History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

stewards, the admission and expulsion of members and preachers, the alteration of circuits, and even
the powers of the annual Conference that Wesley himself had fixed by his Deed of Declaration.
Meanwhile the officers of the Birmingham societies met, and issued a printed circular opposed
to all these changes, and to any important modification of the economy of the body as left by Wesley.
Stevens says: "The diversified opinions of the Connection were, in fine, resolving themselves into
three classes, and giving rise to as many parties, composed respectively of men who, from their
attachment to the Establishment, wished no change unless it might be greater subordination to the
National Church by the abandonment of the sacraments in those cases where Wesley had admitted
them; of such as wished to maintain Wesley's plan intact, with official provisions which might be
requisite to administer it; and such as desired revolutionary changes, with a more equal distribution
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of powers among laymen and preachers." This is a fair statement of the situation, and his chapter
upon the period intervening from Wesley's death to the ensuing Conference of 1791 is a sad
commentary upon its truth, and in demonstration of the utter failure of the Poll-Deed to accomplish
what its author intended. Meetings and countermeetings of preachers and laymen distinctively, like
Jews and Samaritans, were held throughout the societies. Leading members of the Conference, and
even those who had been named as the Legal Hundred, differed as to expediency and polity. The
ordinations and the sacraments were the hones of contention, but beneath it all, as is seen, the
unbalanced government Wesley left could not be brooked by the laity, while the locality were eager
to secure some more pronounced recognition. A preference is given to Stevens' account, as he cannot
be suspected of a leaning towards the dissentients and the disaffected. Indeed, he construes this
hurly-burly of discontent and dissensions and expulsions and secessions into a providential moral
discipline necessary to prepare the Legal successors of power and property for a prosperous career.
It is an easy philosophy of the situation to be accepted by those who can so view it.
"Early in this controversy a man of great energy, and destined to become historically distinguished
as the founder of a Methodist sect, began a course of persistent agitation on the subject by printed
pamphlets." In this way Stevens formally introduces Alexander Killiam. He gives full space and
treatment to his biography, but it cannot be followed under the limitation of the objective of this
History. He was born at Epworth, July 10, 1762, and at eighteen years of age was converted among
the Methodists. He was of impetuous, resolute temper, and accompanied Brackenbury, an irregular
itinerant of wealth and social position, as his servant, and shared with him in the preaching during
the Channel Islands' labors for Methodism. He was received by Wesley as a regular itinerant in 1785.
He was a Dissenter in his principles from the beginning, and three years before Wesley's death
designed to petition the Conference, "Let us have the liberty of Englishmen, and to give the Lord's
Supper to our societies." He was a stranger to the thrall of sacerdotalism; and better would it have
been for the unity and success, great as the latter has been, of Methodism the world over, if the whole
hierarchal figment of a divine touch — an actual succession of preaching grace — had been thrown
to the winds and the simple New Testament practice followed of self-government for local churches;
preachers called of God, and elected by the people, with an installment of laying on of hands of other
preachers; an itinerancy of evangelists, with the apostles as exceptional rulers of the Church, whose
special functions ceased with their death. There are but two consistent systems of Church
government, the Presbyterian and the Episcopalian. It will be seen in the sequel how the Wesleyan
Conference came at last to the former as a system essentially, and thus swung away from the
National Church and Wesley's preference; and how the American Methodists were organized as an