History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

Commentary is an imperishable monument. He was instrumental in the conversion of Joseph
Butterworth, afterwards member of Parliament and the associate of Wilberforce, and enrolled with
Thornton, Buxton, and Thompson as leading laymen. William Bramwell is a name known to the
sacred biography of Methodism. "At one time," says Stevens, "he sympathized much with Kilham,
in his projects of 'reform,' but his deep piety saved him." Comment is forborne. Extraordinary scenes
attended his revivals. Samuel Hick, the "Village Blacksmith," is a memorable name in the ranks of
the local preachers. His career, as depicted by Stevens and by his biographer, reads like a romance.
He died in his seventy-first year in triumph, having spent more than fifty years in labor as a
blacksmith and service as a Methodist preacher and exhorter. Under such auspices the United
Societies increased in these seven years from 76,968 to 108,261. The itinerant ministry increased
from 313 to 399, and during the same time some 20 new chapels were erected. [2]
The eight Conferences from 1798 to 1806, being respectively the fifty-fifth to the sixty-third, were
presided over in order by Benson, Bradburn, Wood, Pawson, Taylor, Bradford, Moore, and Coke.
The excision of Kilham, the retirement of Thom and others from the Conference to join him, and the
secession of five thousand members left the old Conference in a condition of acquiescence in the
dominant party, the Legal Hundred and their supporters. There is no question that not a few of them
were in earnest sympathy with a more liberal form of government. Indeed, so widespread was the
espousal of such sentiments that, but for the Poll-Deed and its entrenchment of property power with
the minority, the insistence of the advocates of liberal views and the force of their logic would have
prevailed. It happened, as it always will in like controversial issues, that social ties, personal
pecuniary support for dependent families, the risk involved in a system yet in theory, the recusance
of the timid, and the uncertainties that loom up in such a venture quelled disaffection and, at least
outwardly, tranquilized the main body of Methodists. It must also be remembered that, besides the
coign of vantage enjoyed by the adherents, their convictions were quite as intense, so that any
innovation on the plan of Wesley meant destruction to the itinerancy and the decay of Methodism.
He had so proclaimed years before his departure. The title of all property must vest in the
Conference; there must be an absolute and unquestioning obedience to its behests in all matters,
specially that of the appointments, or ruin impended to the societies despite the vitality of its
doctrines and the piety of its members. The potential element was the machinery. That nothing of
the kind happened in the New Connection body and the other offshoots in England, in the Methodist
Protestant Church and other offshoots in America, served to dispel the illusion, and demonstrate that,
when leaders are wedded to power, they are blind and deaf, not to the logic of theory only, but to the
logic of facts as well. Much had been conceded, however, as has been found, and more probably
would have been but for the imperatives of the Poll-Deed, thus evidencing the truth of one of the
fundamentals, that it was responsible, directly or indirectly, for all the divisions in English
Methodism.
At least two important events took place between 1798 and 1806 in the Wesleyan Conference
history, which must receive passing notice as outcroppings of the quiet struggle which still went on
between the men of extreme views within it. On the 29th of March, 1799, Dr. Coke, having
conferred with his confidential friends, and secured their approval, wrote to the Bishop of London
one of those remarkable letters which remind us how thoroughly hierarchal he was in his convictions
of church polity, and how little value he attached to his third ordination by Wesley. The full text is
found in Drew's biography of Coke, pages 284-286. See Appendix B. The address is of the highest