretch from 1784 to 1792, and thus include the Christmas Con-
ference in that organized whole of settled and unbroken General
Conference supremacy or sovereignty. It is not that the period
from 1784 to 1792 is eight years instead of four. The term
“ Quadrennial,” so far as it carries only a notion of time, exclu-
sive of that of permanency and succession, is a mere accident of
the situation. If the Christmas Conference had governed the
Church from 1784 to 1792, as the General Conference of 1792
governed it from 1792 to 1796, there might be small question as
to its admission to the category of General Conferences. But
an isolated General Conference is a contradiction in terms.

Thus we are brought around in sight of the fact that while
the generalization upon which the “simple solution” is found-
ed is the truth, it is only half the truth, omitting a very essen-
tial element. It is undoubted that all six of the Conferences
under consideration were sovereigns, but between the first and
second there stretched a line of eight other sovereigns, just as

9
130 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

royal as the Christmas Conference before them and as the five
General Conferences after them. In 1792 this other sovereign
became extinct, and obtruded no royal reversals and vetoes upon
the Quadrennial sovereigns from 1792 to 1808. Let us here re-
mind ourselves that it was not that yearly Conferences ruled
in a limited, even if necessarily inconvenient, fashion from
1784 to 1792; but that, as we have seen, the Christmas Confer-
ence committed to “the Conference” the government of the
Church; that “the Conference” repeatedly annulled the acts of
the Christmas Conference; that in 1787 it abrogated the reso-
lution of submission to Mr. Wesley, and rejected his nominees
for the superintendency, thus asserting the autonomy of the
American Methodist Episcopal Church; that in 1789 and 1790
it created and empowered the “Council” as a central organ of
general administration and government; and that in 1792 it
called the General Conference of 1792 together, thus supersed-
ing and abolishing the Council, which had proved a failure as
an organ of administration. For, says Snethen, “the instant
a General Conference was acceded to, the Council was super-
seded.”

We may now recall the results of our examination into the
anterior connections—the origin—of the Christmas Conference,
since its posterior connections with the government of the Church
are sufficiently evident. But these results will best pass under
review in connection with a formal enumeration and presenta-
tion of the grounds on which the Christmas Conference may
properly be styled a convention—with or without the prefix
“extraordinary,” which certainly has an eminently fit descrip-
tive use in this connection, and is not wholly devoid of legal or
governmental significance. These grounds are four, of which
the third is chief and might be sufficient without the others:

(1) Its call—extraordinary, if one please;

(2) Its self-derived and self-sufficient powers, as an intended
mass meeting of “all the traveling preachers on the continent”;

(3) Its creation of the Methodist Episcopal Church;

(4) Its dissolution when this creative work was done.

1. The Extraordinary Call.—The reader will kindly review in
this connection the results of our inquiries in Chapter VIII
Fortunately the state of the evidence is such as to enable us to
mark the precise moments of the conception and birth of the
 

GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 181

 

Christmas Conference. This positive evidence of the origin of
the body, establishing a definite beginning and history, of itself
excludes mere theories and hypotheses for which proof ad rem
is lacking. We know that when Dr. Coke arrived in New York,
Mr. Dickins, so far from receiving the impression from the
doctor’s communications that Mr. Wesley designed the meeting
of a Conference to pass on his plan, pressed Coke “earnestly
to make it public, because, as he most justly argued, Mr. Wes-
ley had determined the point.” We know that at Philadelphia
Dr. Coke did open “to the society our new plan of church-gov-
ernment.” We know that in his circular letter Mr. Wesley de-
cisively and definitively said, “I have accordingly appointed Dr.
Coke and Mr. Francis Asbury to be joint Superintendents over
our brethren in North America.” We know that when this ap-
pointment was communicated to Asbury, who was then holding
the office of general assistant by Conference election, with Mr.
Wesley’s confirmation thereof, his “answer then was, if the
preachers unanimously choose me, I shall not act in the ca-
pacity I have hitherto done by Mr. Wesley’s appointment,” de-
clining office on the terms tendered. We know that Asbury
had, in expectation of Dr. Coke and his embassy, “called to-
gether [at Barratt’s] a considerable number of the preachers to
form a council,” and had informed Mr. Wesley’s delegate that
“if they [the aforesaid preachers] were of opinion that it would
be expedient immediately to call a conference, it should be done.”
(Italics ours.) We know that these preachers, about fifteen in
number, “were accordingly called, and, after debate, were unan-
imously of opinion that it would be best immediately to call a
conference of all the traveling preachers on the continent,” and
that the topic before these preachers when they made this call
was “the design of organizing the Methodists into an Independ-
ent Episcopal Church.” (Italics ours.)

This is the positive, precise, essentially complete account of the
actual historical inception of the Christmas Conference, derived
exclusively from the absolutely contemporary witness of Dr. Coke
and Mr. Asbury. There is nowhere a trace of evidence that the
idea of the meeting of such a body had entered any human brain
before it took shape in that of Asbury. To assert for it any
other origin in the face of such evidence is impossible without
disregard of the simplest canons of historical testimony.
1382 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

Undoubtedly Mr. Wesley gave the acts of the Christmas Con-
ference his full and free approval when the Minutes of the body
were laid before him by Dr. Coke on his return to London in
the following year. So far as his concurrence and indorsement
were necessary to the finality and legitimacy of the enactments
of the Christmas Conference, the body had them to the fullest
extent, and any supposititious shadow of illegitimacy regarded
as attaching to the birth of American Methodism is entirely re-
moved thereby. This was an easy matter for Mr. Wesley, since
the Christmas Conference followed his directions as to the ordi-
nations, etc. But Mr. Wesley’s unqualified indorsement after the
event is quite a different thing from his positive inclusion before
the event, of the Conference as a part of his plan for the organi-
zation or government of the Church. No pertinent evidence of
this positive inclusion, so far as we know, has ever been ad-
duced, nor, so far as our reading extends in the proper quarters
for its discovery if it exists, is adducible. Indeed, the positive
evidence we have of the actual call of the body seems once for
all to exclude the possibility of evidence tracing the body to an-
other and distinct origin.

It has been attempted to find evidence of Mr. Wesley’s pro-
vision for the Christmas Conference in the concluding sentences
of his circular letter. In order to carry the origination of the
body back from Mr. Asbury and the preachers at Barratt’s to
Mr. Wesley, however, not only is it necessary to set aside the
direct and conclusive evidence already adduced—which a mere
conjecture or presumption would not warrant us in doing—but,
considering the circular letter alone, we should have to show,
not simply that the action at Barratt’s and at Baltimore was
not in contradiction of the circular letter, but that it was de-
ducible from it. Logicians are familiar with the distinction
between a proposition which is deducible from another, and a
proposition which, while it does not contradict, cannot be in-
ferred from another.1 Now we have no interest in denying
that the action at Barratt’s and Baltimore did not contradict
Mr. Wesley’s letter, since he fully approved what was done im-
mediately afterwards; but it is certain that the action taken by
the Council at Barratt’s was not suggested by, and is not dedu-
cible from, Mr. Wesley’s letter.

 

1Compare a problem set in Tigert’s Logic, p. 190.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 133

 

Let us analyze the letter. When properly printed it is com-
posed of six numbered paragraphs. Its general topic, it will
become evident, is a defense of Mr. Wesley’s course in ordain-
ing a superintendent and elders for America. The contents of
the paragraphs may be summarized as follows:

(1) The providential separation of the provinces of North
America from the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the
mother-country is pointed out, and Mr. Wesley’s willingness to
give desired advice in this peculiar situation indicated;

(2) Mr. Wesley’s long-cherished conviction that bishops and
presbyters have the same right to ordain is stated; and his re-
fusal hitherto to exercise his right in England explained by his
determination not to violate the established order of the national
Church;

(3) The difference between England and North America is
pointed out: since in America there are no bishops having
jurisdiction, and there is scant provision for the adminis-
tration of the sacraments, Mr. Wesley declares his scruples
at an end, and conceives himself at full liberty to ordain for
this field;

(4) He accordingly prepares and advises the use of a liturgy and
appoints Dr. Coke and Mr. Asbury to be joint superintendents, and
Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey to act as elders; so far as
appears, these appointments being definitive—Coke, Whatcoat,
and Vasey having been ordained and furnished with parchments;

(5) Mr. Wesley expresses his willingness to embrace any
more rational and scriptural way, if pointed out, of providing
pastors for these poor sheep of the wilderness; and

(6) It seems to him in conclusion that a way has been sug-
gested which some might consider more regular and rational,
and he proceeds to give his reasons why he did not adopt it

(we quote the paragraph in full):

(6) It has indeed been proposed, to desire the English Bishops, to ordain
part of our preachers for America. But to this I object, 1. I desired the
Bishop of London, to ordain only one; but could not prevail: 2. If they
consented, we know the slowness of their proceedings; but the matter ad-
mits of no delay. 3. If they would ordain them now, they would likewise
expect to govern them. And how grievously would this intangle us? 4. As
our American brethren are now totally disentangled both from the State, and
trom the English Hierarchy, we dare not intangle them again, either with
the one or the other. They are now at full liberty, simply to follow the
134 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

scriptures and the primitive church. And we judge it best that they should
stand fast in that liberty, wherewith God has so strangely made them free.

It is clearly evident that the theme of this letter from begin-
ning to end is the justification of the ordinations for America,
and the clear and rightful separation of the American Metho-
dists from the English Establishment, since they were no longer
subjects of the English state. This was the liberty wherewith
God had so strangely made them free, and wherein they were to
stand fast. In particular, the sixth paragraph states four rea-
sons for declining to ask ordination of the English bishops for
the American preachers, and the last two sentences are part of
that paragraph and of the fourth reason.? We reach therefore
our former conclusion, in Chapter VIIL., that it is impossible to
deduce authority for the Christmas Conference from the circu-
lar letter, and that all that can be said is that the letter contains
no prohibition from Mr. Wesley of such a gathering. We are
not sure, however, but that we have been logically too liberal in
allowing that while authority for the Christmas Conference is
not deducible from the circular letter, the action at Baltimore
is not contradictory of that document. For to say of two propo-
sitions even that they are not contradictory is to imply that
they have the same matter; but in this case there is no conner-
tion between the subject of the circular letter—the American
ordinations—and the organization of a Conference—General or
other—for the government of the American Church. There is
simply no point of contact or relation between the circular let-
ter and the Christmas Conference.

We have elsewhere said that Mr. Asbury interposed the Con-
ference as a barrier betweer himself and the authority of Mr.
Wesley. That he did this, and that he did it without wicked
rebellion, and without the desire or intention of prostituting
power for personal ends, but with wise and far-sighted states-

 

1This version is taken literally, following spelling, punctuation, capitali-
zation, italics, from a printed copy of the circular letter inserted in an orig-
inal and complete copy of the Sunday Service and Discipline of 1784, as issued
by Dr. Coke in 1785.

