History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

appointed a moderator.' Many ends were thus subserved. He was in poor health and might find it a
burden. It flattered the well-known vanity of Dr. Coke. It enabled him to be present or not as he
deemed best. His knowledge of human nature had led him to measure the strength and mark the
weaknesses of his principal foeman in the debates, James O'Kelly. He knew that he was irate and
impetuous, and he foresaw that in his own absence from the chair and from the Conference at times,
he would probably be provoked into indiscretions and extremes, and so defeat himself, and this
forecast proved to be true. It enabled him to confer with his tried adherents and so direct the course
of events. With Dr. Coke and the committee he had a full understanding. Self-poised, he viewed the
field, and in the hottest debates he was calm. He saw a large majority against him dwindle into a
small minority His voice was seldom, if ever, heard, and his manipulating hand, gloved in velvet,
seldom seen.
Let the devious course of the proceedings be traced as far as the meager information that has come
down will allow. Quite promptly Dr. Coke reported from the committee the final regulations, and
said: "The members of this Conference are the representatives of the People, and we are to all intents
the legislature of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the government is aristocratical. You may
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call me a weathercock," O'Kelly has preserved this deliverance in part. Asbury, Lee, Bangs, and
Stevens are all silent about it. The reason for their silence need not be pressed. Alas, for Dr. Coke!
How these sentiments compare with his letter to O'Kelly in May, 1791. How amazed must have been
the numerous preachers to whom he had sent at the same time his private circular outlining the
reforms he and O'Kelly would inaugurate at this Conference. His conscience extorted from him the
confession, however ignoble — you may think me a weathercock! O'Kelly was left no longer in
doubt that he was not only deserted, but turned upon by his quondam friend and ally; but he did not
quail or despair. In this regard he was made of much the same clay as Wesley and Asbury. The
committee reported revisions of the Discipline for Conference action. Some of the leading preachers
demanded the Council business, to pass upon which they had joined in the call for this General
Conference. Let O'Kelly be called again. There is something naive about his manifestly truthful
story, maugre some lapses of memory as to dates, as when he puts this Conference "in the latter end
of the year 1791." It may be in this case a misprint only. He says "This speech [of Coke's just cited]
affected many minds, because they justly expected the affairs of the council to have come before
them; that being the business for which they were called together. Some of the members at sundry
times would interrupt the president after this manner: but where is the council affairs, etc. Thomas
[Coke] would arise and warmly oppose, and demand silence on the subject: and silence it was. In
our debates if at any time we were led to speak of the conduct of Francis [Asbury] he would leave
the house." Among the interrupters of the president were James O'Kelly, Freeborn Garrettson, Ivy
Harris, Rice Haggard, Hope Hull, Stephen Davis, William McKendree, and others, the last named
then a young preacher, but exhibiting all the characteristics that afterward as a Bishop in the Church
made him a worthy successor of Francis Asbury. He was quite intemperate in his speech, and one
of his impassioned utterances has been preserved and was used as a slogan by the Reformers of
1820-30. It must not be forgotten that not a few of the ringing, epigrammatical, and pungent sayings
of these Reformers were the coinage of such changelings as McKendree, Emory, and Waugh, all of
them afterward bishops.
On the second day of the Conference, according to Colbert, but according to the drift of the
discussion as reported by O'Kelly it must have been later, this great leader of the opposition brought