History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

1786 he proposed a tantamount arrangement to Wesley and asked his concurrence. McCaine in his
"History and Mystery," p. 42, assigning reasons for the action of the Conference in expunging the
name of Wesley from the minutes in 1787, gives among others the following: "A writer from whose
work we make the following extract, 'in 1786, Mr. Asbury complained of the long Latin word
superintendent, and wished it to be termed bishop. This was not all; but he proposed to the Rev. Mr.
Wesley, Mr. T., Mr. W., and Mr. A., as three persons to be appointed bishops for the United States
to act under Mr. Asbury.' Mr. Wesley's answer was to this purport, and is worthy to be engraven in
characters of gold, 'During my life, there shall be no Archbishops for the Methodist Church, but send
me the man of your choice, and I shall have him appointed joint superintendent with you. Mr. Asbury
objected to either of these men proposed as joint superintendents with him; but desired Mr. Wesley
to send a man of his choice, and he would receive him.'" The history is that subsequently Mr. Wesley
called through Dr. Coke a special General Conference for America, and named Richard Whatcoat
as a Superintendent. The result has already been traversed. After the practice of Methodist writers
of the period as to so much that was done in secret, and written, if at all, in initials, you are left by
this writer to guess who the three were. Examining the minutes of that period, and of the eligible
elders whose reputation would make them a likely choice with Asbury, Mr. T. was John Tunnell;
Mr. W., Richard Whatcoat; and Mr. A., Beverly Allen. Of these, ten years later, 1797, Tunnell was
dead and Allen had withdrawn. Comparing the facts given with the recommendation he made to the
Wilbraham brethren, and it is clear that Asbury no more than Wesley would permit "a rival near his
throne." The Father of Methodism may have overreached a little in construing Asbury's sub-bishops
as named into an ambition to be an Arch-bishop, though the squinting in that direction is sufficiently
pronounced; but it establishes the moral certainty before premised that Asbury alone would be the
Bishop during his life of the American preachers and people. The names he proposed were
judiciously chosen: Lee for the Northeast, Whatcoat for the East, and Poythress for the Southwest;
each swayed a commanding influence in his section.
Conjecture is legitimate as to what he would have further done had the Wilbraham brethren
approved his plan. He would have carried it, armed with their action as a precedent, to all the other
six Conferences, and winning them to it, it is an open question whether he would have ventured to
"set them apart," or held them over to the General Conference of 1800. As neither Asbury, Lee, nor
Bangs makes any allusion to this episode in the proceedings, Stevens must be accepted as to the
result and the reason for it, and he depends upon Dr. L. M. Lee's "Memoirs" for what he asserts, "The
Conference declined the proposition as being incompatible with the requirements of the discipline."
No one knew the requirements of the Discipline better than Asbury, so that this conclusion of the
brethren was either an easy evasion of his wish, or they misunderstood him to appoint Bishops when
nothing was further from his purpose. Lee's account is simply the following: "The Conference at
Wilbraham made choice of me to preside in that meeting and to station the preachers. The business
was conducted to the satisfaction of the preachers, and peace and love dwelt among us. At the close
of the Conference the preachers gave me a certificate, signifying their approbation of the proposed
plan for me to travel with the Bishop, and to fill up his appointments when he could not be present."
Asbury in his letter to Lee urged him to travel with him, "He said he had made it a matter of prayer,
and there was no one who would do to travel with him, or to take his appointments but myself." Not
a word about the assistant bishops. October 26, a month after the Conference, he was again in the
saddle and he records) "This day Joshua Wells returned from Wilbraham conference. Matters were