2TIn the Minutes of 1813, and in the letter as often printed, there is a dash
after the period following the word “other,” separating the last two sen-
tences as if they were a general conclusion to the letter. But this punctua-
tion is incorrect: it occurs neither in the Minutes of 1795, nor in the printed
copy inserted in the original Discipline of 1784, from which I have quoted.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 135

manship, ought to be evident, and is abundantly evident, from
the utterances of Mr. Asbury himself. As we have seen, he was
“shocked” when informed of the intentions of Coke, Whatcoat,
and Vasey in coming to America. His answer then was a point-
blank refusal to act as joint superintendent by Mr. Wesley’s
appointment. The unanimous choice of the preachers could
alone induce Asbury to accept office, and this independence of
his led immediately and necessarily to the calling of the Con-
ference. Again: of the passage of the minute of submission to
Mr. Wesley at the Conference itself, he declared in 1796: “I
never approved of that binding minute. I did not think it
practical expediency to obey Mr. Wesley, at three thousand
miles distance, in all matters relative to church government.”
But Mr. Wesley did think it “practical expediency,” and just
here the issue was joined between him and Mr. Asbury, who
adds the oft-quoted words with regard to the binding minute,
“T was mute and modest when it passed, and J was mute when
it was expunged.” One final utterance of Mr. Asbury’s will put
in a clear light why he refused office on Mz. Wesley’s appoint-
ment; why he demanded unanimous election by the preachers,
that he might interpose their authority between himself and
the great man over the sea; why he was mute and modest at the
passage and at the repeal of the minute of submission. In his
letter to the Rey. Joseph Benson in 1816, a few months before
his (Asbury’s) death, Mr. Asbury says:

T can truly say for one, that the greatest affliction and sorrow of my life
was that our dear father [Mr. Wesley], from the time of the Revolution to
his death, grew more and more jealous of myself and the whole American
Connection; that it appeared we had lost his confidence almost entirely.
But he rigidly contended for a special and independent right of governing
the chief minister or ministers of our order, which, in our judgment, went
not only to put him out of office, but to remove him from the Continent to
elsewhere, that our father saw fit; and that, notwithstanding our constitu-
tion and the right of electing every Church-officer, and more especially our
Superintendent, yet we are told, “Not till after the death of Mr. Wesley”
our constitution could have its full operation. For many years before this
time we lived in peace, and trusted in the confidence and friendship of each
other. But after the Revolution, we were called upon to give a printed ob-
ligation, which here follows, and which could not be dispensed with—it
must be: “During the life of the Rev. Mr. Wesley, we acknowledge our-
selves his sons in the gospel; ready, in matters belonging to Church-gov-
ernment, to obey his commands; and we do engage, after his death, to do
every thing that we judge consistent with the cause of religion in America
136 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

and the political interest of the States, to preserve and promote our union
with the Methodists in Europe.”

Thus we conclude that because the Christmas Conference was
a called body, unexpectedly intercalated between the regular
sessions of the American Conference for 1784 and 1785; be-
cause it was not part of Mr. Wesley’s “plan” for the organiza-
tion or government of the Church; because it was not called by
Dr. Coke or Mr. Asbury, or both of them together, acting inde-
pendently and officially; because it was called by a Council of
preachers, brought together by Asbury to “form a council” at.
Barratt’s Chapel, Delaware, November 14, 1784, Asbury initiat-
ing and Coke concurring—this Council “after debate” being
unanimously of opinion that it would be best immediately to
call a “conference of all the traveling preachers on the conti-
nent”; because the purpose of calling the Conference was to
have it pass on “the design of organizing the Methodists into
an Independent Episcopal Church,” 7. ¢., to take action on “ Mr.
Wesley’s plan,” involving a decision particularly upon the ap-
pointment and ordination of superintendents—the Conference
deciding whether Mr. Wesley’s appointment and ordination of
Dr. Coke was complete and final in itself, or whether it needed
their consent and confirmation before he could act as a joint
superintendent among them, and Mr. Asbury refusing ordina-
tion as Mr. Wesley’s appointee without the unanimous election
of the preachers; because of all these circumstances of its ori-
gin and call—its extraordinary call—differentiating it from any
General Conference that ever met, we say the Christmas Con-
ference is properly called a convention—an “extraordinary”
convention, if one prefers it.

2. It is properly called a convention because it was a self-cre-
ated body, with self-derived and self-sufficient authority. This
point need not long detain us. The authority of the Christmas
Conference did not flow to it from Mr. Wesley, from the Ameri-
can Conference, from Dr. Coke or Mr. Asbury, or both of them,
nor from the Council at Barratt’s, nor from any constituency
of laity behind it. It was a mass meeting of all the American
itinerants, 7. ¢., of all those who had exercised the functions of
government or legislation over the Methodist Societies of the
continent, who freely met on the call of some of their own num-
ber, specially convened as a Council, Mr. Asbury initiating and
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 187

Dr. Coke approving. Of course it did not derive its powers
from this Council, a lesser body than itself, though it assembled
on the call of the preachers who had come together at the Quar-
terly Meeting at Barratt’s. As a mass convention intended to
embrace all the itinerants, its powers were self-derived and selt-
sufficient.

The self-derivation and self-sufficiency of the powers of the
self-created body are evident, also, from the nature of the case,
as well as from the circumstances of its historical origin with
which we are now so familiar. The American preachers assem-
bled “to constitute themselves into an Episcopal Church”; the
change suggested by Mr. Wesley “ could not take effect until
adopted by us,” says William Watters, who was present, “which
was done in a deliberate, formal manner, at a conference called
for that purpose”; they were, as distinct from Mr. Wesley, to
satisfy themselves of the validity of Dr. Coke’s episcopal ordina-
tion, and confirm or reject it, although the act, so far as Mr. Wes-
ley was concerned, was complete and final; in particular, the
preachers were called upon to give Mr. Asbury a “unanimous
election” to the joint superintendency, as a conditio sine qua non
of his ordination, he flatly refusing to accept ordination from
Dr. Coke by Mr. Wesley’s sole appointment. Now, such a body,
self-created and appealed to, with these ends in view, recognized
by Mr. Asbury as giving him a title to office which Mr. Wesley
could not give, and affording him protection in office against
Mr. Wesley himself, was necessarily a codrdinate, independent,
and self-sufficient source of power. For these reasons, in the
second place, the Christmas Conference is properly called a
convention.

3. In the third place, the Christmas Conference is properly called
a@ convention—an organizing convention—because it created the
Methodist Episcopal Church. In an unshared and unique sense,
the Christmas Conference, thus called and constituted, created
the Methodist Episcopal Church. When the Conference met,
this Church did. not exist: when it adjourned, episcopacy and
the other orders of the ministry, sacraments, liturgy, and Disci-
pline, had all been secured and provided. It thus stands exte-
rior to the Church as an instrument of organization, and not
within it as an organ of government. Neither those who called
it, nor those who composed it, designed it as an organ of gov-
138 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

ernment. Now, a General Conference, whether of the original,
unlimited order, or of the subsequent restricted and delegated
class, is the creature of the Church. The Methodist Episcopal
Church in due time called into existence such a body, unknown
in the previous history of Methodism, for its own government,
to meet the new conditions and exigencies of ecclesiastical regi-
men in America. But since the Christmas Conference was the
creator of the Methodist Episcopal Church, it could not have
been its creature. By this token we are directed at once to its
extraordinary and unique character as an organizing conven-
tion: to designate such an organizing or creative body a con-
vention is a correct use of language. It differs from every
General Conference in this capital respect: Every General Con-
ference is the creature of the Church; but the Church is the
creature of the Christmas Conference.

Turning once more to the Minutes of the Christmas Confer-
ence, as the primary official and contemporaneous source, the
outstanding and overshadowing fact, contained in this record,
subordinating or absorbing all others, is that the body trans-
formed the Methodist Societies in America into the Methodist
Episcopal Church.!. Asbury, for obvious reasons, is careful to
record that in the Christmas Conference the debates were free,
and all things were determined by a majority of votes.2 “We
will form ourselves into an Episcopal Church,” say the members
of the Christmas Conference, in the third answer of their offi-
cial Minutes, “under the direction of Superintendents, Elders,
Deacons, and Helpers, according to the Forms of Ordination

 

1T have before me a copy of the Large Minutes of 1780, entitled, “Min-
utes of Several Conversations between the Reverend Mr. John and Charles
Wesley, and Others. From the Year 1744, to the Year 1780. London: Printed
by J. Paramore, at the Foundry, Moorfields.” As far as I can ascertain, this
was the last edition of the Large Minutes published before the organization
of American Methodism into a Church. If so, it is the document used by
Coke and Asbury as the basis of their preparation of the Discipline adopted
by the Christmas Conference. Dr. Robert Emory, in his History of the
Discipline, starts off on the wrong foot, inasmuch as he compares the first
Discipline with the Large Minutes of 1789, printed in 1791, which seems to
have been his only copy. Lack of space forbids a detailed comparison in
the text above; but I hope to publish an exact comparison between the
original of the first Discipline and the Large Minutes of 1780, that our gov-
ernmental history may be placed upon the proper foundation,

2 Journal, i. 376.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 139

 

annexed to our Liturgy, and the Form of Discipline set forth in
these Minutes.” This answer (1) enumerates the grades of the
ministry of the new Church; (2) specifies its already printed
forms of ordination; (3) refers to its printed Liturgy, whose
contents have already been accurately enumerated in these
pages; and (4) styles “these Minutes” a “Form of Discipline.”
This primary official and contemporaneous record, let it be
noted, though supported by all the other sources, stands in its
own sufficiency, decisive of what was done. “Following the
counsel of Mr. John Wesley,” say the Minutes published in
1795, “who recommended the Episcopal mode of church gov-
ernment, we thought it best to become an Episcopal Church,”
etc. Thus the orders and sacraments provided by Mr. Wesley
were freely accepted by the Christmas Conference; the election
of one of the joint superintentendents appointed and already
ordained by Wesley (Dr. Coke), and the election and ordina-
tion of the other joint superintendent appointed by Wesley (Mr.
Asbury), with that of elders and deacons, followed; and the first
American “Episcopal Church” was organized, and began its al-
most unparalleled mission of continental conquest.

The exact method of this organization deserves notice. Inthe
American Societies there already existed two marks of a Chris-
tian Church, (1) congregations of faithful men, and (2) the
preaching of the pure word of God. Mr. Wesley designed to
add the other two, (3) orders, or an ordained ministry; and (4)
the sacraments instituted by our Lord, thus completing the or-
ganization of a Christian Church. But the bearers of these
orders and sacraments from Mr. Wesley were not accepted
without the consent of the Christmas Conference, called for
this purpose. The Americans, however, were in this situation.
By the final rejection of the Fluvanna action—proceeding to
the extent of the reordination of Fluvanna men—the American
Methodists had set aside self-originated presbyterial ordination
once for all. However rational and scriptural the Fluvanna
method, followed in principle by the British Conference in
1836, appears to us, it had been aborted and suppressed by the
American preachers. While the Christmas Conference, there-
fore, passed upon the validity of Mr. Wesley’s ordinations, and
elected Dr. Coke and Mr. Asbury to the joint superintendency,
the Americans, according to their own history and principles,
140 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

were shut up to the acceptance of the orders and sacraments
provided by Mr. Wesley—else they must continue without both.
If the question is asked, Did our episcopacy—or ministerial or-
ders generally—originate with Mr. Wesley or with the Christ-
mas Conference? the answer is, With both. Neither, in the
event, exercised power without the other. Wesley did appoint
both the joint superintendents, and ordain and commission one,
doubtless regarding his action as complete. But Mr. Asbury
and the Americans thought otherwise. Mr. Asbury refused
appointment and ordination without the election of the preach-
ers, and this led to Dr. Coke’s election as well as his own, the
Conference independently confirming Mr. Wesley’s acts. On
the other hand, the Conference freely elected, but had it de-
clined Mr. Wesley’s provision, the Americans, according to
their own principles, would have remained without orders and
sacraments. The elected superintendents were, of course, made
amenable to the Conference.

4, The Christmas Conference is properly styled a convention, and
not a General Conference, because when it adjourned it dissolved.
This point need not be elaborated. An isolated General Con-
ference, as we have seen, is an impossible conception in Metho-
dist Church government. The General Conference of 1792 was
in no sense the successor of the Christmas Conference. The
organizing convention committed the supreme government of the
Church to “the Conference,” which exercised sovereignty until
it called the General Conference into existence in 1792. When
the Christmas Conference adjourned it ceased to exist.

