History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

Why do the printed Minutes take no notice of the Manakintown Conference? Undoubtedly they
were properly kept and forwarded to the Asbury party, as they had been the previous year. The
answer is plain: when the manuscript copies were printed by Dickins, under the supervision of Coke
and Asbury, in 1795, the regular Conference is historically blotted out so far as such an act made it
possible. Stevens is justly indignant that "it is unmentioned in all our contemporary official
documents." Before leaving the Asbury Conference, it must be noted that it placed itself on record
as the first American Temperance Society, antedating all other organizations. "Do we disapprove of
the practice of distilling grain into liquor? Shall we disown our friends who will not renounce the
practice? Yes."
The Manakintown regular Conference met May 28, 1780, according to adjournment. The minutes
having been repudiated by the bishops in the edition of 1795, dependence for information is left to
Watters and Garrettson and Asbury himself unofficially. All were present who attended the previous
year. It is not known who presided, but presumably Gatch, and it is significant that Asbury, though
present with Garrettson and Watters, is unrecognized, except as a preacher in the societies. Watters
says, in substance, that on reaching the assembled Conference they were invited to be present, and
that they "found the brethren as determined as ever in persevering in their newly adopted mode, with
the added argument that the Lord had greatly blessed them in it. He tells of the tears and the sobs and
the prayers, effective weapons with tender-hearted preachers. Watters preached, and after waiting
two days, "and all hopes of an accommodation failing, we had fixed on turning back in the morning."
Finally, "one of their own party in Conference (none of the others being present) — it was probably
Gatch, who made this private interview with the Baltimore men proposed that they would suspend
the ordinances for a year, and in the meantime Wesley" should be written to for a decision, and by
that they would abide. Gatch is suggested as making the proposal, for the reason that, at the
Baltimore Conference, after withstanding all suggestions of conciliation, he and Ellis looked with
favor on the proposal which came from Asbury to suspend the ordinances for a year, and thought it
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might be made the basis of negotiation. He now brings it forward at Manakintown, and the next
day submitted it to the Conference, coupled with a suggestion that Asbury be invited to travel
through their circuits, etc. For the time it secured the peace of the faction with the regulars.
They agreed to meet in Baltimore in May, 1781, as a united Conference. For the future unity of
American Methodism it was a, fatal compromise. Not a compromise, but a surrender. It was the lost
opportunity to organize Methodism on a liberal polity. They yielded their convictions for the time
under the spell of the magnetic presence of Asbury. As several times already admitted, the argument
before the fact as to the resultants is unsatisfactory, but it is now known from the comparative
success of the polity likely to have been then inaugurated, in the history of the Methodist Protestant
Church, that nothing essential to Methodism would have been sacrificed, and its organic unity in
America probably preserved. All the annalists agree in commending them for the Christian spirit of
their submission, but it has taken more than one hundred years even partially to undo the results of
this surrender. Asbury's account of the Manakintown Conference is characteristic. On his way he
preached in Fairfax County, Va., and says: "Prepared some papers for Virginia Conference. I go with
a heavy heart, and fear the violence of a party of positive men; Lord, give me wisdom." What a
strange conglomerate is even pious human nature. He fears the "violence of a party of positive men."
He seems utterly oblivious that himself and his retainers had done all the "violence" as a "positive
party." "He found the people full of the ordinances;" he had ridden into the open air of a free