History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

society in Plymouth. He was a man, says Tyerman, of "education, courage, and Christian zeal." He
hired a room, drew off some forty of the society, and formed one of his own. Wesley was sent for,
and, with the advantage of empire in property, soon settled matters to his satisfaction. It was naughty
in Moore, but a peace measure as the Deed was intended to be is not always measured by peace.
Wesley visited Ireland, and in two months entered and preached in fifty or sixty towns about
fourscore sermons. He passed his eighty-second birthday on the 28th of June, and finds himself in
such health that he says, "I dare not impute this to natural causes; it is the will of God." He held the
Irish Conference on July 10, Coke being absent on his mission. He is delighted with the Irish
preachers and pays them the high compliment, "I think number for number they exceed their
fellow-laborers in England." He was constantly forming new friends, but the old ones were rapidly
dropping away. This year Vincent Perronet and John Fletcher died. The former was in the
ninety-second year of his age, and died while Wesley was in Ireland, on the 9th of May. Charles
Wesley buried him and preached his funeral sermon. Wesley was in the west of England when
Fletcher died, August 14, 1785, and so could not attend his funeral. Next to the Wesleys and
Whitefield, Methodism is most indebted to Fletcher. But for his almost angelic influence at the
previous Conference of 1784, during the debate on the Deed of Declaration and the Ordination
questions, serious results might have followed, menacing the very existence of the Conference and
the societies. His life was saintly and his death triumphant.
The forty-second Conference convened at City Road in London, July 26. Wesley says: "Our
Conference began; at which about seventy preachers were present, whom I had invited by name. One
consequence of this was, that we had no contention or altercation at all; but everything proposed was
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calmly considered and determined as we judged would be most for the glory of God." Seventy
preachers out of nearly two hundred. There is a charming simplicity in his record of the result; as
though seventy out of two hundred, and they invited by name, could disagree to anything he
proposed! Nevertheless, the Deed of Declaration was again brought up, and seventy preachers, all
who were present, signed documents that they approved the Deed. Eight preachers left the
connection, including Moore and the two Hampsons, without dispute among the ablest and hitherto
truest men of the Conference. It was the beginning of other secessions on the same account. Nova
Scotia, Newfoundland, and Antigua appeared in the minutes. Once more itinerating, when he
reached Bristol he heard a report that he was about to leave the National Church, and felt called upon
to make a public denial. "I openly declared in the evening that I had no more thought of separating
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from the Church than I had forty years ago." Among the notable publications of this year under
Methodist auspices was a twelve-page pamphlet with the title "Free Thoughts Concerning Separation
of the People called Methodists from the Church of England, Addressed to the Preachers in the
Methodist Connection by a Layman of the Methodist Society." It was a strong argument against
separation, and is cited in proof that the Methodist laity, in the Wesleyan and Asburyan forms of it
specially, have ever been most conservative; and yet, strange to say, under the polity of both these
eminent leaders, the laity were shut out from participation in the government, the position being
practically in regard to the people, that they were best qualified to exercise the trinity of virtues: Pray,
Pay, and Obey. The concession made in these pages that the paternal system of Wesley — and it may
be extended to Asbury — during his life was, all things considered, the most efficient, and for the
time allowable, and if its advocates please, even providential, must be qualified by its trend in
establishing a precedent for a class hierarchal of preachers exclusively. It is worth while to retrace
our steps a few weeks to July 14, the second Sunday before the Conference met, to record one of the