Let us sum up:

1. The Christmas Conference was not a convention in the sense
of being composed of delegates of the people called Methodists
expressly chosen for constitutional purposes, whose action could
not, therefore, be revised by “the Conference,” in its yearly
meetings, or by the General Conference. The notion of the
actual, representative, or constructive presence or action of the
laity, as distinct from their pastors, in the Christmas Confer-
ence, or in the Council of preachers that called it, is pure fic-
tion, apparently devised more than half a century later for con-
troversial purposes. From Dr. Coke’s Journal we know that
the laity were present in hundreds at Barratt’s Chapel—he ad-
ministered the Lord’s Supper, he says, to five or six hundred
 

GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 141

communicants; yet none of these were called into the Council
to consult about the calling of the Christmas Conference, nor
were they or any other laymen invited to seats in that body.
There were no delegates or representatives of the laity: the mem-
bership of the Societies did not act insuch manner at the organi-
zation of the Church that a purely clerical body could not undo
the work of the Conference: in fact, the laity did not act at all,
though content with what was done, and purely clerical bodies did
immediately begin the revision of the work done in 1784. Such
functions of the laity were entirely foreign to the conceptions
of Church government entertained by the fathers of 1784; this.
unhistorical idea would perhaps never have been suggested ex-
cept that long afterwards it was needed as a proof to sustain a
failing cause that had little else upon which to lean.}

2. The Christmas Conference was not a convention in the
sense of making a constitution and lodging it in the govern-
ment of the Church as a charter and definition of the powers
to be exercised by a legislature. No such constitutional con-
vention assembled in American Methodism until 1808. Yet it
would be very easy to construct a verbal argument proving the
Christmas Conference a constitutional convention. Asbury, in
the letter to Benson of 1816 as cited above, refers to “our con-
stitution,” enacted in 1784; and the title of the Discipline of
1786 is, “The General Minutes of the Conferences of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church in America, forming the Constitution of
the said Church.” (Italics ours.) But such verbal arguments
are very deceptive, and will lead us astray unless we pass to the
realities that lie behind them. The term “constitution,” em-
ployed in these citations, does not designate any unrevisable-
legislation of the Christmas Conference, expressly set apart and

1The first “Constitution and Discipline of the Methodist Protestant
Church” (Baltimore: 1830; Preface, p. v.) gives unequivocal witness on this
point: “At the close of the year 1784, the methodist societies in these United
States, were organized by a conference of preachers exclusively, into what
is called the Methodist Episcopal Church. . . . The government was so
framed by the conference, as to secure to the itinerant ministers, the unlim-
ited exercise of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the church,
to the entire exclusion of all other classes of ministers and all the people.”
This testimony in 1830 of seceders from the Methodist Episcopal Church
sufficiently offsets the cunningly devised theory of a later controversy at-
tributed to Mr. Choate. ,
142 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

recognized as such; but refers to the necessary permanency of
the principles of Episcopal regimen which the American Meth-
odists had incorporated in their ecclesiastical organization,
which, while they could be legally eliminated, speaking from
the standpoint of pure theory, could not, as a matter of fact, be
canceled without repudiating the fundamental convictions and
practically irrevocable deeds of Mr. Wesley and the American
Methodists, and thus overturning all the foundations that had
been laid.

3. The Christmas Conference was a convention in the senses
specified and elaborated above: (1) In its call, and the extraor-
dinary purposes and ends involved therein; (2) As an intended
mass meeting of all the itinerants who had hitherto acted as
legislators of the Church, convened to take action on Mr. Wes-
ley’s plan; (8) As creating the Church, by initiating and con-
firming its orders and sacraments, thus standing exterior to the
Church, and not in it; and (4) As dissolving in its adjournment
and constituting no General Conference successor, governmental
sovereignty, with the exception of the “binding minute,” being
fully committed to the yearly assembly called “the Conference.”

From the beginning, the historians of the Church have recog-
nized the extraordinary and exceptional character of the Christ-
mas Conference. Jesse Lee, earliest and most exact, says, in-
deed, of the Christmas Conference that it “was considered to be
a general conference” !—a rather reticent and dubious expres-
sion from such an historian, to be considered in the light of
what follows. The caption of Chapter V., in which this fuller ex-
pression occurs also, runs, “ From the first general Conference in
1784,” ete. But the caption of Chapter VII. is, “ From the begin-
ning of the year 1792, in which the first regular General Confer-
rence was held,” etc. Of this Conference Lee says, “ On the first
day of November, 1792, the first regular general conference be-
gan in Baltimore” ?—the text in no wise deviating from, or lim-
iting, the caption, asin the case of Chapter V. For Chapter IX.
the caption is, “From the beginning of the year 1796, including
the second General Conference,” etc., the adjective “regular”
being omitted; and the body is mentioned several times in the
text simply as the “general conference.” The caption of Chap-
ter X. is, “From the beginning of the year 1800, including the

1Short History, p. 94. #Ilid., p. 176.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 143

third General Conference,” etc., and the corresponding text is,
“This year we held our third regular general conference,” etc.
The caption of Chapter XI. is, “From the beginning of the
year 1804, including the fourth general conference,” etc., and
the corresponding text is, “This year we held our fourth gen-
eral conference in Baltimore,” ? etc. Finally, as to Lee’s nota-
tion, he says of the General Conference of 1808, “The 219th
[conference] was the 5th general conference, held in Baltimore,
on the 6th of May.”* The sum of the evidence derivable from
Lee as to notation is this: (1) Once in a caption he speaks of
1784 as a “ general conference,” which is qualified in the text by
the words “was considered to be,” the historian withholding
judgment; (2) twice, in 1792 and 1800, the body is spoken of
as the “first regular” and the “third regular” General Con-
ference; (3) three times, in 1796, 1804, and 1808, the bodies are
spoken of absolutely as the second, fourth, and fifth General
Conferences, this being apparently the final notation on which
Lee settled.

, If, in view of the whole evidence, we attempt to fix the sense
of Lee’s term “regular,” we take first its ordinary lexical mean-
ing, “conformed to a rule; agreeable to an established rule,
‘law, principle, or type,” and, since Lee wrote in 1809, after five
, Disciplinary General Conferences had been held, we find its
‘specific interpretation in the fact that before 1792 the Dis-
cipline, the law book of the Church, did not distinguish be-
tween General and Annual Conferences, these bodies being de-
fined and ordained by law at that date. That his employment
of the term “regular” was in further contrast with the Confer-
ences of 1785, 1786, and 1787, styled “General Conferences” in
the Minutes, is highly probable, and will receive some consid-
eration hereafter.

But there are other passages in which Lee would naturally
have spoken of the Christmas Conference as the first General
Conference had he so regarded it, but in which he distinguishes
it, with more or less sharpness of contrast, from General Confer-
ences. Thus he says: “I shall therefore take no further notice
of the rules about slavery which were made at various times for
twenty-four years, i. e. from the Christmas Conference in 1784,
to the last general conference held in 1808.”* Speaking of the

 

1ghort History, p. 264. *Jbid., p. 297. 8Jbid., p. 345. 4Zbid., p. 102.
144 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

college, he says, “The business was brought before the conference
which met at Christmas,” ! etc. Alluding to Mr. Whatcoat’s re-
jection as a bishop in 1787, he says: “Dr. Coke contended that
we were obliged to receive Mr. Whatcoat, because we had said
in the minutes taken at the Christmas conference, when we were
first formed into a Church in 1784,”? etc. “Mr. Tunnil was
elected to the office of an elder at the Christmas conference,
when we were first formed into a Church.”* Finally: “It was
eight years from the Christmas conference, where we became a
regular church, to this general conference.” * Not much weight
is to be assigned these passages, except as they indicate Mr.
Lee’s general drift. It may be noted, however, that in the first
and last passages the Christmas Conference is distinguished
from General Conferences in the same sentence, and that in
three the organizing function of the body is emphasized as its
distinguishing note.

In conclusion, it is desirable to state explicitly some general
prerogative facts, in the light of which the details of evidence
are to be considered.

I. No Discipline from 1785 to 1791 inclusive contains the
distinction between General and Annual Conferences in form
or fact. We have already considered the answers in the Disci-
plines of 1785 and 1786, which assign supreme governmental
authority to “the Conference.” In the Disciplines of 1787,
1788, 1789, 1790, and 1791, “the Conference” continues the
sovereign and exclusive organ of government. In every one of
these Disciplines, now lying before us, “the electing and or-
daining of Bishops, Elders, and Deacons” is “business to be
done in the Conference.” In the sections devoted to these or-
ders of ministers, it is said of all, bishops, elders, and deacons,
that they are to be constituted “by the election of a majority of
the Conference,” etc.; and bishops are amenable “to the Confer-
ence: who have the power to expel them for improper conduct,
if they see it necessary.” The mere statement of these simple
facts cannot bring home to the consciousness of a reader the full-
ness and weight of knowledge and conviction that spring from the
monotonous reiteration in all these connections of the sole and
supreme governmental authority of the only organ of govern-
ment recognized in the Disciplines of the Methodist Episcopal

* Short History, p. 113. *Ibid., p. 126. ®Jbid., p. 162. 4Ibid., p. 192.
GENESIS OF GENERAL AND ANNUAL CONFERENCES. 145

Church from its organization to 1792. As one picks up Disci-
pline after Discipline, and examines its provisions in detail, he
sees that here is a system of government, simple and original,
differing widely from that which prevailed afterwards. Though,
throughout this period, “the Conference” met in sections, va-
rying from three in 1785 to sixteen in 1792, the Discipline of
the Church never recognized any impairment of its unity or su-
premacy, and from beginning to end of the period the legally
constituted organ of government in our Church was “the Con-
ference.”

IL. The Discipline of 1792, for the first time in the history of
American Methodism, substitutes for “the Conference” two
bodies, “the General and District [Annual] Conferences.”
Never before in the history of the Church do we find such a
division, distribution, and definition of governmental powers
between these two orders of Conferences, which have continued
in the Discipline and in the Church to this day. The act was
of legal and disciplinary force and record in the strictest sense
of the terms. The year 1792 must rank with 1784 and 1808 as
of first-rate importance in the constitutional history of Episco-
pal Methodism. In 1792, for the first time in the law book of
the Church, the question is asked, “Who shall compose the
General Conference?” and its membership is defined —all the
traveling preachers in full connection. For the first time a sov-
ereign successor of the same order is constituted. ‘When and
where shall the next General Conference be held?”’ is asked, and
the answer recorded, “On the Ist day of November, in the year
1796, in the town of Baltimore.” Similarly, for the first time
in the Discipline and in the Church, the membership and ses-
sions of what we now call Annual Conferences are legally de-
termined. “Who are the members of the District [Annual]
Conferences?” is asked, and the answer is, “All the traveling
preachers of the District or Districts respectively, who are in
full connection.” ‘How often are the District Conferences to
be held?” Answer: “Annually.” For the first time in the
history of the Church, the election of bishops is made the ex-
clusive prerogative of “the General Conference”; and, like-
wise for the first time, these officers are made amenable to the
newly-constituted tribunal, “the General Conference.” Elders

and deacons, hitherto, like the bishops, elected by “the Confer-
10
~

146 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

ence,” are now to be constituted “by the election of a majority
of the District Conference.” And so in the Discipline of 1792,
from which all of these citations and facts are directly gath-
ered, we have the original legal constitution of General and An-
nual Conferences, with the Disciplinary division and definition
of their powers. From 1792 the legislative function inheres ex-
clusively in the General Conference. And the law book—the
Discipline—now goes forth to the Church for the first time with
the notice on its face that it was “revised and approved” by a
body styled “the General Conference.”

