History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

Mr. Wesley generally held a Conference in Ireland for the same purpose." The reader has been made
sufficiently acquainted with Wesley's Conferences to see how farfetched is the illustration and the
cases without parallel. It suited the purpose, however, and no doubt satisfied not a few who were no
better informed. Four general fasts were appointed for the year. The probation for membership in the
society was now three months. Of the 10,500 members only 873 were north of the southern boundary
of Pennsylvania, yet the war was ravaging Virginia and the Carolinas at this time, and it is a
phenomenal fact that, despite the action of the Conference as to slavery, the South was, and ever has
been, the principal theater of its most brilliant achievements for Christ. Revival work was also
extensive in the South this year; but the preachers suffered many hardships; following Asbury, some
were non-jurors, but were drafted and maltreated, some found refuge in the Episcopal Church, others
made shipwreck of faith, and not a few perforce retired; but the depleted ranks were recruited by
young converts to the heart-witnessing religion of Wesleyan doctrine, — and it must be repeated,
not the system as such, — inspiring a zeal that consumed them for service and sacrifice.
Asbury was always on the wing, having entered upon those wonderful tours of the whole work,
making the circuit about twice a year. His personal experience was always alive and flaming, except
when the bile depressed him. The allusions are plentiful, "I am filled with love from day to day —
I always find the Lord present when I go to a throne of grace." A few days after the last Conference
adjourned he says, "I wrote to my father and to Mr. Wesley." He is down in North Carolina using
the magic of his presence and persuasive force to win over the preachers and the people, who had
been mightily convinced at both the Fluvanna and the Manakintown Conferences by John Dickins,
the educated and intellectual Englishman, that the Presbyterian and not the Episcopal form of church
government had the authority of Scripture and history, and who successfully withstood Asbury in
the argumentative bout until he almost despaired of his purpose. O'Kelly's account of it is quaintly
perspicuous, both for Fluvanna and Manakintown Conferences: "After there had been much
disputing, John, whose surname was Dickins, made appear from Scripture that a Presbytery and not
Episcopacy was the divine order. Then it pleased the Conference to form a Presbytery and ordain
elders. We went out in the name of the Lord, and the pleasure of the Lord prospered in our hands."
It needs to be repeated parenthetically that this is true. For two or three years, in the absence of
Asbury and his Episcopal leadership, unprecedented success up to that time attended these
Presbyterian Methodist preachers of evangelical doctrine, and all the essentials of Methodism were
preserved: and this is in evidence that equal success would have attended American Methodism, with
a strong probability that its organic unity would have been conserved. O'Kelly resumes: "Tidings of
this soon reached the northern preachers, and Francis (Asbury) wrote that we should meet in
Conference at Manakintown, to consider the matter more minutely. We met accordingly; and Francis
from the North and John from the South were chief speakers. Francis raised his argument from an
author (Wesley), who advised the Methodists never to leave the established church. But John drew
his arguments from the New Testament, proving thereby that the true church was not the Episcopal
order. Conference broke, and a separation was the result." [3]
It may be in place to state another fact of a different character. This James O'Kelly was one of
Asbury's presiding elders, and was noted for his rigid discipline and assertion of authority, and this
has sometimes been availed of against him when he posed as a Reformer. It was also true of not a
few of the later Methodist preachers and people who struggled and suffered in the Reform of
1820-30. But it is not intrinsically to their discredit. With increasing light came change of sentiment,