History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

eached 2828. The membership was 76,968, an increase for the year of 2714. The membership in the
United States was 57,631, so rapidly was it gaining on that of Great Britain. The last decade of
Wesley's life witnessed an increase of more than double the united results of the forty years
preceding, says Tyerman. The legislation of the Conference was confined to preachers and the
preaching houses. Among the other points insisted on by Wesley and embodied now in a disciplinary
rubric, was that no preacher should preach more than twice the same day. Mather, Pawson,
Thompson, and others objected. Wesley reasoned the matter, insisting that his own example could
not be cited against him as he knew better how to husband his strength than other men, and closed
the discussion with the declaration, "And the custom shall not be continued." It has been already
found that Whitehead, speaking for Charles Wesley, expressed the opinion that his brother's
government of the societies was "approaching a system of human policy that in the end could not
be carried on without sometimes having recourse to the arts of misrepresentation and deception." It
was a singular prescience, for the incident just referred to ended by the preachers deceiving him after
all, by altering the minute when it was sent to the press thus, "No preacher shall preach three times
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the same day to the same congregation." It is needless to pass a judgment upon the conduct of the
preachers. It was highly disingenuous; but it has been the legitimate fruit of Paternalism in
Methodistic government in both England and America to this day.
Those whose predilections and education lead them to applaud and advocate such a system have
no words but of unstinted commendation. Stevens, reviewing at the close of this Conference,
indulges in such reflections as follows. No individual life was more complete in its results. His
popular power was wide as any prelate in the land or even the Sovereign himself. His power could
now, in any necessity, reach almost any part of the three kingdoms by the systematic apparatus of
Methodism. Through his "assistants," and by them to the 300 preachers, and the 1200 local
preachers, by these to the 4000 stewards and class leaders, and by these to 70,000 members. "Such
a power, created by himself without prestige, but now wielded with a prestige which secured grateful
and almost implicit obedience from his people, would have been perilous in the hands of a weak or
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selfish man, but in what one historical respect did he abuse it?" It may be answered without
qualification: knowingly, in none. As the Father of the Methodists, seeing that constitutionally and
educationally he was an autocrat and could not govern otherwise than he did, it may be freely
allowed him; and so no doubt his preachers thought in the main; and hence their allegiance: but what
parent can transmit his authority to a son? Would it not be "perilous," and sure to distract the
household? One of the postulates of this History is, that the fundamental error of Wesley began with
the Deed of Declaration, entailing to 100 preachers of 300, to the exclusion of 1200 local preachers,
many of them the peers in every respect of the itinerant, and of 70,000 people, all his rights
proprietary in chapels and all his personal conferential authority.
October 6, at Winchelsea, Wesley preached for the last time in the open air beneath an ash tree
in the churchyard, known afterward as "Wesley's tree." He continued to preach, kept on with the
Arminian Magazine, and published a translation of the New Testament with an Analysis of the
several books and chapters. He bore testimony against the vexed question of separation, "I declare
once more, that I live and die a member of the Church of England, and that none who regard my
judgment and advice will ever separate from it." In his last printed sermon, on Faith, he has glimpses
of the eternal world. In six weeks he had triumphantly entered it.
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