History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

minutes as printed. To that portion of Wesley's circular letter which speaks of the setting apart of
Coke as a "superintendent" an asterisk follows the word, and a foot-note is supplied to this effect:
"As the translators of our version of the Bible have used the English word Bishop instead of
Superintendent, it has been thought by us that it would appear more scriptural to adopt the term
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bishop." Accordingly "us," who could have been no other than Dr. Coke, and, constructively,
Asbury, in the body of the historical statement, uses the terms as interchangeable,— "the elected
superintendent or bishop," — but the Episcopal word does not appear in the disciplinary minutes as
taken, at the time of the Christmas Conference. These then are pure interpolations of what the
Conference did, and are the fragile basis of the whole Episcopal invention as it appertains to the
Methodist Episcopal Church. And this historical statement furnishes satisfactory reasons for the
destruction of the plan of Wesleyan government contained in the "little sketch"; of the suppression
of the "testimonial" of ordination Coke carried with him, and of the mutilation of Wesley's Circular
letter for the societies in America. No marvel that Asbury spent the 4th of July, 1785, as already
quoted, reading, "I spent three hours profitably in reading the printed minutes of the Conference."
They can be quite carefully read in half an hour, but they furnished food for serious reflection, and
much admiration for the adroitness of his compeer in office, "superintendent or bishop," Coke.
Asbury's long cherished plan for organizing an Episcopal Church was realized. He had molded Dr.
Coke to his views, and as the plan agreed with his own conceptions, he was not hard to persuade.
He saw that there were practical obstructions to Wesley's plan, and the contention of these pages is
not that a strong case cannot be made for Asbury's view of it; it is that the methods employed to
impress the preachers with the conviction that Asbury and Coke's plan was Wesley's plan, and that
"he counseled and recommended it," and by so doing giving a gloss to the facts of history, were
questionable and unwarrantable. It is intended to make this position a demonstration when the
subject shall be closely analyzed under the McCaine-Emory controversy of 1827-30. The contention
is that the truth of history demands that all reference to the counsel of Wesley and his
recommendation of the organization of American Methodism into the Methodist Episcopal Church
shall be expunged from the historical preface of the Discipline of that Church now persisted in under
modifications for more than a hundred years, in the face of facts and arguments that incontestably
prove the contrary. McCaine first exhumed these facts and arguments, and so thoroughly satisfied
himself that he pronounced the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church, so far as it claimed
Wesley's counsel and recommendation for it, a "fraud," as "surreptitiously introduced," as "foisted
upon the Methodist societies." He found a spade, and he called it a spade, as shall be exhibited later.
These pages, however, shall not so characterize the methods, but will claim and demonstrate that
they were "questionable and unwarrantable." At the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, in New Orleans in 1866, the committee appointed for the revision of the Discipline
did subsequently expunge the entire historical preface on this subject, and which had been also
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perpetuated in that Church from 1846, when organized, down to 1866. It has never been restored,
so that unwittingly as to the Church in general and its ministers, it has set itself right on this vital
question of ecclesiastical veracity. A later generation of Methodist preachers have looked into these
matters with some degree of impartiality, appropriating the facts elicited by McCaine and other
workers in this realm of the esoteric in their Church history, and have become convinced that their
Church cannot longer afford to carry this stigma of unattested statement. Rev. Dr. Warren, President
of the Boston University, of the M. E. Church, in an able article in the Methodist Review prior to
the General Conference of 1892, called for the expurgation of the misstatements; but it was not
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pressed upon that General Conference, and nothing was done. It will yet be done; the truth-loving