History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

organization of the M. E. Church and the ordination of Asbury. There must have been a motive for
it. What was it? Conjecture can be indulged. He returned in haste to England on the death of Wesley,
and it was believed by the English preachers that his sudden coming was in the hope that he would
succeed Wesley. This hope he cherished for some years. He knew that the whole American business
was looked upon with suspicion by the preachers, and practically repudiated by them. It would
remove a source of irritation to them if his reprint Journal should omit all reference, and it was done.
If not the correct reason, it is amenable to reason.
14 Jesse Lee, in his "History," says that the three Conferences appointed in 1784 for North Carolina,
Virginia, and Maryland, were held, that in Baltimore on the first of June, as Asbury notes in his
Journal. Lee's notes complicate the Situation, and are given that the reader can make his own
opinion. "This was the first time that we had more than our regular Conference in the same year. For
a few years before this we had two conferences in the same year, but they were considered only as
one, first begun in one place and then adjourned to another. Now there were three and no
adjournment. I have therefore considered the conferences as but one in the year, and have numbered
them accordingly; but from this time I shall consider the number of the conferences as I find them
in the minutes. This year, and the two succeeding years, the minutes were called Minutes of the
General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. The business of the three
conferences was all arranged in the minutes as if it had all been done at one time and place." The last
remark is certainly true. There is not an indication in the printed minutes that these three conferences
were held so soon after the Christmas Conference, or that they were held at all. Nor can you tell from
the printed Minutes, so-called of that Christmas Conference, a copy of which is now before me, but
which minutes are, in reality, a reprint of the Discipline as agreed upon, largely taken from Wesley's
larger minutes, what was the actual business of that Conference, and nothing at all as to the
ordinations; neither do they include the service for ordinations. But as these are found in the Sunday
Service, it was unnecessary to include them in the Discipline also. So it may be that the action anent
the suspension of the rules on slavery was had at the three subsequent conferences, and not at the
Christmas Conference; and so as to the plan of appointments forming a part of that Conference
according to the printed Minutes of 1795.* There is a wonderful crudeness in all the proceedings as
they have come down. Perhaps clearness was not one of the objects sought, so that some
questionable proceedings are in the obscurity best befitting them, as shall be presently shown.
*The apparent contradiction of these statements is reconciled with the averment of a few pages
back that the plan of appointments, as made by the Christmas Conference, superseded the three
called conferences of 1784-5 only in that fact. As Lee avers, they were formally held, but without
a change in the appointments until that in Baltimore in the spring of 1786.
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