History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

compose the organic or constitutional law of the denomination." Bangs is more dubious — "call
these rules, therefore, restrictive regulations, or a constitution of the church — for we contend not
about names merely — they have ever since been regarded as sacredly binding." Stevens' phrase is
apt, "a species." The genus Constitution is well defined by that keen and analytical mind, Nicholas
Snethen, and what he delivered needs citation as in part prophetic of the legal construction of Judge
Nelson in 1850. "What is a constitution? According to the opinion of the most approved writers on
the subject, it is an instrument of relation that cannot be made, altered, or abrogated by a legislative
power; but by the united consent and authority of a whole community. The United States and each
individual state of the Union have a written constitution from which the legislative authority is
derived. In other countries, where the form of government cannot be traced to any common act, or
choice of the people, much pains have been taken, and great learning displayed to prove that a
constitution may exist without such choice or consent. Americans, however, think otherwise and act
accordingly. In the Methodist Episcopal Church, no instrument was ever dignified with the name of
a constitution; but in that year 1808, six articles were framed under the denomination of limitations
and restrictions, . . . but the word Constitution is not found in the book of discipline. And if we may
be permitted to think and speak as Americans, neither the General Conference, nor any body among
us, was ever organized, or endowed with prerogatives, to make a constitution. The General
Conference of 1808 might signify its opinion or wish to its successors, but the most that can be said
of its limiting and restricting enactments is that they are laws having no more binding authority upon
its successors than legislative enactments. It is to be hoped that every preacher will admit that the
General Conference of 1808 had none of the attributes or powers of Constitution makers, as all are
infinitely interested in disavowing such a precedent, and in having the origin and nature of a
Constitution clearly and distinctly defined."
This was written in August, 1822, while he was yet in the Church of his early choice and love,
and with no thought other than to live and die in it. This definition cannot be invalidated.
Lexicographers in an accommodational sense have allowed the species Constitution to be the
established form of government in a country. It is incontrovertible that the General Conference of
1808 had no more sovereign authority to dictate enactments to be forever binding upon its
successors, than the General Conference of 1804 had to bind that of 1808, and by parity of reasoning
could assert no sovereignty that would debar the General Conference of 1812 from disannulling what
it did as a lawmaking body. The reason for it is obvious: the parties to it, under the anomalous
system of the Methodist Episcopal Church, are coordinate in power. But, its authority never having
been questioned, its precedent crystallized as a dominating sovereignty. This settler from an
imaginary interlocutor needs qualification in two respects. It is true only of the law-making class —
the ministers, many exceptions being allowed — and the reason for it is given when Snethen's
aphoristic utterance is again cited: "Men who have the same interests will be prone to act alike; and
as long as they perceive that their interests are mutual, they will act together." It has been largely
questioned by the laity as an excluded class, and the highest judicial authority in this country has
adjudged that with every assembly of a General Conference an independent sovereignty is embodied.
Moreover, the source of authority has never been satisfied that the enactments of 1808 were in
any legal sense a Constitution. Individual opinions have been given to this effect, and the course of
legislation has assumed it, but the abstract doubt took concrete form, when, just eighty years after,
the General Conference of 1888 appointed a Constitutional Commission of its ablest opponents to