History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

foes could shake his resolution. . . . I have seen him sit in Conference with the greatest calmness;
when many things were canvassed which must have greatly pained and wounded his mind. . . . If he
could not carry a point, he did not force it against wind and tide, but calmly sat down till the blast
was gone by, and with a placid dignity made a virtue of necessity, or, with discriminating wisdom,
brought the measure forward in a less exceptional shape, and at a more convenient time. . . . I should
not omit his temperance, having frequently dined with him. I have been astonished how a man who
ate so sparingly could perform such vast labors; an egg, a little salad or bread, and a small piece of
meat was his usual dinner; sometimes he dined only upon tea or coffee; wine, spirits, or cordials he
seldom tasted; at dinner his meals were seasoned with some weighty and profitable discourse, chiefly
upon vital and practical godliness; he rose early from table and always concluded with prayer."
As a copy of a primitive Evangelist, and an apostolical Bishop, remembering that this word is the
preferred translation of an Evangelist's office because suited to the third-order hierarchy of the
Episcopal translators of the King James' version of our English Scriptures, it may be said, perhaps
without exaggeration, that he has had no equal in labors since the apostle Paul. Conscientious in his
Episcopal convictions, as all his reading was to the end of fortifying himself in these convictions,
the error of his system — an anomaly in ecclesiastical polity — was in rigidly holding to the logical
conclusion of his early education and after reading, that a religious organization is best held together
by a supreme leader buttressed by force. It was his beau-ideal for Methodist Union — The peripheral
tire binding felloes and spokes to the hub of centralized authority. This History will fail in one of its
fundamental purposes if it does not prove that instead it has been the disintegrating force and
element of disunion.
Is further evidence needed that this is a fair interpretation of Asbury's views? Let a few citations
from his Valedictory Address to Bishop McKendree penned at Lancaster, Penn., August 5, 1813,
speak, "It is a serious thing for a Bishop to be stripped of any constitutional rights chartered to him
at his ordination, without which he could not, and would not have entered into that sacred office, he
being conscious at the same time he had never violated those sacred rights. . . . Thus I have traced
regular order and succession in John Wesley, Thomas Coke, Francis Asbury, Richard Whatcoat, and
William McKendree. Let any other church trace its succession as direct and as pure if it can. . . My
dear Bishop, it is the traveling apostolic order and ministry that is found in our very constitution."
Could confirmation stronger be given of the views expressed in earlier portions of this History as
to Asbury's meaning of "regular order and succession," over which Dr. John Emory so puerilely
blunders? It was a Methodist order and succession, and he meant by order, a third order — why
equivocate over it? And how remarkable this deliverance is in that, contrary to the tracery of his
"authority," given in May, 1805, when he disowned Wesley as the first link in it! Was it an accident?
It could not be: the difference was in 1805 and 1813 and the environments of each. And yet, how
utterly invalid it is by any test that makes the terms "Bishop," and "Episcopal," anything but sham
appellations! It was the very gist of the McCaine-Emory controversy over it in 1827, and what sheer
logical folly was the latter in elaborating the position that a Church may adopt the likeness of a thing
— its semblance — if it choose, or as Dr. Buckley has put it as late as 1894," The members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church believe that no particular system of government — meaning by that
exception, no system of government in details of construction — is enjoined in the New Testament,
and, therefore, that Christian believers are entitled to form such a government as the Methodist
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Episcopal Church has adopted." This position would be logically relevant if it had ever been