History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

METHODIST REFORM
Edward J. Drinkhouse, M.D., D.D.
Volume I
CHAPTER 12
The decade of 1805-15 — Extorted modifications of the Poll-Deed — Dr. Coke and Foreign
Missions — Committee of Privileges acts — Revivals and their leaders — Lorenzo Dow; sketch of
his history — English camp-meetings under Clowes and the Bournes; Conference opposition —
Expulsions of the leaders — Origin of the Primitive Methodists in 1810 — History of this
organization as the second liberal Methodism in England — Another fruit of the Deed of Declaration
as enforced by the Conference, and of entailed Paternalism — Marvelous success of the new
movement under liberal principles.
The next decade, from 1805 to 1815, will furnish material for another chapter of English
Methodism. The minutes do not record any special changes in the polity of the Conference, except
such modifications as were found expedient and quietly incorporated through the influence of the
New Connection system which was growing side by side with its parent. Wesley would hardly have
recognized the system he enforced and which he endeavored to entail by the Poll-Deed, so radical
were the changes made in deference to popular demand and the superior forecast of such men as
Bunting. This freedom, the equality of personal rights guaranteed under the British Constitution,
exerted its reflex influence upon the minds of Methodists, and the fallacy that church government
to be effective must be something different from constitutional civil government, the precedents of
the New Testament being ignored, could not be concealed under the plea of Wesley's name as an
excuse and justification of arbitrary methods. Even the loyal Wesleyan preacher did his own
thinking, and learned that personal rights must be extorted either by the method of reform or
revolution. One of these quiet movements within the Conference in 1814, brought about another
modification of the Deed of Declaration more in consonance with these personal rights of Christian
manhood. That instrument restricted the election of a President and Secretary, annually, to the Legal
Hundred. It was a spectacle of class, close corporation government when a Conference of 850
ministers and preachers sat in their seats awaiting the choice of 100 of their number as to who should
preside over them. It could not be perpetuated, and a less autocratic mind than Wesley's would have
foreseen it. The pressure upon the Legal Hundred wrought the change, but like all bodies, time
immemorial, who hold securely vested powers, they doled out concession in scant measure. It was
conceded that preachers of fourteen years' standing might vote for President and Secretary, but the
election to be subject to the separate vote of the Legal Hundred, thus circumventing the Poll-Deed,
and all vacancies in the Legal Hundred were to be filled three out of four by themselves by the old
rule of seniority, but the fourth by ballot without restriction as to age. Stevens suggests that the
change was made that Bunting might be elevated. This desire was likely a factor in the
modifications. There were a few cogs less in the revolving wheel of exclusive authority. The
liberty-loving English preacher breathed a little freer. It served to quiet that discontent which a
parental or oligarchic system is sure to foment perpetually.
Dr. Coke (for as such he was always known, and never in England as superintendent or bishop)
lost no opportunity to further missions in Methodism. He kept the foreign work well in hand,