History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

METHODIST REFORM
Edward J. Drinkhouse, M.D., D.D.
PREFACE
The writing of a History of the Methodist Protestant Church was first suggested to me by the Rev.
W. C. Lipscomb in the autumn of 1877. Bassett's History had just been issued from the press.
Written from the point of view of "The Methodist" (Protestant) Church of the North and West it was
found quite unsatisfactory to the East and South, not so much from what it stated, as from what it
failed to state. Hence this suggestion to me, then editor of The Methodist Protestant, Baltimore, Md.
It was a surprise and not entertained. I had been a close student of Methodist history since 1850.
More mature reflection led to the conclusion that it might be my providential task, if proper leisure
and apt environment ever came to me, It led to a painstaking collection, often at considerable
personal expense, of all the sources and authorities bearing upon general Methodism and of the
Methodist Protestant Church in particular, through intervening years of exacting editorial toil down
to 1892. Then came retirement from official position and leisure for the work. It has been diligently
pursued through five years as an uncompensated labor of love and from a settled conviction that "the
truth of history" demanded the work at my hands. The result is before the reader in these octavo
volumes.
The Reform movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church during the decade of 1820-30, never
contemplated a separate Church organization. This was made a necessity by the Expulsions of
1827-30, as a concerted action of the authorities of that Church. Nor for a decade of years after 1830,
did the expelled and their seceding friends of governmental Reform in Methodism abandon the hope
that their quondam associates would become amenable to reason and the sense of restitution on terms
of reinstatement such as Christian manhood could accept. In consequence, inadequate care was taken
to preserve historical documents and the local story of Reform movements. Apart from the records
of its periodical press no attempt was made to embody the facts until 1843, when a twelvemo volume
was issued by Rev. James R. Williams, of Baltimore, Md., the cradle of Reform as it was of
Methodism. It covered succinctly the period to 1842. The small edition was soon exhausted, but it
was never republished, and fugitive copies are all that remain of this initial History. It was
unsatisfactory to North Carolina and the circumjacent territory as dealing too sparsely with the
movement in that section. Dr. J. T. Bellamy gathered material and wrote a History, but for
unexpressed reasons during his last illness ordered his son to burn it. Rev. Dr. John Paris, also of
North Carolina, in 1849, issued a twelvemo volume of more inclusive character and historical
analysis. Like the History of Williams, it answered the demand of the period, but was never
republished, and scattered copies only are to be found among our preachers and people. About
1855-60, Rev. Dr. Dennis B. Dorsey, Sr., then resident at Fairmont, W. Va. prepared a skeleton of
a Church History and had largely filled it in, but his decease cut short the work and it never appeared.
The Church had now grown in the West and North with a record of its own and on lines of
separation from the adhering conferences, and a demand was made for a history from its point of
view. It was furnished as already suggested by Rev. Dr. A. H. Bassett in a twelvemo volume, issued
in 1877. It was afterward enlarged and amended, and for a score of years has been the dependence
of the reunited Church. This triangular supply of data needed a central and unsectional array with
the addition of a logical connection and philosophical treatment. It was this task the writer undertook