History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

The preachers having had great difficulties about the appellation of the Rev. and Mr., that is, to call
a man by one of the Divine appellations, supposing Mr. to be an abbreviation of Master ('call no man
master on earth'), it was talked over in the yearly conference, for then we had no general conference
established. So we concluded it would be far best to give each man his official title, as deacon, elder
and bishop; to this the majority agreed." The reader may determine how far this explanation explains,
as against his contemporaries, O'Kelly and Lee.
Lee says this Discipline of 1787 consisted of thirty-one sections. An examination of the reprint
copy of 1787 reveals thirty-four, but the last three were added at this Conference. The thirty second
is the one Asbury says, as already cited, he drafted for the specific purpose of dealing more
summarily with "disorderly members," as he styles them. It provided for trial, not for immoralities
only, but for "disobedience to the order and discipline of the Church." Section thirty-three provided
for trial of ministers, including bishops, and the thirty-fourth is a new regulation as to stewards. The
one thing that certainly can be claimed for this new Discipline of Asbury's revising and
supplementing on the title page is, "Arranged under proper heads and Methodised in a more
acceptable and easy manner." It has these qualities. A further examination discloses a new section,
numbered First, which gives answers to the three questions — "What was the rise of Methodism in
Europe? What was the rise of Methodism, so called, in America? What may we reasonably believe
to be God's design in raising up the preachers called Methodists in America?" The answers form a
part of the historical preface to the Discipline to this day in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and is
admirably stated. Section second is the same as section first in the Discipline of 1785, but section
third is a recast with material changes and additions to Coke's prefatory statement as to the origin
of the Church in the printed minutes of 1784, but not found in the disciplinarian minutes of the same
year, the difference being accounted for only that the latter were intended for Wesley's eye and the
former for the American Church.
The title as given to this section by Asbury is also pretentious, "On the Nature and Constitution
of our Church." It is the first and, mayhap, the only time the word Constitution is used to describe
the extra-constitutional proceedings of sixty-one preachers, without delegation from any one,
instituting an organization, a body politic, without the consent of the governed; a proceeding without
parallel in Church or State claiming to be constitutional, a term utterly malapropos to the conditions
and circumstances; and which made it necessary one hundred years afterward that the General
Conference of this Church should appoint a Commission to discover and define what is to be
construed as its "Constitution"; but with very indifferent results as to the quest. In fact, the
Constitution has never been found, and never will be, until the people in primary assembly shall meet
and ordain one, the only way it can be established by all the recognized principles of jurisprudence
and common sense. The reasons assigned for the organization of an Independent Church are totally
dissimilar to those given by Dr. Coke. There is not a word about following the counsel of Mr.
Wesley and his recommendation of the Episcopal form. Why the radical change? Was it too much
for the conscience of Asbury who knew better? knew it as well as Coke himself; but he seems
lacking in the effrontery to blazon it again as history. Or was it because he thus early hesitated to link
the origin of his authority with Wesley, as he formally disallowed it not many years after? Asbury's
first paragraph recites as reasons, that the Church of England is "deficient in several of the most
important parts of Christian discipline"; that it has "lost the life and power of religion" that it is "a
National Church" and makes "servile devotion to the will of temporal governors" that further