These decisive facts may suffice. On them, with the results
of the preceding discussion, we rest the inevitable historical
conclusions. They are fully able to sustain them. The assem-
bling of the General Conference of 1792, with the provision for
a succession of like order, and the legal division and definition
of the powers of General and Annual Conferences placed for
the first time in the Discipline of the Church, constitute by
every token and in an absolute sense the creation of an institu-
tion, (a) by deliberate purpose and legislative enactment; (b) to
meet acknowledged practical necessities, existent then, but not
in 1784; and (c) to the exclusion and abolition of a rival scheme
of general government—the Council—then supposed to be op-
erative, and which had been found inadequate to the exigencies
of the Church. From 1792 the General Conference has con-
tinued the permanent organ of government in American Meth-
odism; and Annual Conferences have developed on the lines
fixed and defined at that date. The two institutions, as known
to the law of the Church, were a simultaneous creation at that

epoch.
CHAPTER XIII.

Tue BALTIMORE CONFERENCE System or GOVERNMENT IN
AMERICAN METHODISM.

It is designed to investigate briefly the intricate and impor-
tant subject of what we shall venture to call the Baltimore Con-
ference system of government in American Methodism.

In 1780, the Asburyan, Northern, or Baltimore Conference
met in Baltimore: the “regular,” Southern, or Virginia Confer-
ence met at Manakintown, and by the intercession of Asbury,
Garrettson, and Watters was reconciled, after the Fluvanna
schism, to the Baltimore or Asburyan body, the union being
consummated in 1781. From that date until 1787, the Baltimore
Conference was the final Conference of every year, and enjoyed
powers and privileges not accorded any other body. This is the
peculiar phenomenon which we desire historically to investi-
gate.

Of the Conference of 1781, Jesse Lee says:

On the 24th day of April, the ninth conference met in Baltimore. But
previous to this, a few preachers on the Eastern Shore, held a litile conference
in Delaware state, near Choptank, to make some arrangements for those
preachers who could not go with them, and then adjourned (as they called
it) to Baltimore; so upon the whole it was considered but one conference.!

And that one Conference was of course the Baltimore. The
Minutes published in 1795? confirm Lee, saying of the Confer-
ence of 1781 that it was “held at Choptank, state of Delaware,
April 16th, 1781, and adjourned to Baltimore the 24th of said
month.” The next year, 1782, Lee explains the governmental
relation of the Southern or Virginia Conference to the Northern
or Baltimore Conference as follows:

The work had so increased and spread, that it was now found necessary
to have a conference in the south [the Virginia] every year, continuing the
conference in the north [the Baltimore] as usual. Yet as the conference in
the north was of the longest standing, and withal composed of the oldest
preachers, it was allowed greater privileges than that in the south; espe-
cially in making rules, and forming regulations for the societies. Accord-
ingly, when any thing was agreed to in the Virginia conference, and after-

 

1Short History, p. 75. ?P. 41.
(147)
148 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

wards disapproved of in the Baltimore conference, it was dropped. But if
any rule was fixed and determined on at the Baltimore conference, the
preachers in the south were under the necessity of abiding by it. The
southern conference was considered at that time as a convenience, and de-
signed to accommodate the preachers in that part of the work, and do all
the business of a regular conference, except that of making or altering par-
ticular rules.

Here we have the final legislative authority fixed in the Bal-
timore Conference, while the Virginia Conference was practically
confined to a narrower and non-legislative sphere. At this very
Conference of 1782, the brethren unanimously chose brother
Asbury “to act according to Mr. Wesley’s original appoint-
ment, and preside over the American conferences and the whole
work.” The Delaware precedent of 1779, and this of 1782, fa-
miliarized Mr. Asbury’s mind with election by the American
Conference, and doubtless suggested to him the alternative of
Conference election to the episcopal office in 1784 by which he
secured protection against Mr. Wesley’s hitherto little ques-
tioned supremacy. Dr. L. M. Lee declares? that “a preacher
in one division possessed the right to sit and vote in the other.”
Yet we shall fall into one-sided exaggeration and error if we fail
to notice that officially these two bodies were still regarded as
one Conference, which, according to the Minutes of 1795, was
“held at Ellis’s Preaching-House, in Sussex County, Virginia,
April 17th, 1782, and adjourned to Baltimore, May 21st.” *
Similarly in 17883 the Conference met at Ellis’s, May 6, “and
adjourned to Baltimore the 27th.”* This accorded with the
appointment of the preceding year, when “it was agreed we
should have the next conference in Virginia, on the first Tues-
day in May following; and the conference in the north in Bailti-
more, on the last Wednesday in the same month.”® The same
system continued to obtain in 1784, at the last Conference held
before the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
According to the Minutes,® the Conference was “begun at
Ellis’s Preaching House, Virginia, April 30th, 1784, and ended
at Baltimore, May 28th, following.” Lee particularizes:

In 1784, the twelfth conference began at Ellis’s chapel, in Virginia, on the
30th day of April, and ended in Baltimore, on the 28th of May. It was con-

sidered as but one conference, although they met first in Virginia, and then
adjourned to Baltimore, where the business was finished.”

1Short History, pp. 78, 79. ?Life of Jesse Lee, p. 101. %P. 49, 4Ibid.,
p. 57. 5 Lee, Short History, p.81. °P.65. 7Short History, p. 86.
THE BALTIMORE CONFERENCE SYSTEM. 149

 

Throughout these years we have a dual session of the Confer-
ence, the first in Virginia, preparatory and chiefly executive, and
the last in Baltimore, of final legislative authority. It is not
without significance that no other place than Baltimore seems
to have been thought of as the seat of the extraordinary and
called session which is known as the Christmas Conference;
and we shall not be able to understand this body in its complete
historical setting unless we keep in mind this Baltimore Con-
ference system of government which virtually began in 1780;
which was not for a season interrupted or essentially altered by
the action of the Christmas Conference in fixing the government
of the Church in “the Conference”; and which, as we shall see,
did not come to an end until 1787. When the called Conference
met in Baltimore on Christmas Eve, 1784, it assembled in the
midst of the traditions of the five successive annual legislative
sessions of the Conference which had been previously held in
the same city. Hence it called itself “a Conference”; hence,
without specific creation of a new governing body, or definition
of its legislative powers, it was able to commit all the powers of
government in the newly organized Church to “the Confer-
ence,” whose general functions had been so long established
and were so familiarly understood, and which, as we shall see,
continued for three years after the organization of the Metho-
dist Episcopal Church to hold its final legislative sessions in
Baltimore, as it had been accustomed to do for five years pre-
ceding that organization.

Here we are confronted with a singular phenomenon, of which
the very probable, but possibly incomplete, explanation will
presently become more evident. Jesse Lee tells us that in 1785,
1786, and 1787, when the annual Minutes first began to be pub-
lished, the caption in these first three editions of the Minutes
was, “Minutes of the General Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in America.”? The term “General Confer-
ence,” though entirely absent from the three editions of the
Discipline of the Church published during these three years,
is here applied in the same sense to the Conferences of 1785,
1786, and 1787, when the term is dropped and disappears
from the Minutes. In 1785, there were for the first time
three Conference sessions held—in North Carolina, in Vir-

 

1Short History, p. 118,
150 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

ginia, and the final one in Baltimore—though two, as we have
seen, had for many years been common; and three was the
number for 1786 and 1787: of the Minutes of these three years,
Lee immediately adds: “The business of the three conferences
was all arranged in the minutes as if it had all been done at one
time and place.” The use of the term “General Conference” in the
caption of the Minutes, therefore, coincides, as to its beginning, with
the expansion of the Conference sessions to the number of three,
still apparently regarded as one, however; continues during the
period when the final session of the three was held in the city of
Baltimore; and is abandoned when the sessions are expanded to
an indefinite number (six in 1788, eleven in 1789, fourteen in
1790), when the Baltimore session, no longer last, falls indis-
criminately as to time in the list, and when the Baltimore Con-
Jerence thus finally forfeits the primacy which it had enjoyed since
1780. These are facts, and, upon further consideration, it will
be seen that they go far toward constituting a satisfactory
explanation of the otherwise inexplicable phenomenon in the
heading of the Minutes to which Lee directs our attention.

As the basis of a more minute examination, it will be well to
quote the entire passage from Lee:

In 1785 we had three conferences. The fourteenth conference was held
at Green Hill’s, in North Carolina, on the 20th of April. The fifteenth con-
ference was held at Mr. Mason’s, in Brunswick county, in Virginia, on the
1st day of May. The sixteenth conference was held in Baltimore, on the 1st
day of June.

This was the first time that we had more than one regular conference in
the same year. For a few years before this, we had two conferences in the
same year, but they were considered only as one, first begun in one place,
and adjourned to another. Now there were three, and no adjournment. I
have therefore considered the conferences as but one in the year, and have
numbered them accordingly; but from this time I shall consider the num-
ber of the conferences as I find them in the minutes.

This year, and the two succeeding years, the minutes were called, “ Min-
utes of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in
America.”

The business of the three was all arranged in the minutes as if it had all
been done at one time and place. And for the first time we had the annual
minutes printed; which practice we have followed ever since!

It will be remembered that the regular Conference of 1784
had held its annual sessions in Virginia and Baltimore in the

1Short History of the Methodists, p. 118,
THE BALTIMORE CONFERENCE SYSTEM. 151

spring, some seven or eight months before the called session of
that year met in Baltimore at Christmas. Now, these three Con-
ference sessions of 1785, enumerated by Lee, were fixed, not by
the called Christmas Conference, but by the regular Conference
in the spring preceding, the final question of whose Minutes is:

Quest. 24, When and where shall our next conference be held?

Answ. The first at Green Hill’s, Friday 29th and Saturday 30th of April,
North Carolina: the second in Virginia, at conference chapel, May 8th; the
third in Maryland, Baltimore, the 15th day of June.!

These three sessions were actually held, the appointments of
the Conference in the spring of 1784 for the Conference of 1785
overleaping the Christmas Conference as if it had not been
held. On comparing this answer with Lee, however, it is found
that the sessions anticipated the appointed time from a week to
fifteen days. It is possible, of course, that this change of time
may have been arranged at the Christmas Conference; but
against this supposition is the fact that the Conference appoint-
ments made at the close of the Minutes of 1785, in which occurs
the only record of the proceedings of the Christmas Conference
outside of the First Discipline, are for the year 1786:

Quest. 17. When and where shall we hold our conferences next year?

Answ. At Salisbury, 21st of February. At Lane’s chapel, in Southampton
county, Virginia, Monday, 10th of April. In Baltimore, the 8th of May,

17862

This action was doubtless taken at the final Baltimore session
in June, 1785; but it is worth while to notice (1) that the Con-
ference sessions of 1785 were appointed by the regular spring
Conference of 1784; (2) that it is the Conference sessions of
1786 that are recorded at the close of the Minutes which include
proceedings of the Christmas Conference with those of the reg-
ular Conference sessions of the year 1785; and (3) that the rec-
ords are silent as to any change of time for the sessions of 1785
made by the Christmas Conference. The much more probable
explanation of the hurrying up of the times of meeting is found
in the convenience of Dr. Coke, who sailed for England, June
2, and in the slavery agitation which made necessary the speedy
repeal of the inopportune action of the called Conference on

that question.
We thus see how the Baltimore Conference system went on

1 Minutes, ed. of 1795, p. 73. ? Lbid., p. 83,
152 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

after the organization of the Church without interruption or
essential modification as to principle. After the dissolution of
the called Conference of Christmas, 1784, three Conferences, or
sessions of the one Conference, met in 1785, appointed by the
regular spring Conference of 1784, the last session, as usual,
being held in Baltimore, June 1. Here, doubtless, were made
the appointments for the Conference sessions of 1786; and here,
certainly, as Coke informs us (Journal, June 1, 1785), the min-
ute of the called Christmas Conference concerning slavery was
suspended, the Baltimore Conference exercising as heretofore
the final legislative authority of the year, though the subject
had received previous consideration in Virginia.

