History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

leadership of the most self-asserting of the preachers as his death was foreshadowed, and the
question who should be greatest distracted the Wesleyan Conference for years afterward. Wesley
kept on writing and publishing extensively during this year.
1775 saw the English crown and the American colonies in conflict. The revolt was raised in the
latter against the principle of taxation without representation. This was the occasion of Wesley's
"Calm Address to the American Colonies," which was a pure abridgment of Dr. Johnson's "Taxation
no Tyranny," yet Wesley signed it "By the Rev. John Wesley, M.A." Prior to reading Johnson his
sympathies were with the colonies, and five years before, in the incipiency of the Revolution, he
published a pamphlet to this end. He was bitterly attacked for his change of views. Tyerman naively
suggests: "Wesley had a perfect right to change his opinions but when a man like Wesley does that,
he can hardly expect to escape unfriendly criticism. The world dislikes changelings and hesitates to
[3]
trust them." A wider application of this truth will be made in the body of this History. Fletcher and
Olivers came to his defense against a host of pamphleteers who lampooned and maligned him. But
he needed no defense as to his motives, whatever might be said of his judgment in the matter. In June
of this year Wesley had a violent illness of fever, and for three days his life was despaired of; indeed,
the rumor obtained that he had died, but he marvelously recovered and lived for fifteen years longer.
The thirty-second Conference was held at Leeds, August 1, 1775, and was largely attended, and rigid
inquiry was made into the qualifications of the preachers. [4]
The membership had increased 2533. Daniel McAllum was in the plan of appointments. He
labored mostly in Scotland and continued in the field for near sixty years. He merits this passing
mention. Also John Valton, a great revivalist and a man of mark for near twenty years.
The thirty-third Conference was held in London, August 6, 1776. The total membership was
39,826, including the American societies at the census of the previous year. Fletcher's health failed,
and Wesley invited him to travel with him, which he did for some time, and lived nine years longer.
He spent three years in Switzerland, and on returning to England married Miss Bosanquet,
memorable name in Methodism, and he died August 14, 1785. But as Fletcher had failed him it is
a coincidence at least that in the same year he formed the acquaintance of Thomas Coke, than whom
no man, Fletcher excepted, had such an influence over him for the remainder of his life. Wesley was
now seventy-three years old. Coke was a young man of twenty-nine. No character in Methodism is
so difficult to mensurate, and none as to whom there is so wide a divergence of opinion as to his
merits and demerits, which were so striking that admission of his faults and frailties is about the only
point upon which his critics agree and the one salient and redeeming feature of his eventful life, —
the missionary of Methodism by eminence for the whole world.
The key to this divergence of opinion is not hard to find. Impartial biography seems an
impossibility, as human nature is constituted. This declaration is made because of the fact that there
lies before the writer Whitehead's "Life of the Wesleys," in which Dr. Coke is painted by a man
whose opportunities for correct estimate are unsurpassed, except by Samuel Drew, Coke's literary
executor, whose biography of Coke is also before me. Whitehead's work betrays a coloring biased
by his party affiliations among the cliques into which the Conference divided, after Wesley's demise.
It was the party of the people and of liberal administration. Wesley's Journal reflected his view of
Coke as influenced by consecrated motives, while condoning his ambition and the indirections he