History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

METHODIST REFORM
Edward J. Drinkhouse, M.D., D.D.
Volume I
CHAPTER 10
Wesley's death inauspicious for the times — The Poll-Deed in conflict with popular sentiment
in the political world — Disfavor of entailed Paternalism — Coke's return to England and his hopes
of leadership — His character analyzed — Fermentation over the Legal Hundred — Distraction
instead of peace in its wake — Alexander Kilham; agitation under him — Laymen aroused by him
— His trial and expulsion; principles involved — Coke's attempt to Episcopalize the Connection;
its failure then and ever since — Rev. William Guirey and his exposures as to the Coke-Lichfield
secret conference — Demand of the Society trustees — Concessions — The New Connection
Methodists; organization and history — Rev. Joseph Barker; a sketch of this infidel lecturer; his
retraction, etc. — The New Connection Society made a theory a demonstration; individual force
against automatic Paternalism — The forerunner of the Methodist Protestant Church in America.
Wesley's death could not have been more inauspicious for the civil and political environments of
Methodism. The Deed of Declaration, which now became operative, — a legal instrument entailing
to 100 preachers out of 300, empire by property over their less favored brethren, 1200 local preachers
and 70,000 freeborn Methodist Britons, conjointly with the absolute power of conferential control
and administration, — was to be subjected to a crucial test. It resolved itself into the question: Can
Paternalism as a system of government be transmitted to sons thus arbitrarily selected by the Father
and Founder? The answer can be impartially delivered by the historical results of the entailing
instrument only. It will be biased by the point of view of the observer, and its wisdom or unwisdom
thus determined. Abstractly there was but little in civil or ecclesiastical history, aside from the
precedents of the primitive Christian Church, which had been utterly ignored in the rise and progress
of the Hierarchy, in contravention. It was therefore inauspicious for Methodism, thus entailed in its
polity, to be tried amid the distraction and division of sentiment which obtained all over England,
from the peers of the realm to the peasants in their poverty, as to the merits of the French Revolution.
Primarily it was an uprising of the repressed and oppressed people against the transmission of
Paternalism. both in Church and State. Its tocsin was Liberty, but under designing leadership it soon
degenerated with the masses into license, which in its insane fury reveled in bloodshed and
developed a blind and malicious Individualism more to be dreaded than the Paternalism it dethroned.
Its principles were nevertheless so strikingly true in the abstract as to win their way triumphantly at
the last, so that liberty-loving Englishmen espoused them, and it brought on the age of
pamphleteering, and the British Islands were flooded with the discussion on both sides. For the first
time popular gatherings in England discussed the issues, and, as might be expected, the Methodists
were not idle spectators. Not a few of them, both preachers and people, espoused liberal principles.
The American Revolution, — a revolt against the dictum: non-resistance and passive obedience to
the monarchical claim of taxation without representation, — and its result in the independence of
the colonies, was a thing of recent memory. On its merits the English people were likewise not a
little differenced in opinion. Thus saturated, it is no marvel that religious society felt the influence
of the liberalizing movement, and it aroused the conservative and non-progressive elements to stern
resistance. The Deed of Declaration was in their favor, and so far as the British Methodists were