History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

overwhelmingly defeated. Observe that the Methodist Episcopal Church under a pressure from
within — for nothing has ever been voluntarily conceded — has a form of lay-delegation, mark it
is delegation only, and its Episcopacy is so shorn of its Wesley-Asbury features that these sainted
men could they revisit earth would not recognize it as their own. Observe that the Methodist
Episcopal Church South, under the prompting of a high expediency, and ulterior purpose to be
exposed farther in its proper connection, has since 1866 a parity of lay-delegates in its General
Conference, and a pressure also from within for recognition in the Annual Conferences which cannot
long be delayed. And while it yet holds to the Asbury-McKendree-Soule theory of its Episcopacy,
a logical necessity since 1844, and it must be confessed with the "constitutional" and argumentative
advantage of the Northern branch as shown by Dr. Tigert, with much skill and abundant evidence,
it will be compelled in the near future to abandon its three-order theory of the Episcopacy. So
everywhere the inevitable tide in the affairs of world-Methodism is against the "Episcopal form of
Church government," as understood by Dr. Tigert and his Church. His hope is forlorn and desperate.
It is not a fallacy only, it is a misunderstanding as to nonEpiscopal bodies and "Wesley's views
and intentions." He loses his civility even when he states it elsewhere. Speaking of those — a strong
majority in English and a strong minority in American Methodism, who insist that the Coke
organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Asbury cooperating so far as Coke was brought to
organize it in accordance with his plan, — and matured long before Wesley sent Coke over, were
not "Mr. Wesley's views and intentions"; he sums up in these disparaging and misrepresenting
words, "But fortunately the ancient performances of this general type sufficiently reveal their origin
in pique and disappointment, and the modern imitators usually betray their design to establish or
defend some newly devised theory of Methodism, and its government, which would fain root itself
in the past, even if false to the fathers and the facts." Speaking for the Methodist Protestant Church
— And this is the impelling motive of this controverting argument — as the most salient and
successful of the non-episcopal Methodisms; it must be affirmed that the whole issue raised by the
McCaine-Emory discussion of 1827-30 was a mere accident of the movement growing out of the
discovery of a whole class of facts until then suppressed or overlooked as to the esoteric organization
of the Methodist Episcopal Church; a class of facts unnoted by Dr. Tigert and all the historians of
his school and order; while lay representation was its true objective, and this form of government
never sought to "root itself in the past," and therefore could not have been "false to the fathers and
the facts." It never essayed any "newly devised theory of Methodism and its government" as
countenanced by Wesley or Asbury. It was a mere accident of the Reform movement of 1820-30 that
drew Wesley's intentions into it. It is true a remarkable and discreditable class of facts were
unearthed, which, when published, raised a storm of persecution against the discoverer, and being
so persistently denied, or explained away, or silently waived, that disproportionate space has
unavoidably been given in this History as well as in the Reform literature of the past, to the
restatement and establishment of this class of facts. This is enough as an answer to Dr. Tigert, as the
specific things must come under review at a later period.
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