History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

ENDNOTES
1 Buckley, in his "History of Methodism," Vol. I. p. 451, says "William Fiske and Dr. Capers were
elected fraternal delegates to the British Conference." In the light of the facts found in the running
text as just given, this statement is misleading. It must be put down to the haste of composition.
2 Among the signs of this pretentiousness about this time, 1840, to the amusement of the English
Christian world, and the grief of not a few Wesleyan Methodists, was the donning of full episcopal
canonicals by leading and lesser lights of the Conference. Even the brainful [sic] Jabez Bunting was
afflicted with this mania for clerical millinery, and appeared in his pulpit arrayed in all the toggery
of an episcopal priest. The London Wesleyan Magazine for the period has a frontispiece, for one
number, of Rev. Matthew Richey of the Conference, stationed at Toronto, Canada, arrayed in all the
glory of canonicals. There were not a few other instances. It was Wesleyan enough, it must be
admitted, as was the Sunday Service, abridged by him for the use of his Societies when he had no
thought of their ever becoming a Church; but now that they were clearly Dissenters in fact and law,
it was pitiable to see them aping the style of the National Church, which had spurned them, and
which was spurned by them in turn. It did not last long, however, but died with other episcopal
plumings, which were too grotesque for a serious Methodist congregation, even in England.
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