Lee says distinctly in the passage cited that from 1785 onward
there was no adjournment from Conference to Conference of the
year, as we know there had been from Virginia to Baltimore dur-
ing the years 1781-1784 inclusive. There exists nowhere any
record of an adjournment of the called Christmas Conference to
the first regular session of 1785; if there had been such an ad-
journment, it is not a violent presumption that this most exact
historian, Lee, according to his habit, would have found it nat-
ural, if not necessary, to make record of it. He does expressly
record, in this connection, that there was no adjournment in
1785 from North Carolina to Virginia, or from Virginia to Bal-
timore, thus cutting off the called Conference of 1784-85 from
any supposed continuity with the final Baltimore session of
1785. If there was thus no adjournment from session to ses-
sion of the same year, much less may we suppose there was an
adjournment from year to year, 7. e., from 1785 to 1786 and from
1786 to 1787. All the information we have detaches the called
Conference from the regular Conferences preceding it, and the

‘regular Conferences following it, making it an extraordinary
parenthesis in the regular ongoings of the settled Conference
government of the American Methodists. Lee, however, makes
the cessation of the usual adjournment from Conference to Con-
ference of the same year the occasion of regarding and num-
bering the several sessions of a year as distinct Conferences;
while the annual Discipline of the Church, down to and includ-
ing the edition of 1791, still knows only “the Conference,” as
the regular governmental body, and the Minutes of 1785, 1786,
and 1787, according to Lee, designate the conjoint sessions,
THE BALTIMORE CONFERENCE SYSTEM. 153

 

“the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church
in America.”

To be exact and complete, we must now notice a discrepancy
between Lee and the earliest collected edition of the Minutes,
published in 1795. Not only does Lee give an identical title,
as cited, for the three years, 1785, 1786, and 1787; but he says,
“The business of the three conferences,” of each of these years,
“was all arranged in the minutes as if it had all been done at one
time and place.” For 1786 and 1787 the Minutes of 1795 confirm
Lee as to title and contents, except that the words “in America”
are omitted from the designation of the Methodist Episcopal
Church. But in the case of the year 1785, we find the Minutes
in the first collected form of 1795 differing from Lee as to both
title and contents. Inthe Minutes the title runs: “Minutes of
Some Conversations between the Ministers and Preachers of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, at a General Conference held
at Baltimore, January, 1785”; and, in addition to the proceed-
ings of the three Conferences of 1785, as described by Lee, the
Minutes of 1795 include certain proceedings of the Christmas
‘Conference which do not appear in the Minutes published by
Coke, constituting the First Discipline of the Church. These
additional proceedings of the called Conference, recorded in
these Minutes, consist of the official record of the ordinations
of Superintendents, Elders, and Deacons, at the Christmas Con-
ference; in the case of the elders and deacons the names being
given in connection with subsequent ordinations at the regular
sessions in the answers to the same minute questions. There
is given also a full copy of Mr. Wesley’s circular letter, with a
few introductory words and a concluding note, in which the
“elected superintendent” is termed a “bishop ”—a title absent
from the Discipline until 1787. The other business of this rec-
ord appears to have been transacted, and to have been made
matter of record, at a time subsequent to the Christmas Con-
ference, 7. ¢., at the regular sessions of Conference in 1785.

We have previously seen reasons why we cannot with cer-
tainty push the date of this form of record farther back than
1795, the time of our earliest copy. Examining the document,
we find two discrepancies between its title and the facts: (1) it
describes the Christmas Conference as “held at Baltimore, Jan-
uary, 1785,” whereas it met Friday, December 24, 1784, transacted
154 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

the bulk of its business during the last week of that year, and
probably closed its business sessions, Saturday, January 1, 1785;*
(2) the title is an incorrect description of the document which
it heads, the body of which contains the record of the transac-
tions at Green Hill’s, North Carolina, in April; at Mason’s, in
Virginia, in May; and at Baltimore, in June, 1785. These ob-
vious discrepancies excite suspicion of a free editorial hand
used on this record as published in the Minutes of 1795; and
raise an inquiry as to the discovery of any apparent reason or
motive for alteration. Now we know from Jesse Lee, in the
passage cited above and elsewhere, that from 1785 the “annual
minutes ” were printed; so that there were contemporary printed
minutes of the Conference of 1785, ten years older than the
edition of 1795 which has come down to us. Jesse Lee prom-
ises us in his History that “the printed minutes,” from their
beginning in 1785, “will be attended to as they come out year
after year.”? If Jesse Lee kept this promise—and all we know
of his accuracy and completeness leads us to believe that he did
—the original printed annual minutes of 1785 did not have the
heading of our edition of 1795, but on the contrary one identical
with the Minutes of 1786 and 1787; and those first printed min-
utes of 1785 did not include the matter concerning the Christ-
mas Conference, for Lee says: “The business of the three Con-
ferences [of each year] was all arranged in the Minutes [of
1785, 1786, and 1787 ] as if it had all been done at one time and
place.” 3

If Lee, with the original annual Minutes of 1785, 1786, and
1787 before him, has here made his usual correct record, it
follows that the editor of the collected edition of 1795 made
alterations both in the title and in the contents of the Minutes
of 1785. There is reason to believe that Bishop Asbury was
this editor; and it is not improbable that the editor dated the
Christmas Conference “January, 1785,” in order to throw the

1Coke dates his account of the Christmas Conference “Friday, Dec. 24-
Jan. 2 [Sunday], 1785,” and Asbury says, “Monday, January 8, 1785. The
conference is risen, and I have now a little time for rest.”

2Short History, p. 89.

3 As has been previously noticed, there is no ground for expecting the dis-
covery of any “lost minutes” other than those we have, originally taken at
the Christmas Conference; but the finding of the printed Minutes of 1785,
described by Lee, is an important desideratum.

 
THE BALTIMORE CONFERENCE SYSTEM. 155.

 

record he was about to make of it chronologically with the Min-
utes of that year; while he added the circular letter! and other
records of the Christmas Conference which had found no place
in the original Minutes of that body, published by Coke imme-
diately after its adjournment.

For these reasons, we have been obliged to say in the itali-
cized sentence above, “ The use of the term ‘General Conference’ in
the caption of the Minutes, therefore, coincides, as to its beginning,
with the expansion of the Conference sessions to the number of three,”
instead of, “with the Christmas Conference and the organization of

the Church,” since the evidence, critically canvassed, will not sup-
port this latter statement. But if it did, it would still remain

true that the term “ General Conference” in the first printed an-
nual Minutes is by no means confined to the Christmas Confer-

 

1S0 far as I am aware, the two earliest texts of Mr. Wesley’s circular letter
are (1) the printed copy inserted in the original edition of the Sunday Serv-
ice and First Discipline, which lies before me; and (2) the copy in the col-
lected Minutes of 1795. The copy of 1795 gives certain token that it is not
the original, but was carefully edited at a subsequent date: (a) No. 1 above
has “many of the provinces of North-America are totally disjoined from
their mother-country,” which the American editor alters in No. 2 to “from
the British empire”; (>) No. 1 says that the civil authority is exercised “ part-
ly by the provincial Assemblies”—No. 2 says “partly by the State Assem-
blies”; (c) No. 1 adds to paragraph 4 the following, wholly omitted from
No. 2: “And I have prepared a liturgy, little differing from that of the
church of England (I think, the best constituted national church in the
world), which I advise all the traveling preachers to use on the Lord’s day,
in all their congregations, reading the litany only on Wednesdays and Fri-
days, and praying extempore on all other days. I also advise the elders to
administer the supper of the Lord on every Lord’s day.” In 1795, the lit-
urgy, litany, etc., had long since fallen into disuse, and, if the text in the
Minutes published in that year was then edited, we can see a sound reason
for this extensive omission. Myles’s text (English), in his Chronological
History, pp. 161-163, corresponds to No. 1 above; Lee’s text (American), in
his Short History (pp. 91-93), corresponds to No. 2—an additional reason
for supposing that the circular letter was absent from the annual Minutes
of 1785, which Lee had, since here he follows the Minutes of 1795. The text
in Tigert’s Constitutional History (pp. 174, 175) reproduces No. 1 in agree-
ment with Myles.

The discussion of the text above and of this note may seem to some readers
a piece of “higher criticism.” Perhaps itis. But, from whatever point of
view we consider the record of the Christmas Conference in the Minutes of
1795, it grows more and more certain that it is not contemporary, and the
more closely the several lines of evidence which lead to this conclusion are
inspected, the sounder will the reasoning appear.
156 THE MAKING OF METHODISM.

 

ence, but had a latitude of meaning wide enough to include the
Conferences of 1786 and 1787. Finally, if Bishop Asbury, in
1795, changed the caption of the Minutes of 1785, and added the
edited form of the circular letter and the ordinations of Christ-
mas 1784, to complete the record of the called Conference at
Christmas with items omitted from its contemporary Minutes,
it is one more proof, almost decisive, that Bishop Asbury had
no “lost minutes” from which to glean additional matter.

It is only necessary, in conclusion, to touch upon the collapse
of the Baltimore Conference system in 1787, and the disappear-
ance at that time of the “General Conference” heading from
the Minutes. In 1787, the South Carolina Conference, at its
first session, with Bishops Coke and Asbury presiding, held an
episcopal election-—a very singular proceeding if it was simply
an Annual Conference in the sense of the Discipline—and con-
firmed Mr. Wesley’s nomination of Whatcoat to the episcopacy.
At the Virginia Conference following, serious objection to
Whatcoat was raised by one James O’Kelly, and it was agreed
by the Conference that this nomination should be finally dis-
posed of at the Baltimore Conference, “on condition,” as Nich-
olas Snethen says, “that the Virginia Conference might send a
‘deputy to explain their sentiments.” At Baltimore, according to
Snethen, in his Reply to Mr. O’Kelly’s Apology, “a vote was
taken that Richard Whatcoat should not be ordained Superin-
tendent, and that Mr. Wesley’s name should for the future be
left off the American Minutes.” The same Conference restrained
Thomas Coke from the exercise of episcopal authority when ab-
sent from the United States, and the first question in the “ Min-
utes of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal
Church for the year 1787” is, “ Who are the Superintendents of
our church for the United States?” and the answer is, “ Thomas
Coke (when present in the States) and Francis Asbury.”

