History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

sense of the ministry, of the King James translators of the Scriptures, giving to these episcopi the title
of bishops. In fact, he had become a Presbyterian while he remained in form an Episcopalian.
It was not a new opinion. Forty years before, Lord King's account of the primitive Church
convinced him "that bishops and presbyters are of one order"; in 1756 he wrote, "I still believe the
Episcopal form of church government to agree with the practice and writings of the apostles" (and
he explained this farther by declaring that he believed the Established Church of England the "best
form for a National Church," and anent this there will be little dissent by any one); "but that it is
prescribed in scripture, I do not believe." Again, in 1761, he said that Stillingfleet had convinced him
that to believe that none but episcopal ordination was valid "was an entire mistake." And finally, in
1780, prior to his actually setting apart as a presbyter, he startled his brother Charles by declaring,
"I verily believe I have as good a right to ordain as to administer the Lord's Supper." After the
collocation of these deliverances, the position taken that, ecclesiastically, he was a Presbyterian and
not an Episcopalian seems established beyond successful contradiction. It sweeps away a great mass
of cobweb spinning and fruitless logomachy of three grades of an episcopacy as proven from the
Fathers in order to transfigure the simple ceremony over Coke in that private chamber into anything
but an assignment of Coke by Wesley to be a superintendent with authority to confer the same office,
not order, upon Asbury in America, into something else. The only excuse at all for a ceremony is
found in the specious reasons urged by Coke, and the more potent fact that Wesley was the father
and founder of the Methodists, and as such had a priority and an authority that may be easily
conceded him.
The general view thus presented has been the traditional view of leading Wesleyan ministers, with
marked exceptions, and that upon which their own Presbyterian polity is based; and it has been the
declared view in logical sequence of the leading ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church of
America from the period when the case of Bishop Andrews was made a crucial one in 1844, the
action of that General Conference pronouncing that the bishopric in that Church is an office and not
an order, to pave the way for the position it assumed that he could resign or they could suspend him
to accomplish the purpose then in hand. True, there have been eminent dissenters since, revamping
the old position that Coke and Asbury and their successors were in some sense and in some grade
a third order, as well as officers in the Church they represent, a position more generally adhered to
in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Tyerman, who may be accepted as a criterion of English
Wesleyan sentiment, thus defines it: "What was the ordination to be? The only one possible was this.
Wesley was the venerable father of the 15,000 Methodists in America. He was not able to visit them
himself, but sends them Dr. Coke. The doctor pretends that it is more than possible that some of the
American preachers and societies will refuse to acknowledge his authority. To remove this objection,
Wesley, at Bristol, in a private room, holds a religious service, puts his hands upon the head of Coke,
and (to use his own words) sets him apart as a superintendent of the work in America, and gives him
a written testimonial to that effect. This was all that Wesley did, and all that Wesley meant; but we
greatly doubt whether it was all that the departing envoy wished. With the highest respect for Dr.
Coke and his general excellencies, it is no detraction to assert that he was dangerously ambitious,
and that the height of his ambition was a desire to be a bishop. . . . These are unpleasant facts; which
we would rather have consigned to oblivion, had they not been necessary to vindicate Wesley from
the huge inconsistency of ordaining a coequal presbyter to be a bishop. Wesley meant the ceremony