History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

obedience in one over another of his mystical members, the Church. The same holds true of Asbury's
autocratic government of the American "Societies" as such, and while the same allowance for
expedient ends may be conceded, it was none the less violative of Christ's ecclesiastical ideal when
the sovereignty of government was entailed in 1784 in the organized hierarchy of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. Hence it cannot be admitted that the limited monarchy of England, based upon
popular suffrage in its representative House of Commons, can be in accord with Christ's ideal, and
therefore right, and an opposite system as ordained by the Deed of Declaration for the Wesleyan
Church be also in accord with it and right; any more than it can be admitted that the Republic of
America, based upon the sovereignty of the people, can be in accord and right, and the sovereignty
of government as displayed in the polity of the Methodist Episcopal Church be in accord and right
also. If the one be ideally right, the other must be ideally wrong, and so destroys for it all its
traditional claims and expedient policy. And this leads to the contention that a hierarchy in the
Church cannot peacefully abide, and be ultimately perpetuated in a civil republic, that of Rome not
excepted. A hundred years of internal strife, and a gradual reform in the Methodist Episcopal Church
of its features inconsistent with personal Christian liberty, are the irrefragable proof.
So complete is the scriptural and logical refutation that it led to the invention of the unchristian
theory that, admitting the utter incongruity of its unbalanced polity with New Testament ideals, and
the existent civil polity of the States of the American Union, a sufficient check is nevertheless found
in the prerogative of the people to withhold supplies. It originated early after the enactments of 1784,
as Ware declares in his "Reminiscences"; became the staple of Dr. Bond's argument in the
controversy of 1827-30, and was then rightly stigmatized as "the purse-string" argument; and has
been used by the ignorant with the ignorant ever since. What language of reprobation can sufficiently
characterize a system which gave birth to the infamous suggestion as a salvo to Methodist Episcopal
laymen: Your effective remedy and sufficient compensation for exclusion from the government is
in your power to impoverish and starve your ministers as the legislative, judicial, and executive class
in the Church! It led to the invention of that equally abhorrent fallacy that the assertion of manhood
suffrage in the civil system and the subjection of manhood suffrage in the ecclesiastical system have
the same divine warrant! And by consequence that the arguments which support the one do not
invalidate the other. And these dual inventions led to the crowning one as the last resort and final
analysis, that the exclusive rule of a limited class in ecclesiastical government is by a "divine right,"
the administration of "moral discipline " carrying with it the prerogative of ministerial rule under a
hierarchic polity. It is destroyed the moment it is brought in touch with the Christly dictum, "one is
your master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." A recent writer has well observed (an enlightened
Roman Catholic), "There is a true instinct in the popular mind which teaches it that the cause of civil
and spiritual liberty is in truth identical." And this is but to affirm that the civil order of personal
liberty is but the reflex of the scriptural order whose "seat is the bosom of God and whose voice is
the harmony of the universe."
Dr. Coke's sudden and unexpected arrival in England, and what came of it until his return to
America in November, 1792, a period of over eighteen months, has already been rehearsed in
previous chapters. Bishop Asbury's Journal for this period is a series of jottings of his ceaseless
travel, hardships, and ill-health, through New England, with a return tour as far south as Charleston,
S. C., and Georgia, and thence back to Baltimore in time for the General Conference which he had
called under the pressure brought to bear upon him by the principal preachers and influential laymen,