Thus in 1787—not in 1784—the American Methodist Episco-
pal Church fully and finally asserted its autonomy: thus in 1787
the Baltimore Conference system of government in American
Methodism—or the Baltimore General Conference system, if
one prefers that title—came to an end. For 1788, six Confer-
ferences are appointed; for 1789, eleven; for 1790, fourteen; for
1791, thirteen; and for 1792, sixteen, Baltimore losing its pri-
macy, and falling last by appointment only in 1788, but actually
THE BALTIMORE CONFERENCE SYSTEM. 157

 

followed in September by the Philadelphia, which was the sev-
enth and final Conference of that year.! In 1789, according to
Coke’s explicit testimony, the question of the restoration of Mr.
Wesley’s name in the Minutes was laid before “ each of the Con-
ferences” (eleven), and “cheerfully and unanimously agreed”
to by “all the Conferences.” The result of this action appears
in the Minutes and Discipline of 1789, “inserted in such a man-
ner as to preclude” Mr. Wesley “from exercising an unconsti-
tutional power” over the Americans; but how great the latitude
of the term “General Conference,” or the phrase “ general Con-
ference held at Baltimore,” employed in making these fresh his-
torical entries, five years after the event, is now too apparent to
merit further discussion. Before 1792, it was a term elastic
enough to include, as we have seen, the Conferences of 1785,
of 1786, and of 1787: after 1792 the name is restricted to a legal
and disciplinary use, which has ever since been its only legiti-
mate unqualified meaning. In 1789 and 1790 Bishop Asbury
passed around to all the Conference sessions the measures per-
taining to the Council. In 1792 the Conferences called the first
General Conference; which provided a successor, or, as Bishop
Coke says, “that great blessing to the American Connection—a
permanency for General Conferences.” At that date, govern-
ment by “the Conference,” whether directly exercised by pass-
ing measures around to all the sessions, or more or less modi-
fied by the Baltimore Conference system, or by the “ Council,”
passed away forever; and the General Conference has continued
without intermission to this day the organ of government in
American Methodism—to 1808 supreme and absolute, and since,
delegated and limited.

1 Lee’s Short History of the Methodists, p. 135,

 
APPENDIX.

(159)
APPENDIX.

Orpers: Roman anp ANGLICAN.

CHRISTIANITY and churchism still struggle in the womb of
time! Leo XIII. and his canonists have decided adversely on
the validity of Anglican orders. The conclusion reached is that
they are not simply irregular, but invalid—ecclesiastically and
canonically null and void. Lord Halifax and his friends de-
luded themselves, and, to some extent, the Church of England,
with the hope of papal recognition; and Mr. Gladstone in an
able paper appealed to Leo. In their hearts, many of the An-
glo-Catholics acknowledge the papal supremacy: in this outward
act, having foolishly appealed to Leo, and thus having practi-
cally acknowledged his jurisdiction in the case, how shall they
reject or nullify or even minify this decision, now that it has
gone against them? If its value were inestimable, had it proved
favorable, how can it be declared worthless, now that it has
turned out to be adverse?

The Civilti Cattolica, for October 3, 1896, contains the Latin
text of this adverse papal decision. The grounds of it are enu-
merated as follows: (1) Letters given forth by Julius III. in
connection with Cardinal Pole’s Legation imply that ordinations
taking place under the rite of Edward VI. had not been duly
consummated. (2) Letters of Paul IV., issued in 1555, carry
the same implication. (3) In ordaining certain persons pre-
viously ordained by the Edwardian rite, the Church of Rome
has assumed the nullity of that rite. (4) The Edwardian rite
for ordination to the priesthood [or presbyterate] in its original
form was decidedly defective as not being sufficiently significant
of priestly rank and function. The subsequent addition of the
words ad officium et opus presbyter, while as much as admitting
the defect of the original form, effected nothing for the validity
of Anglican orders, since in the interim valid orders had been
lost and the English Church had within herself no power to re-
coverthem. (5) The form of episcopal consecration in the An-
glican ordinal is defective. Moreover, the episcopate, as being

a more excellent grade of priesthood, cannot be validly insti-
11 (161)
162 APPENDIX.

 

tuted where a lapse of priestly orders has occurred, as was the
case in the English Church. (6) Reflecting the close connec-
tion between belief and ceremonial, the Anglican ordinal ex-
cludes characteristic features of the Roman. It contains no
open reference to sacerdotium or to the power of consecrating
and offering sacrifice. (7) While the Roman Church presumes
that the “intention,” requisite to the validity of a sacramental
performance, is present where the Roman rite is used, a diver-
gence from that rite must be taken as a positive indication that
the ministrant puts himself in opposition to the Roman Church,
‘and does not intend the ordinance which he executes in the
sense of that Church.

That the exact view which Leo XIII. and his canonists take
of the relation of the priesthood or presbyterate to the episo-
pate, and how it differs from the Anglican doctrine, may be
seen, we here cite the text of this fifth ground of objection in
full: -

De consecratione episcopali similiter est. Nam formule, Accipe Spiritum
Sanctum, non modo serius adnexa cunt verba, ad officium et opus episcopi, sed
etiam de iisdem, ut mox dicemus, judicandum aliter est quam in ritu cathol-
ico. Neque rei proficit quidquam advocasse prefationis precem, Omnipotens
Deus; quum ea pariter deminuta sit verbis quae summum sacerdotium decla-
rent. Sane, nihil huc attinet explorare, utrum episcopatus complementum
sit sacerdotii, an ordo ab illo distinctus: aut collatus, ut aiunt, per saltum,
scilicet homini non sacerdoti, utrum affectum habeat necne. At ipse procul
dubio, ex institutione Christi, ad sacramentum Ordinis verissime pertinet,
atque est precellente gradu sacerdotium; quod nimirum et voce sanctorum
Patrum et rituali nostra consuetudine summum sacerdotium, sacri ministerii
summa nuncupatur. Inde fit ut, quaniam sacramentum Ordinis verumque
Christi sacerdotium a ritu anglicano penitus extrusum est, atque ideo in
consecratione episcopali ejusdem ritus nullo modo sacerdotium confertur,
nullo item modo episcopatus vere ac jure possit conferri: eoque id magis
quia in primis episcopatus munus illud scilicet est, ministros ordinandi in
sanctam eucharistiam et sacrificium.

Referring, in the light of this most recent pontifical deliver-
ance, to the “Catechism of the Council of Trent,” published by
command of Pope Pius V., we find the following enumeration
of the several orders of the Roman Church:

Their number, according to the uniform and universal doctrine of the
Catholic Church, is seven: Porter, Reader, Exorcist, Acolyte, Sub-deacon,

Deacon, and Priest. . . . Of these some are greater, which are also called
“Holy,” some lesser, which are called “ Minor Orders.” The greater or Holy
ORDERS: ROMAN AND ANGLICAN. 163

Orders are Sub-deaconship, Deaconship, and Priesthood; the lesser or Minor
Orders are Porter, Reader, Exorcist, and Acolyte.

On a later page the same official catechism declares:

The third and highest degree of all Holy Orders is the Priesthood. Per-
sons raised to the Priesthood the Holy Fathers distinguish by two names:
they are called “ Presbyters,” which in Greek signifies elders, and which was
given them, not only to express the mature years required by the Priest-
hood, but still more, the gravity of their manners, their knowledge and pru-
dence: “ Venerable old age is not that of long time, nor counted by the num-
bers of years; but the understanding of a man is grey hairs”: they are also
called “Priests” (Sacerdotes), because they are consecrated to God, and to
them it belongs to administer the sacraments and to handle sacred things.”

One more brief quotation from the Roman Catechism will
suffice for our present purpose:

The Order of Priesthood, although essentially one, has different degrees
of dignity and power. The first is confined to those who are simply called
Priests, and whose functions we have now explained. The second is that
of Bishops, who are placed over their respective sees, to govern not only the
other ministers of the Church, but also the faithful. . . . But Bishops
are also called “ Pontiffs,” a name borrowed from the ancient Romans, and
used to designate their Chief-priests. The third degree is that of Archbish-
op. . . . Patriarchs hold the fourth place, and are, as the name implies,
the first and supreme Fathers in the Episcopal order. Formerly, besides the
Sovereign Pontiff, there were but four Patriarchs in the Church. . . . The
Patriarch of Constantinople, although last in the order of time, was first in
rank. . . . Next . . . is that of Alexandria, a see founded by the
Evangelist St. Mark. . . . The third is the Patriarchate of Antioch,
founded by St. Peter, and the first seat of the Apostolic See; the fourth and
last, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, founded by St. James, the brother of our
Lord.

Superior to all these is the Sovereign Pontiff, whom Cyril, Archbishop of
Alexandria, denominated in the Council of Ephesus, “the Father and Pa-
triarch of the whole world.” . . . As the successor of St. Peter, and the
true and legitimate vicar of Jesus Christ, he, therefore, presides over the
Universal Church, the Father and Governor of all the faithful, of Bishops,
also, and of all other prelates, be their station, rank, or power what they
may?

The essential oneness of all these five degrees of priesthood,

from the presbyter to the pope, appears from the standpoint of
the Roman Catechism in this, that all of them stand in the same

 

1Page 216 of the Catechism of the Council of Trent, translated into Eng-
lish by the Rev. J. Donovan, Professor in the Royal College, Maynooth.
New York: Catholic Publication Society.

2 Tbid., p. 220. 3 Lbid., pp. 221, 222.
164 APPENDIX.

 

relation to the sacrifice of the mass, the supreme act of worship,
and the center of the ceremonial and the sacerdotal power, of
the Roman Church. The language of the Catechism strictly
and literally interpreted would mean that the priest differs from
the bishop only as the bishop differs from the archbishop, and
as the archbishop differs from the patriarch, and as the patri-
arch differs from the pope. The common priesthood has five
degrees of dignity. But in view of the facts (1) that sacerdotal
power in the mass is chiefly had in view in this declaration, (2)
that the power of ordination has always been canonically con-
fined to the episcopate, and (3) that variant opinions of many
dogmatists and canonists of high authority have been tolerated
on this point of the difference between priests and bishops, it
would perhaps be unwise to press this interpretation to its final
issue. It is worth while to notice, however, that there is imbed-
ded in the Roman doctrine the primitive tradition of the deriva-
tion of the episcopate from the presbyterate, and that the high
Anglican doctrine of the essential and inviolable divine distinc-
tion between episcopal and presbyterial orders, whereon the An-
glicans build their Church and excommunicate other Protestants,
finds scant support, if any, in the fundamental doctrine of the
Roman Catholic Church.

Some of the principal facts in connection with this complex
subject are the following:

1. The scholastics seem to have been inclined to deny that the
episcopate is, in the proper sacramental sense, a distinct order
from the priesthood (presbyterate or sacerdotium). Such repre-
sentative writers of matured scholasticism as Thomas Aquinas,
‘Bonaventura, and Durandus took this ground.

2. In the sub-scholastic era, though unanimity was not main-
tained, the scholastic view, in the sense just defined, appears very
largely to have colored Roman Catholic phraseology and think-
ing. In proof of this, reference may be made to the Tridentine
documents. In the decrees of the Council of Trent (to be dis-
tinguished from the Catechism) we find that the second chapter
of the twenty-third session has the heading De septem ordinibus.
It is indeed denied that the heading belonged to the original;
nevertheless, the fact of its being inserted and continuously tol-
erated is significant, as indicating that in the customary way of
thinking just seven orders were recognized, the seventh of course
ORDERS: ROMAN AND ANGLICAN. 165

 

being understood to be the priesthood. Again, in the second
canon of this same session we read: “If anyone saith that, be-
sides the priesthood, there are not in the Catholic Church other
orders, both greater and minor, by which, as by certain steps,
advance is made into the priesthood: let him be anathema.”
The natural suggestion of this language is that the priesthood
is the final stage in the ascending scale of orders. The cate-
chism which bears the name of Trent, though not technically
representative of the council, since that body adjourned before
it was ready for approval, is fairly presumed to reflect the think-
ing prevalent among the Tridentine bishops. As has been shown,
it makes the priesthood the seventh and final order, the superior
dignity which is affirmed for the bishop not being viewed as an
attachment of a distinct order. The formal approbation given
to the catechism by one and another of the popes, if not placing
the seal of infallibility upon all its details, must in any event
be regarded as securing to it a high rauk as a Roman Catholic
standard.

