History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

until finally the illegality of it was pointed out, and the assessment plan upon the Conferences
reenacted. It is one among the curious but significant violations of law winked at to render the
Episcopacy more independent. Preachers were allowed from this Conference to receive presents, etc.,
without accounting for them as salary. Also, "No preacher shall have a right to sit as a member in
the next General Conference, unless he is in full connection and has been a traveling preacher four
years." Formerly the deacons were members, and under it Alexander McCaine and others were
members of the Conference of 1800. A rule was made for the ordination of colored preachers as
deacons; but Lee says in 1810 that it was never printed, and so unknown to most of the preachers.
Under it Asbury had ordained Richard Allen of Philadelphia, who subsequently seceded and
originated the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and gave much trouble to the parent white body.
It was not published, just as two editions of the Discipline were published, — one, omitting the
stringent regulations anent slavery, for circulation among the southern people, another of the curious
moral obliquities of Episcopal legislation.
Stevens furnishes some other items. Nicholas Snethen was Secretary of the Conference, and it
voted to allow Asbury a traveling companion, and from his Journal it is learned that he selected
Snethen. Stevens also records: "On the second day a motion was introduced to authorize the Annual
Conferences to elect their presiding elders. It was defeated, but was the beginning of a controversy
which prevailed for years in the Conference, and throughout the Church." He either did not know
or forgot to mention that it was introduced in 1796, and, as will be found, bobbed up every time until
1820, when it was carried by a two-thirds vote, and stifled by the Bishops. It was the sign of that
unresting minority from 1792, who bravely held out for a more liberal Episcopacy. There was quite
a thick sprinkling of them, and Stevens further enlightens the Church in things "which have hitherto
been unnoticed by the historians of the Church." He must be honored as the first of the class who
uncovered suppressed facts, and opened the way for tardy justice to noble men. William Ormond was
of the number, who appears to have been the noblest "radical" of the body, and tried to secure the
ordination of local preachers as elders several times during the session, but failed. The minutes of
1804 say that he fell a martyr to his work during the yellow fever at Norfolk in 1803; that "he had
a high sense of the rights of men," and died triumphantly. A motion to reorganize the Conference
as a delegated body failed by a large majority. Coke attempted, without success, to obtain a rule by
which the new Bishop, in the absence of Asbury, should be required to read his appointments of
preachers in the Annual Conferences; "to hear what the Conference may have to say on each station,
in accordance with the English example." It was a piece of invidious legislation and deserved to be
defeated on that score, though right in principle. Then Joshua Wells tried to hamper the new Bishop
by "a motion to provide a committee of three or four elders to be chosen by each Annual Conference,
to aid the new Bishop in making the appointments." It was twice renewed by other members, but
lost. Various efforts were made to make the rule on slavery still more stringent. Light Street church,
and specially Old Town, on Fell's Point, were in a blaze of revival during the Conference, and about
one hundred conversions were reported. Henry Boehm, who was a visitor, gives quite a full account
of the work in his "Reminiscences." Many meetings were held in private houses and most of the
conversions so occurred. The ensuing General Conference was ordered for Baltimore, May 6, 1804.
The coming quadrennium was the most remarkable in the history of the Church for its extensive
revivals. Lee gives up twenty-four pages of his concise "History" to a description of the wonderful
work, which was not confined to any location or state. Camp-meetings were introduced into