History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

METHODIST REFORM
Edward J. Drinkhouse, M.D., D.D.
Volume I
CHAPTER 22
The Deed of Declaration and the Christmas Conference the acme of wisdom or fundamental
errors; logically considered — What was intended by Wesley in contrast with what was done —
Cumulation of evidence — How Coke secured his ordination by Wesley; the methods exposed —
The testimonials Coke brought to America, and how they were either garbled or suppressed — Was
Coke made a presiding presbyter or a bishop; English Wesleyan opinions — Coke's arrival in
America; interview with Dickins in which the "little sketch" of government was disclosed for the
first and only time except to Asbury — Bishop Seabury; declinature of Coke and Asbury to receive
ordination from him, and become Protestant Episcopalians, with new evidence of it — Events prior
to the Christmas Conference.
The Christmas Conference of 1784 is in view with its antecedents and consequents for careful and
impartial consideration. It was the climacteric event in the history of American Methodism, and
sustains the same relation to it as the Deed of Declaration does to British Methodism. Pre-intimation
has been given in the introductory chapter that these two events are estimated, either as the
summation of ecclesiastical wisdom, entailing and perpetuating, as they did in the latter case, a
governmental system which constituted a Church for the ministry; recognizing it as the first and only
estate depository of legislative, judicial, and executive functions, to the utter exclusion of the
preponderating element of the locality as its second estate; and of the membership, the very base of
the Church pyramid and the third estate; whom Christ as the Head of the Church recognized, and for
the service of which, from Pentecost, a ministry was called of the Holy Ghost and elected by the
people a ministry for the Church. Or these two events are estimated as the fundamental errors
respectively by Wesley for the English societies and by Asbury for the American, in ecclesiastical
polity, as violative of the precedents of the New Testament churches and the whole structure of
brotherhood by equality in all relations, more intrinsically demanded even than in civil government
in ideal realization.
This may be the place for the general admission that though the contention of this History is, that
these two events were fundamental errors of Church polity, that of the Deed of Declaration, already
traversed and submitted to the judgment of the reader, and that for the organization of the Christmas
Conference, now to be made evidential, no question need be raised against the supporting facts that
for both these events the successional prestige given them by Wesley and Asbury, with the conceded
efficiency and potentiality of the autocratic and oligarchic polities as such, has given them a
vantage-ground which has easily assured them leadership in the Methodisms of the world. It is not
in anticipation that this leadership will ever be abdicated or lost in the growing successes of the
excised and secedent denominations. It was and is their providential mission to materialize the true
ideals of church government as taught by Christ and the apostles, and demonstrate their congruity
with Methodistic doctrine and its peculiar means of grace. This they are doing, and by reflex
influences operating from without, and combining with the inevitable struggle of these same
germinal principles within the old organizations (perpetually fomented whenever thought and