History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

founded 'We are far gone into popery.' Quickly after this the vote was taken. Ah! fatal hour! the
motion was lost; and out of an hundred and more, we had a small minority."
In these and other extracts the extremes of declamation are discovered; happily, the crowning one
by McKendree has been preserved by Ezekiel Cooper, one of the preachers present, and in it,
probably more than any other utterance, the determining factor is laid open. In his semi-centennial
sermon he states, that while McKendree was on the floor, delivering a masterful and vehement
argument, he said, referring to the power of the Bishop to appoint absolutely without any appeal, "It
is an insult to my understanding, and is such an arbitrary stretch of power, so tyrannical [or] despotic,
that I cannot [or will not] submit to it," These are red-letter sentences, and will recur forty years later
in this History of Reform. Thomas Ware, another of the preachers present, gives the rationale of the
defeat of O'Kelly. Stevens quotes a page and a half of it, but as much of it has already been
anticipated by the writer, in dissecting Asbury's management of the logical fray, the whole need not
be here re produced. He says: "Had O'Kelly's proposition been differently managed, it might possibly
have been carried. For myself, I did not at first see anything very objectionable in it. But when it
came to be debated, I very much disliked the spirit of those who advocated it, and wondered at the
severity in which the movers, and others who spoke in favor of it, indulged in the course of their
remarks." He cites one of the extreme illustrations, and gives in part McKendree's philippic. "The
advocates of the opposite side were more dispassionate and argumentative. . . . Hearing all that was
said on both sides, I was finally convinced that the motion for such an appeal ought not to carry."
The sagacious Asbury foresaw what would thus happen under O'Kelly's leadership, and, by
frequent absences from the Conference, his magnetic personal presence, awesome to most of the
preachers, was lost upon the advocates of repeal, and Dr. Coke gave them full latitude for extreme
denunciations degenerating into personality. There were enough present on the other side, wily and
composed, who urged on their opponents. It is also a common experience in deliberative assemblies,
that a proposition, however popular at first, by acrimonious debate gets into a position of doubt, and
then, the longer it is continued, the less its chances of success its timid friends absenting themselves,
and so a default. Over-confidence was another element in the defeat. Coke was believed to favor it
until he arrived and showed his perfidy. O'Kelly had rallied most of the leading preachers, so that
he came to Conference backed, as he believed, by a strong majority, and he presumed upon it. It was
kept a full week upon the anvil of discussion, and was beaten out of all shape. A night session was
called, sure to distemper speech and action. Of one hundred and fifty members in the city, the vote
was taken by something over a hundred. These considerations are recited because otherwise it is
impossible to account for the defeat of a measure every way amenable to reason. It had just been
carried by the English preachers, among other guarantees in the British Conference of 1792, and
from which Dr. Coke was fresh. He knew of it, and probably informed Asbury, but they made no
sign. If O'Kelly knew of it, it was not brought forward. But it is morally certain he did not, for it
would have been a powerful argument on his side, and would probably have settled the vote
affirmatively. It has continued a constitutional right of every Wesleyan preacher the world over. It
has been incorporated into the organic law of all the liberal Methodisms. It is an essential feature of
the Methodist Protestant Church, and wherever adopted it has proved a safeguard with no injurious
results to the itinerancy of the Church. In the denomination last named it is seldom availed of, but
had as a sacred right, inalienable and indefeasible, against errors of judgment in the appointing
power, whether the President of an annual Conference or a Stationing committee. In the Maryland