History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

Conference or the Book committee in New York. It looks like an innocuous measure, but it virtually
destroyed the liberty of the press and was widely intended to cut off criticism of church officials, and
was in subsequent years made a criminal offense to infract it. The Article of Religion on the National
Constitution was changed to its present form. It brings out that strange paradox, persisted in by the
preachers of class legislative powers arrogated to themselves and utterly unamenable to the people,
as to civil responsibility: "The President, the Congress, the General Assemblies, the Governors, and
the Councils of State, 'as the delegates of the people', are the rulers of the United States of America,"
etc. The italics were put in the law as framed. The seeds of the paradox were sown early in the
Church history, they fructified and flowered in 1827-30 in the open proclamation of the General
Conference that her ministry not only preached and administered moral discipline, but ruled,
legislatively, judicially, and executively, by Divine Right. More of it in its proper place.
Thomas Lyell moved the abolition of the presiding elders. It cut at the tap-root of the right-hand
power of the Bishops as never before. In the afternoon, after a long debate, the motion of Lyell was
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lost." There must have been earnest supporters of it and Lyell himself was a foremost man. It was
probably intended as a preparation for another radical step which will be disclosed in the proceedings
of the ensuing General Conference, and it will be seen through these General Conferences down to
1820 how the Episcopal anaconda tightened its coils in these futile efforts of the liberal minority to
secure some limitations to its power, until it crushed the authority of the General Conference itself.
Watters had a favorite project which he pushed to a crisis: "Shall there be an ordination of local
elders?" It was decided against it by a tie vote of 44 to 44, and then laid over as unfinished business
to the next General Conference. Colbert says," William Watters, who perhaps considered himself
the most deeply interested in the business, went off this afternoon." He was becoming infected with
radical notions, and some of his descendants were original members of the Methodist Protestant
Church. It was a hopeless way they had in those days of emphasizing their dissent, — defeated, they
went home. Colbert says the numbers were reduced within two weeks of the session from 105 to 70.
It will be seen in the next General Conference how the whole delegations of Philadelphia and New
York, making nearly one-half of the body, threatened to secede, and were brought back only by
yielding to their views. It was the Conference of 1804 that ordered a division of the Discipline into
two parts — The Doctrines and Discipline, and The Temporal Economy. Two thousand copies of
the first were ordered bound separately, and did not contain the laws on slavery, for the use of the
South. On the twenty-third of May the Conference adjourned. Colbert says the debates were warm
and spirited, and so was the preaching by the giants in attendance, of which he gives quite a full
account, but there was no revival. Asbury, Coke, and Whatcoat parted to meet no more in General
Conference. Coke never returned to America for reasons already presented, Whatcoat died two years
after, and Asbury came to the Conference of 1808, once more sole Bishop of the Church.
A few events of conspicuous importance must receive attention before passing to the General
Conference of 1808. The first is the departure out of this life of Bishop Richard Whatcoat. Asbury
says, "On my return [Kingston] I found a letter from Dr. Chandler declaring the death of Bishop
Whatcoat, that father in Israel and my faithful friend for forty years — a man of solid parts, a
self-denying man of God; who ever heard him speak an idle word? When was guile found in his
mouth? A man so uniformly good I have not known in Europe or America. He was long afflicted
with gravel and stone, in which afflictions, nevertheless, he traveled a great deal — three thousand
miles the last year. . . . He died in Dover on the 5th of July, 1806, and his mortal remains were