3. But since the sixteenth century a divided verdict has been
rendered on the relation of the episcopate to holy orders, and a
complete view of the subject requires notice of the fact that the
approved Roman Catholic theory makes the episcopate an essen-
tial part of a divinely instituted hierarchy, and does not allow
that the particulars in which it differs from simple priesthood
are matters within ecclesiastical discretion.

On these points and the relation of bishops to holy orders,
Thomas Aquinas says:

Episcopatus ordo esse dici potest, non quatenus sacramentum est ad eu-
charistiam ordinatum, sed tantum ut est officium quoddam ad sacras et hier-

archicas actiones.

Ordo potest accipi dupliciter. Uno modo secundum quod est sacramentum:
et sic, ut prius dictum est, ordinatur omnis ordo ad eucharistize sacramentum.
Unde cum episcopus non habeat potestatem superiorem sacerdote, quantum
a: hoe episcopatus non eritordo. Alio modo potest considerari ordo, secun-
dum quod est officium quoddam respectu quarundam actionum sacrarum: et
sic cum episcopus habeat potestatem in actionibus hierarchicis respectu cor-
poris mystici supra sacerdotem, episcopatus erit ordo.}

This seems to import that the episcopate is not an order be-
yond the priesthood, or presbyterate, in the proper sacramental

1Sum. Theol., III., sup. 40. 5.
166 APPENDIX.

sense, but only in a qualified sense, or in virtue of superior gov-
erning authority in the Church.

Among modern authorities Gury seems to agree with Aquinas.
He says:

Septem numerantus ordines, scilicet: Presbyteratus, diaconatus, subdiaconatus,
acolythatus, exorcistatus, lectoratus, et ostiaratus. . . . His adde episcopatum,

et primam tonsuram quorum alter est ipsius sacerdotii complementum, altera
vero ordo non est, sed dispositio ad ordines, qua quis clericus renuntiatur.1

This eminent authority, it will be seen, is in exact agreement
with the Tridentine Catechism, cited above. Liguori says:

Ordo est sacramentum, qua traditur potestas circa eucharistiam rite admin-
istrandam. Ordines universim sunt septem: Ostiaratus, lectoratus, exorcis-

tatus, acolythatus, subdiaconatus, diaconatus et sacerdotium. Quod rursus
est duplex, minus et majus sive episcopatus. Unde quidam octo numerant.?

Liguori is inclined to side with those who make the episcopate
an order distinct from the presbyterate or sacerdotium. The
high valuation given to the authority of Aquinas by Leo XIIL,
as well as the tenor of his decision on the validity of Anglican
orders, is presumptive evidence that he favors the position of
the Angelical Doctor. The phrase which Leo cites as descriptive
of the episcopate—preexcellente gradu sacerdotium—is rather in
line than otherwise with the view that associates the episcopate
with the priesthood in point of order. Moreover, the command,
Back to Saint Thomas! which the pope has sent all along the
line of his forces, makes it easy to think that he leans to the
view of the Angelical Doctor. It is quite probable, too, that the
pope would think twice about the significance of the papal ap-
probation of the Tridentine Catechism before venturing formal-
ly to pronounce against its exposition of holy orders in relation
to the episcopate. On the whole, there is exceedingly small oc-
casion to look for a papal deliverance of that kind.

We have recently received from the Wesleyan book-steward at
London the third edition, revised and enlarged, of Dr. James H.
Rigg’s “Comparative View of Church Organizations, Primitive
and Protestant”: London, 1897. At pages 74,75 Dr. Rigg gives
a brief and very satisfactory account of the modern rise of the
theory of episcopal apostolic succession in the Church of En-
gland. The learned Wesleyan divine says:

 

Theol. Moral. n. 1415, 1416, ?Theol. Moral. Lib. 6, Tract. 5, cap. 2, n. 734,
ORDERS: ROMAN AND ANGLICAN. 167

 

The necessity, however, for formulating this theory [of “apostolico-epis-
copal succession ’’] was not discovered until half a century had passed since
the separation from Rome of the Reformed Church of England. It had not
been maintained or defined in any ecclesiastical decree or corpus theologicum
of the Church of Rome. It was, as formulated, an invention of the Church
of England to meet its controversial necessities when pressed hard by the
zealous champions of the Puritan party. These insisted on the divine right
of their Presbyterian platform as opposed to prelatic episcopacy. Bya nota-
ble coincidence, in the very same year, the year of the Armada, to which I
have already referred as marking the date when the Reformed Church of
England became, by a sudden and sweeping change, Anglo-Catholic, Dr.
Bancroft, afterwards archbishop, preaching at Paul’s Cross, suggested rather
than asserted the divine right of bishops in the Church of England, thus
claiming to make good its position against the “divine right” asserted by
Rome on the one hand and claimed for the Puritan “discipline” on the
other. This was, at the time, an entirely novel suggestion, and involved a
desertion of the ground hitherto held by Jewell, Whitgift, and Hooker, and,
to quote Mr. Child’s language, “appeared to have been enunciated simply, as
one may say, to overtrump ” the great Puritan controversialist “Cartwright’s
trick.”1 Shortly afterwards, this view was elaborately set forth and main-
tained by Dr. Bilson, afterwards bishop of Winchester. It was, however, a
startling and very notable change of position for churchmen to take up in
Elizabeth’s reign. Indeed, Bilson’s argument was not only opposed to the
views of Whitgift and Hooker before him, but of Andrewes after him, of
whose character and authority so much is made by modern churchmen. A
distinguished high-church ecclesiastical scholar, Dr. N. Pocock, writing in the
Guardian in 1892 (November 23), says roundly that “the belief in an apos-
tolical succession in the episcopate is not to be found in any of the writings
of the Elizabethan bishops,” and that “ probably not a single bishop was to
be found who believed in his own divine commission [by episcopal descent
from the apostles in an unbroken line of ordinations] or in the efficacy [ex
opere operato] of the sacraments.”

In conclusion we desire to say that, not only in view of Leo
XIII.’s summary and final condemnation of the validity of An-
glican orders and of the general current of the doctrine of or-
ders in the Church of Rome itself, but also in view of the com-
plete disappearance of the dogmatic and historical foundations
of the modern Anglican claims upon the first touch of unbiased
but thoroughgoing historical criticism, according to universally
received canons of investigation, there is as little likelihood and
would be as little propriety in the reception of reordination by
Methodist Episcopalians at the hands of the bishops of the
younger Protestant Episcopal Church as in the reception of

1Church and State under the Tudors, by Gilbert W. Child, M.A,, p. 238,
168 APPENDIX.

Roman reordination by the clergy of the Church of England
and its American offshoot. Our surprise at the position of
such a man as Dr. Charles W. Shields, of the Presbyterian
Church, on this question of the acceptance of the “historic
episcopate” scarcely knows bounds. With entire respect for
our Protestant Episcopal brethren (and we trust with no breach
of Christian charity), but also with perfect frankness, we adopt
the language of Dr. Daniel Curry, in the Methodist Review (New
York) for January, 1897: “That such a proposition should be
made by courteous Christian people, without any sense of inso-
lence on their part, shows to what a degree excessive self-appre-
ciation may blunt the soul’s best sentiments. . . . The Church
of Rome offers as liberal terms to all men—heathens, Jews, and
Protestants—as the would-be American Church offers to their
confessed fellow-Christians.”’ +

The questions here tentatively argued have from a very early
date occupied a large place in the literature of Methodism. They
begin with John Wesley’s statement of the grounds upon which
he considered himself a scriptural bishop, and his justification
of his exercise of the “ power of ordination.” Freeborn Garrett-
son says that it was a “ power of ordination” which Wesley sent
to America by Coke, Whatcoat, and Vasey. (‘Experience and
Travels,” Philadelphia: 1791; pp. 161, 162, and 197,198.) In
1804, Dr. William Phoebus wrote an “Apology for the Right of
Ordination, in the Evangelical Church of America, called Meth-
odists,” which is extensively quoted in Myles’s “ Chronological
History” (ed. 1813), pp. 164, 165. From Myles these citations
have passed into the pages of later historians. In 1817, Phoe-
bus also published “An Essay on the Doctrine and Order of the
Evangelical Church of America; as constituted.at Baltimore in
1784,” the full title of which has been cited in the list of the
sources of the Christmas Conference. From p. 67 to p. 109

 

1This Appendix has been added since the Preface was stereotyped. Ac-
cordingly I can only here make proper acknowledgment of my obligations
to my esteemed friend, Professor Henry C. Sheldon, the eminent Church
historian, of Boston University, for effective assistance in the collection of
materials. My copy of the Latin text of Leo’s decision was unfortunately
lost in the mails, and the analysis of the grounds of the adverse decision was
taken from the original and furnished me by Dr.Sheldon. He has also veri-
fied the references to Aquinas, Gury, and Liguori, contained in books at
present inaccessible to me.
ORDERS: ROMAN AND ANGLICAN. 169

Phoebus treats at large of Methodist orders and the doctrine of
orders in the Anglican Church. In this connection, it is well
also to consult the “Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in the United States of America, From its Organiza-
tion up to the Present Day: Containing I. A Narrative of the
Organization and of the Early Measures of the Church; II. Ad-
ditional Statements and Remarks; III. An Appendix of Orig-
inal Papers. By William White, D.D., Bishop of the Protest-
ant Episcopal Church in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Second edition. New York: 1836.” In addition to his well-
known work, “Defense of our Fathers,” Bishop Emory wrote
another, entitled the ‘‘ Episcopal Controversy Reviewed,” edited
and published after his death by his son Robert. The latest
Methodist work on the subject is “The Historic Episcopate: A
Study of Anglican Claims and Methodist Orders,” by Dr. R. J.
Cooke, who has a paper entitled “The Ancient British and
Ephesian Succession Theories,” in the Methodist Review (New
York) for March, 1898. Estcourt on “Anglican Succession”
(London: 1873) is also referred to as a work of value. We have
examined it, but have not read it. But this is perhaps a suffi-
cient summary of the literature for those who wish to pursue
the subject further.
INDEX.

Apmission into full connection, in
England, 52.

Aquinas, Thomas, quoted, 165.

Arminian Magazine, Philadelphia,
1789, quoted, 109; for 1790, quoted,
110; full title of, 110, 111; contents
of 1789 noted, 113, 114; quoted, 116.

Asbury, Francis, his history as gen-
eral assistant, 4; ordained deacon,
elder, and superintendent, 5; elect-
ed by Christmas Conference, 5;
relations with Coke, 9; nominates
assistant bishops, 10; relations with
Whatcoat, 10; relations with Mc-
Kendree, 11; “mute and modest,”
38, 135; methodizes Discipline in
1787, 36; quoted, 40, 41, 58, 61, 76, 79,
84, 85, 87, 92, 102, 110, 111, 112, 131,
135; comes to America, 47, 57; con-
victions on itinerancy, 57, 58; Val-
edictory Address quoted, 58; suc-
ceeds Boardman, 58; powers in 1779,
61, 63; commission to Manakin-
town, 62; tenure and authority in
1782, 63; meets Coke, 76; use of the
term “general conference,” 84, 85;
presidency in Christmas Confer-
ence, 89; full title-page and descrip-

- tion of Journal, 109-112; interposes
Conference as a, barrier, 134 ff; death
of, 112.

Atkinson, Dr. John, quoted, 89.

Baurimore Conference System, 147 ff.

 

Bancroft, George, History U.S. quoted,
28, 29.

Bangs, Nathan, quoted, 39, 61.

Benson, Joseph, Asbury’s letter to,
quoted, 135.

