History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

arguments, except as it relates to its effects upon British Methodism, the consideration will be
deferred, to avoid so much anticipation as would be requisite.
Suffice it to recite the main facts. It must be remembered that this was an age of prelatical
pretensions. Ordination, instead of being that simple New Testament setting apart by laying on of
hands, a custom borrowed from the Old Testament method of reverential blessing, with no priestly
entail whatever, came to be an essential of hierarchal exclusiveness, as it grew in its departures from
New Testament ideals, from the third century onward. Deacons were ordained as an order in the
ministry, and Elders as a superior grade, and Bishops as transcending both, and then Archbishops
in the ascending gradation, ultimating in the crowned and infallible Pope, an incarnation of
ecclesiastical Paternalism. Apostolical Succession was the established dogma of the National Church
of England. It was firmly held by Charles Wesley to his decease. John Wesley, when about forty
years of age, by extending his reading and laying himself open, by the modifying force of his
environments, to intellectual conviction, became satisfied from Lord King's "Account of the
Primitive Church," that there was no authority for an order of Bishops from the Scriptures.
Subsequently Bishop Stillingfleet's "Irenicum" convinced him that the Apostolical Succession was
"a fable which no man ever did or could prove." But he remained a stanch Churchman to the end,
not accepting the logical results of such conclusions. He therefore insisted that the members of his
United Societies should go to the National Church for the ordinances, and steadily refused, until late
in life, to relieve any of his lay-preachers of this disability. He resisted, with all his effective
authority, the clamors of both his people and his preachers, fortifying his conduct with the one
reason: the Church (kirks) were near enough to his societies for practical purposes.
The circumstances were widely different in America. The English helpers he had sent over were
mostly of the same opinion, and Asbury, his General Assistant, was an emphatic believer in
Apostolic Succession, as has been already found. But at the close of the Revolutionary War the
established Episcopal Church in America had been so scattered and peeled that, for hundreds of
miles together, her deserted kirks had no rectors, so that not their own people only, but the
Methodists, now fifteen thousand strong, were absolutely without the ordinances: their children
remained unbaptized, and the Lord's Supper was never administered except under rebellion against
Asbury's authority. Appreciating the urgency of the situation, and having good reasons to know that
if much longer delayed he would be completely overborne, he wrote beseechingly to Wesley to come
over himself, or send a National Church clergyman to relieve the difficulty. He could not go himself
— his age forbade it. He applied to Bishop Lowth, setting forth the need for an ordained clergyman
to be sent to America, but he was refused. He was in a strait betwixt two. Should he send himself
a clergyman, or permit the authority of Asbury, and through him of himself, to decay? He anxiously
consulted Fletcher and others of his confidants, hoping for directive, favorable advice to the purpose
which was crystallizing in his own mind; but they, with one consent, disapproved of his assuming
the episcopal prerogative of ordination, as understood in the National Church — any other they did
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not understand at all. In this emergency he thought of Coke, who largely shared his confidence.
He was a presbyter of the National Church, equal with himself in this respect. He was fully qualified
by education, and his administration of the Irish Conference, now for some time committed to him
by Wesley, all conspired in favor of this choice. He appears to have given him some intimation of
his purpose. Drew says he did it in February, 1784. He would send him as a General Superintendent
a word-coinage of his own — not, perhaps, to supersede Asbury, but to ordain some of the American