History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

it ? Wesley, when he received the account of it through Coke and the minutes as well, and, perhaps,
through others of his American correspondents, would not condone Asbury's conduct, ready as he
always was to extenuate the lapses of his friends. Years afterward, 1796, Asbury let out a secret of
his correspondence with Wesley, and says: "For this [leaving his name off the minutes] Mr. Wesley
blamed me, and was displeased that I did not rather reject the whole connection, or leave them if they
did not comply. But I could not give up the connection so easily after laboring and suffering so many
years with and for them." It is not often that Asbury is betrayed into special pleading like this — in
modern parlance, availing himself of the "baby act." He was the connection. It might leave him, as
it did at the Fluvanna Conference, only to disclose this very fact — he was the connection. A wave
of his hand in stay of proceedings and the minute with Wesley's name would have remained. There
can be no question with the impartial that these several acts brought about the culmination of
Asbury's desire, — an end of which he never lost sight: to be the Primate of American Methodism.
Atkinson has well said: "Henceforth Francis Asbury was recognized as, what he had long been in
fact, the governing mind of American Methodism. He was the Wesley of the New World." Nicholas
Snethen gives the same verdict while combining with it a high tribute to Asbury: "I assume it as a
fact that Francis Asbury was the father of the system which goes under the name of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. Without his agency and influence it never could have been what it is now. Mr.
Wesley and Dr. Coke might have written, but their theories would have remained, in a great measure,
a dead letter. The vast ability with which this great man presided over these elements was fully
equaled by his sincerity. He had the utmost confidence in the plan as the best that could be devised
to promote the work of God in this country."
The work is monumental today it girdles the world; but its greatest boast is not due to the system
of Asbury, much as it may have done in a contributory sense, but to its doctrines and the impulse of
the Holy Spirit through them; for other forms of Methodism share fully in this impulse under a
totally diverse, and, as the writer believes, a more scriptural, rational, and ideally correct theory,
which has proven itself in practice all-sufficient for the successful embodiment of every Methodist
feature. In all its forms it remains true, "A revival Church in its spirit — a missionary Church in its
organization." As to the system, presently it will be seen that its exponent did not fully understand
his own spirit — no autocrat ever does. His assumptions grew rapidly until the spirit of
Americanism, not to say of apostolical religion, could brook no more, and his iron will was
measurably broken. Presently it will be seen that the system is responsible — the postulate from the
beginning — for rending the body by schism, a foretoken of many that were to follow and which
must be fathered upon the system. Wesley, soon after the Conference of 1787, found out his fatal
error in the ordinations, in view of his manifest purpose to keep the Methodisms of the world under
his personal authority while he lived, and, constructively at least, a part of the Church of England.
The American preachers found out that they committed an error in breaking away from his authority,
not then seeing that one just as absolute would take its place, and upon some of them it dawned —
an increasing number as time and events grew upon them how much was lost, when the Fluvanna
Conference surrender of their inherent Christian and natural rights took place.
And the mention of rights leads by association of ideas to the contention of the apologists of Coke
and Asbury in the doings of 1784 and 1787: the contention of Bangs and Stevens and others in
monographic displays that the preachers had a right to organize an independent Church; that they had
a right to set aside Wesley's authority when it became too meddlesome. There can be no doubt of it