History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

exhortation, the preacher shall deliver the bread, saying, 'The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, etc.,
after the Church order.'"
It is observable that though this Conference was outlawed by Asbury, these regulations were
found so sensible, broad, and scriptural that they remain to this day parts of the Discipline except that
the Prayer Book forms, which these liberal-minded preachers practically rejected, were incorporated
when Mr. Wesley's Sunday Service for the American Methodists was brought over by Dr. Coke and
accepted by the Christmas Conference of 1784. The plan of appointments (there is no information
as to the manner of making it, whether by Gatch or the Commission) covered the whole field except
Delaware and points north of Maryland. Asbury's name does not appear in the printed Minutes at all,
as it had not in the two previous Conferences. The appointments for Baltimore and Frederick were
the same in both bodies. The vote being taken on the sacramental question, it was carried by a vote
of eighteen in the affirmative. Watters, the only member who attended both sessions, says, "A few
did not agree" with the affirmative. It is due to Watters to record in passing that he "received no
notice of the Asbury Conference, but hearing of it indirectly, determined if possible to get there,
though in a weak state of health, in order that he might persuade Asbury to attend the regularly
[8]
appointed Conference." He was President of the Leesburg Conference of 1778, and there is little
doubt that he was at the time in sympathy with the Fluvanna brethren. Freeborn Garrettson, who was
also at the Asbury Conference, in his semi-centennial sermon admits that Fluvanna was the regular
Conference. So that, of the eleven preachers who attended, it is far from conclusive that they did so
because they approved his proceedings, but, once under Asbury's magnetic influence and persuasive
reasoning, they agreed to his proposals.
Before the Conference at Fluvanna adjourned, the "presbytery" before noted ordained one another,
and then all of the preachers but the few who did not agree. As Watters attended Asbury's
Conference from Fairfax County, Va., as he tells, in order to persuade him to go to the regular
Conference, it would seem that he might have done so if he had wished, as it must have been as easy
and as free from risk for Asbury to find the Fluvanna Conference as it was for the invited brethren
to find him, thus establishing a probability that, foreseeing that he would be overborne by the action
at Fluvanna, he determined not to attend, but call in anticipation an irregular conference to do his
will. To use a vulgar illustration, "He took the bit in his teeth." Philip Gatch had retired in 1777,
being one of the few married men, but such was the respect in which he was held that he was elected
to preside over the Conference of 1779. That he was liberal in his sentiments, one proof is in the fact
that to him the laity of the societies were indebted for a change in the mode of trial. Stevens says,
"The Church owes to him one of its most momentous legislative measures: the trial of accused
members by committees in place of the previous clerical power of excommunication." The Fluvanna
Conference adjourned, to meet at Manakintown, Powhatan County, Va., May 8, 1780. Asbury
records in his Journal, under date July 30, 1779: "I received the minutes of the Virginia Conference,
by which I learn the preachers there effected a lame separation from the Episcopal Church, that will
last about a year. I pity them; Satan has a desire to have us that he may sift us as wheat." The irony
is biting, and it stands with numerous other deliverances which prove that this good man was after
all severely human. Of such references the candid Stevens says: "Asbury's judgment was always
severe in such cases. His own iron conscientiousness, and his rigorous habits of 'discipline,' led him
to condemn deviations from 'order' as dangerous, if not disastrous sins; and many of his allusions