History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

Thus it is seen that the old fires only smoldered. The secession of Hammett in Charleston, S. C.,
already referred to, ran parallel with it, and out of it grew a bitter war of pamphlets, Hammett
attacking, but not always wisely, Wesley, Asbury, Coke, and others in turn, and a defender rose in
Morrell, a man of splendid abilities and a popular preacher of the North; and he ably championed
Asbury and the Episcopal polity. O'Kellyism, as it was stigmatized, became noised over the
connection and polemical parties divided the brethren, both of the ministry and the laity. Asbury
found it at the Lynn, New England, Conference, in 1793, and Stevens says that "The news of the
O'Kelly schism in the South reached them. Nearly twenty-five preachers, in various parts of the
connection, had ceased to travel; four of them had withdrawn, and among them was their own
'Boanerges.'" The defenders of Asbury did not fail to use the heresy argument as well as every other
damaging report bigoted zeal had set afloat against O'Kelly. Lee, who was laboring these years in
New England, except for a period after the Conference of 1792, when he helped Asbury in the
Virginia and North Carolina sections (his native heath) to pacify the Methodists, made much of the
doctrinal heresy of O'Kelly as published by "a preacher who told him" all he knew of it at the 1792
Conference. It was advertised in New England, and it will presently be seen what came of the
substantial under by reason thereof. The true extent of the schism being thus portrayed, let the
minifying historians speak. Bangs says, "They began to contend among themselves, and then to
divide and subdivide; until within a few years scarcely a vestige of them was to be found in all
Virginia." Alas! he so eagerly wished it to be so that he was content to make "history" out of some
such rumor a prevaricating preacher, perhaps, had retailed to him. Stevens is more careful, "The year
[1793] had been a calamitous one for the Church generally; the minutes reported an aggregate
decrease of 6317 members;" but he does not tell how he made it this figure. Lee, without entering
into the statistics, says, with a better knowledge of its extent, "Such a loss we had never before
known since we were a people." [5]
What a price it cost to maintain the absolute system! What a responsibility it assumed! Conscience
does not teach what is right, but it prompts to do what is believed to be right. The conscience of the
defenders of the hierarchical plan had only been enlightened on one side of the question.
Unfortunately the principles of Scripture and reason, which so radically overthrew it, were in that
day largely abstract, — the history of Methodism furnished no antecedent facts against the plan, —
it had always been so, and although it is now known to have been a bald fallacy, fairness demands
that their conscience in the matter should be respected. Paine, McKendree's biographer, says,
attempting to account for his tergiversation, "He soon understood, too, the evil consequences which
would inevitably follow the adoption of the O'Kelly favorite measure — the ruin of the General
Superintendency and of the whole itinerant system." It is remarkable that Asbury, the crowned
authority, does not argumentatively defend it, — he simply personated it, — it was foregone with
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him. He and Dr. Coke, traveling together in the South in 1796, thus piously dispose of it. Going
over the scenes of the Virginia secession Asbury writes: "I feel happy among the few old disciples
who are left. My mind of late hath been in great peace. I am glad I have not contended with those
violent men who were once with us." Contend with them! not he; but what about the history of those
days? Coke rejoiced also at the Virginia Conference. Hear him and be amazed, careful reader. "It was
in respect to love the counterpart of our General Conference. Oh, what great good does the Lord
frequently bring out of evil! The sifting and schisms we have had turned out to be the greatest
blessings!