Bishops, contemporary, 8; conform
administration to Plan of Separa-
tion, 17; table of contemporary, 17,
18; table of proportion to ministry
and membership, 18.

Bishops’ meeting, recommended by
General Conference of 1824, 14; first
held in 1826, 15.

Boardman, Richard, comes to Amer-
ica, 47; his laxity, 57.

Bunting, Jabez, influence in 1836, 53.

Cazinet, the, McKendree author of,
11, 43.

Catholicity of Methodism, 48.

Christmas Conference, the, its call, 5,
60, 75 ff, 130 ff; elects Coke and As-
bury joint superintendents, 5; sum-
mary of action and nature of, 32, 33,
66, 67, 82, 86; in what sense a con-
vention, 81, 130 ff, 140 ff; meets, 88;
membership of, 88, 89; two printed
records of, 94 ff; sources for the his-
tory of, 98 ff; its work, 120 ff; self-
created and self-sufficient, 136, 137;
created the M. E. Church, 137, 138.

Circular letter, Mr. Wesley’s, 83, 84.

Coke, Thomas, his episcopal ordina-

tion and the grounds thereof, 4,.
(171)
172

27; elected joint superintendent by
Christmas Conference, 5; his super-
intendency, 8, 9; relations with As-
bury, 9; presidency in General Con-
ference, 9; correspondence with
O’Kelly, 39; quoted, 39, 57, 75,
76, 122, 181; arrives in America,
75; meets Asbury, 76; presidency
in Christmas Conference, 89, 90;
preaching, 96; Journal, title-page
and description of, 113-115; other
works, 116.

‘Coke and Asbury, Notes to the Disci-
pline quoted, 36.

‘Conference first in America, 59; pow-
ers in 1782, 64, 65; General and An-
nual complementary, 123.

Constitution of 1808, 11.

‘Cooper, Ezekiel, quoted, 80 (foot-
note); his Funeral Discourse on
Asbury, 99, 119.

Council, the, 35, 38, 39, 110.

Creighton, Rev. James, assisted in
original Methodist ordinations at
Bristol, 31.

Curry, Dr. Daniel, quoted, 168.

Derp or Deciaration, 52, 54.

Dickins, John, 89, 102.

Dickinson, Rev. Peard, his participa-
tion in Methodist ordinations dis-
cussed, 31; further history of, 32.

Discipline of 1785, quoted, 120, 121,
138; title-page quoted, 98; full title-
page and description, 100, 101;
of 1786, full title-page and de-
‘scription, 105, 106; title cited, 141;
of 1787, full title-page, 106; title-
page, quoted, 89, 102; of 1788, full

‘title-page and description, 106; of

 

 

INDEX.

1789, full title-page and description,
106, 107; of 1790, full title-page and
description, 107; of 1791, full title-
page and description, 107, 108; of
1792, full title-page and description,
108, 109; title-page quoted, 92; en-
actment of, 145, 146.

District Conferences, possibilities of,
23.

District, earliest use of term, 34.

Districts, episcopal, principles of fixed
in 1816, 12; suggestions in 1824 by
General Conference, 15; action in
1832, 16, 17.

Eccrzstasticat Principles and Polity
of the Wesleyan Methodists, quoted,
50, 51; described, 51 (footnote).

Elders, Whatcoat’s parchment, 30;
elected and ordained at Christmas
Conference, 33; duties assigned in
first Discipline, 33; duties added in
1786, 34; in 1787, 35.

Electors, episcopal, proposed, 10, 11,

Embury, Philip, 47.

Entwisle, Joseph, 49.

Episcopacy, account of origin of in
Discipline of 1789, 5.

Episcopal Church, organized in 1784,
67, 68.

Episcopal districts, principles of fixed
in 1816, 12; suggestions in 1824 by
General Conference, 15; action in
1832, 16, 17.

Examination, English, for admission
to Conference, 50.

Expulsions, from ministry, in Eng-
lish Methodism, 54,

FEeprrartion, 23.
INDEX.

Fluvanna, Conference at, 61; ordina-
tions, 28, 29, 61, 62; suppression of
ordinations and sacraments, 62, 67,
68, 79, 139.

Fry, Benj. St. James, Life of What-
coat, 118, 119.

Full connection, admission into in
England, 52.

GaLLoway, Bisnor C. B., assists in
ordinations at British Conference,
53.

Garrettson, Freeborn, enters itineran-
cy, 60; messenger to call Christmas
Conference, 76, 88; works of, 116,
119; quoted, 168.

Gatch, Philip, 61, 93.

General Conference, Asbury’s use of
the term, 84, 85; use in England,
85 (footnote) ; secretary of, 91; Lee’s
notation of, 142; use of in caption
of Minutes, 150 ff, 155.

George, Enoch, elected bishop, 11;
relations with colleagues, 12, 15, 16.

Gury, quoted, 166.

Heppine, Evisag, elected bishop, 14;
relations with colleagues, 15, 16;
visits Southern Conferences but
once in twenty years, 19.

Hollingsworth, Francis, quoted, 111;
referred to, 112.

JrineRaNncy, compact of, 69; advan-
tages of, 19, 70; concluding history
of, 70, 71.

Journaz of Asbury, full title-page and
description of, 109-112.

Journal of Coke, full title-page and
description of, 113-115.

 

173:

Larce Minutes, basis of first Disci-
pline, 95; Robert Emory corrected,.
138 (footnote).

Lednum, Rev. John, quoted, 60, 89.

Lee, Dr. L. M., quoted, 94, 148.

Lee, Jesse, opposes the Council, 39;
quoted, 35, 40, 41, 62, 64, 65, 88, 92,
93, 103, 122, 123, 142 ff, 147, 148, 149,
150, 154; his History estimated, 99,.
100; title-page of, 119.

Leo XIIL., quoted, 162.

Letter, Circular, Mr. Wesley’s, 83;.
analyzed, 132, 133; original copy
of, 184 (footnote); incorrect punc--
tuation of, 134 (footnote); two
earliest copies compared, 155 (foot-
note).

Liguori, quoted, 166.

Location, right of, 69.

Matuer, ALEXANDER, ordained super-
jntendent by Mr. Wesley, 5, 31.

McClintock, Dr. John, quoted, 92.

McKendree, William, elected bishop,
11; relations with Asbury, 11; orig-
inator of the Cabinet, 11, 43; hesi-
tates about episcopal districts, 12,
13; relations with colleagues, 15, 16;
in O’Kelly’s district, 38.

Memoirs of Protestant Episcopal
Church, by Bishop White, 169.

Memoirs of Whatcoat, by Phoebus,
117.

Methodism, American, organized as
an Episcopal Church, 67.

Methodist Protestant Church, Con-
stitution and Discipline cited, 141
(footnote).

Ministerial character, how conferred,.
48, 49,
174

Minutes, American, quoted, 60, 61, 62,
63, 65, 122, 139, 148, 151; in ques-
tion and answer form, 93.

Minutes, English, quoted, 48, 49, 52,
58, 54, 55, 56; in question and
answer form, 90.

Minutes, Large, basis of first Disci-
pline, 95; Robert Emory corrected,
188 (footnote).

Minutes of 1795, title-page, description
and discussion of, 101-105, 149-156;
for quotations from, see Minutes,
American.

O’Keiiy, James, ordained elder, 33,
40; opposition to the Council, 38,
39; correspondence with Wesley
and Coke, 39; continuously presid-
ing elder, 39, 40; withdraws, 40;
works of, 117.

Orders, origin of, in Methodism, 28,
29, 66, 140; Roman and Anglican,
161 ff.

Ordination, by imposition of hands,
when and how begun in British
Conference, 53, 61, 189.

Pastora term, in England, 54, 55; in
America, 60, 70.

Pearson, Dr. John, quoted, 89.

Phoebus, William, works of, 117, 119,
168.

Pierce, William, quoted, 50, 51.

Pilmoor, Joseph, comes to America,
47.

Plan of Pacification, English, 54.

Plan of Separation, American, 17.

Presiding eldership, coeval with the
Church, 34; duties of, 34, 35, 36;
earliest occurrence of the title, 35;
chronology of the title, 37; appoint-

 

INDEX.

ment and term in the office, 40, 41;
action in 1792, 42; action of 1840,
42.

Private Sources for history of Christ-
mas Conference, discriminated and
enumerated, 99, 109 ff.

Probationary term, 62, 63.

Protestant Episcopal Church, White’s
Memoirs of, 169.

Public Sources for history of Christ-
mas Conference, discriminated and
enumerated, 98, 100 ff.

QUARTERLY CONFERENCES, primitive
jurisdiction in America, 58; first
held in America, 59.

Rankin, THomas, first general assist-
ant in America, 3; ordained by
Wesley, 31; comes to America, 47;
succeeds Asbury, 58; exercises ap-
pointing power, 59; closes his Amer=
ican work, 60; testimony of Asbury
and Bangs, 61.

Resolution of submission, adopted
by Christmas Conference, 8, 33;
repealed, 8, 33.

Rigg, Dr. James H., quoted, 166, 167.

Roberts, R. R., elected bishop, 11;
relations with colleagues, 12, 15.

SEABURY, SAMUEL, ordination of, 29.

Secretaries, of British Conference, 90;
of General Conference, 90; of An-
nual Conferences, 93.

Shadford, George, comes to America,
47.

Sheldon, Dr. H. C., obligations to, 168
(footnote).

Soule, Joshua, doubts constitution-
ality of episcopal districts, 13; scru-
INDEX.

175

 

ples removed, 14; elected bishop,
14; relations with colleagues, 15, 16;
quoted, 34, 128; assists in English
ordinations, 53.
Sources, Public and Private, for history
of Christmas Conference, 98, 99 ff.
South Carolina Conference, Minutes
of cited, 93 (footnote).

Stevens, Abel, quoted, 31, 58, 81, 82.

Strawbridge, Robert, 47; pleads for
the sacraments, 59; first to admin-
ister, 61.

Sunday Service, of 1784, title-page
and contents, 101.

Superannuated preachers, provision
for in England, 55.

Superintendency, General, advantages
and dangers of, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23.

Superintendents, joint, powers and
responsibility of, 6, 7; proposed
modifications, in 1800, 10; five in
1824, 14.

Supernumerary preachers, provision
for in England, 55.

Term, Pastoral, in England, 54, 55;
in America, 60, 70.

Term, Probationary, 62, 63.

Thomas Aquinas, quoted, 165.

Trent, Catechism of, quoted, 162, 163;
Decrees of, 164, 165.

Vasey, Tuomas, ordained presbyter,
5, 27.

THE

Ware, THomas, quoted, 34, 64; Life
and Travels of, 118; article and let-
ter by, 118.

Warren, Dr. W. F., Constitutional Law
Questions cited, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.
Watters, William, presides in Confer-

ence, 61; autobiography, 118.

Webb, Thomas, 47.

Wesley, Charles, his protest against
his brother’s ordaining, 5; objec-
tions to Coke’s ordination sermon,
116.

Wesley, John, exercised episcopal
office in England, 3; grounds of his
ordination of Coke, 4, 27; ordains
Mather superintendent, 5; powers
claimed under resolution of sub-
mission, 8; design in 1784, 27;
quoted, 116, 131; approved the
Christmas Conference, 132.

Whatcoat, Richard, ordained presby-
ter, 5, 27; elected bishop, 10; rela-
tions to Asbury, 10; ordination
parchment as elder, 30; reasons for

- inserting, 31; Memoirs, 117; Fry’s
Life of, 117, 118.

White, Bishop William, Memoirs of,
169.

Wightman, Bishop, quoted, 31.

Winans, Dr. William, speech in 1824,
14.

Wright, Richard, comes to America,
47.

 

END.