Wesley at eighty — The Birstal matter again — Wesley jealous of his authority — 1784, the
"climacteric year of Methodism" because of the ordinations and separation — Coke's assumptions of authority — Sunday-schools and Wesley — "The People called Methodists " — Coke and the Deed of Declaration — Tyerman on the Legal Hundred — Two objections to the Deed — Review of its provisions — Asbury and the ordinations — Fletcher no party to it — Coke's letter and its over-persuasion — Subsequent ordinations by Wesley — Tyerman on Wesley's inconsistency, viz, ordaining and yet a Churchman — The "Sunday Service for the American Methodists."
1783, and Wesley at eighty years of age. He had more invitations now to preach in National churches than he could accept. A wonderful change in forty years, yet, from the point of view of the clergy, the fact that he and his were not exscinded is a striking proof of the conservative character of that Church, imitated by its congener, the Protestant Episcopal Church of North America. He was as ardent a Churchman as ever. He was taken dangerously ill in March, and on convalescing wrote a most tender letter to Hester Ann Rodgers, rehearsing a dream he had of his own funeral. Yet on June 11, he set out for Holland, with companions, taking as interpreter, Jonathan Ferguson, son of a preacher who had removed to Holland. He returned to London July 4. The fortieth Conference began July 29. The Birstal matter led to the following minute: "What can be done to get all our preaching houses settled on the Conference plan? Let Dr. Coke visit the societies throughout England as far as is necessary to the accomplishment of this end." So strong was the sense of the injustice of this plan that the recalcitrants were not confined to Birstal. Kingswood school was also giving trouble. The membership of the societies was 45,955, not including 13,740 in America, and near 2000 in Antigua, West Indies. William Black was also laboring successfully in Nova Scotia.
At this Conference Wesley was again taken seriously ill, but, after eighteen days of suspense he recovered, and was soon active as ever, keeping in touch with every interest, and guarding his authoritative control of preachers and societies as though dissolution and disaster impended should he relax in the slightest minutia of discipline. The mind was autocratic, and the danger was in his mind. It was, indeed, the only safeguard in such an anomalous and unbalanced government. Since the plan for transmitting his authority of 1770-75 had overpassed, the same subject was now the burden of his thoughts. He continued to write and publish, the Arminian Magazine, the medium for the sermons which he now matured.
1784 has been denominated by Whitehead "the grand climacteric year of Methodism." He refers to the ordinations by Wesley and the Deed of Declaration. In this sense his characterization is just.
A stanch advocate of its "original constitution," as he calls it, adhesion to the National Church, in the forlorn hope that reform of it could still be secured from within, he saw in the ordinations and the Deed of Declaration inevitable separation after Wesley's decease. He also saw the factions into which the Conference was dividing in a strife for leadership, and no provision being made for a popular or people's check upon these factions, he prophesied corruption, and final dissolution of the societies. Right in the abstract, he proved to be wrong in the concrete, inasmuch as he took no
sufficient account of that empire of property, its cohesive power in holding together a powerful party, which the Deed of Declaration securely entrenched. Now in his eightieth year, Wesley claimed an octogenarian vigor as surprising to himself as it was to his friends. Setting out in March, he made a seven months' journey throughout England and Scotland. The Irish Conference he gave largely over to Dr. Coke. Apropos, Drew, his biographer, says "As the doctor, in his occasional visits, sometimes acted as Mr. Wesley's more immediate representative, it was not infrequently his lot to introduce regulations into the societies with which many were dissatisfied. His power was rather discretionary than precisely definite; and in several instances he was accused of proceeding beyond the bounds of delegated authority . . . With difficulties of this nature the Doctor was somewhat compelled to contend; while the part which he actually bore in the dubious transactions rendered his means of defense more perplexing than the charges were serious which he undertook to obviate and this ultimately exposed his conduct to suspicions which it was not easy for him to repel." The reader[1]
will not fail to carefully note these reflections, by a bosom friend of Dr. Coke's and a Conference partisan, as their application will be seen often in the progress of this History. It is applied by Drew particularly to his alleged dominating influence in the preparation of the Deed of Declaration. Before it shall pass in thorough review as it came before the Conference, a few things need mention.
In his eighty-first year Wesley mellowed and ripened for his saintly garnerage. Nothing could be sweeter than his tender consideration for the children who thronged about him as he walked the streets and ministered in the chapels. The snowy locks, the freshness of his countenance, and his benignant smile won them to him, and scenes are narrated by his biographers of interviews with the children most pathetic and instructive. Guileless as a child himself, he was more than ever unsuspicious of the suggestions of those about him. In his travels he came to Otley, and preached at Bingley church, where a Sunday-school of 240 had been gathered. He remarks of it, "Who knows but that some of these schools may become nurseries for Christians?" It is his first notice of Sunday-schools. They were beginning to attract public attention. Miss Ball had such a school at High Wycombe, and Miss Cooke, a Methodist, was the first to suggest to Robert Raikes the idea of instituting a school at Gloucester, which he did June 5, 1784, and ever since his name has been associated with them as the originator. The whole town of Leeds was divided into sections where reading, writing, and religion were taught the children, and then they were conducted to their respective churches. Wesley earnestly fostered the plan.
The forty-first Conference began at Leeds, July 27, 1784. It was a gracious season as well as one of "long debate," sixteen or seventeen hundred partaking of the Lord's Supper. "August 3 our Conference concluded in much love," and Wesley adds, with unaccustomed sarcasm — "to the great disappointment of all." This is from his Journal, which gives no hint that the "long debate" was on the Deed of Declaration; but Tyerman shows from the Methodist Magazine, 1845, pp. 12, 13, that it was the subject. Wesley preached not less than eight times during these seven days. Mention has been made of the prominent features of the early deed of settlement for the chapels. At the instance of Wesley, Dr. Coke ferreted out the fact that it was imperfect in that it gave no legal definition of the term occurring in it, "Conference of the People called Methodists," as the Conference was not[2]
an incorporated body. A strong probability is established that Dr. Coke was principal in the preparation of the new deed. It is well known that Wesley had a repugnance to legal forms and was impatient of their details. Indeed, Whitehead declares that: "Neither the design of it nor the words of the several clauses are to be imputed to Mr. Wesley. So far was he from forming any design of
a deed of this kind, that I have good evidence to assert it was some time before he could be prevailed upon to comply with the proposal: and as in most cases where he followed the same guide, he soon found reason to repent. That Mr. Wesley did actually repent of signing this deed is pretty evident from the following letter which he wrote about a year afterward, and committed to a friend to deliver to the Conference at their first meeting after his decease." The "guide" referred to was undoubtedly[3]
Dr. Coke. These confident assertions of Whitehead should be taken with some allowance, but not more than the opposite as made by Coke and Moore. The letter referred to Dr. Whitehead gives, and it indicates not so much repentance for the Deed of Declaration as grave fears based upon the jealousies he saw spring up among the preachers in the year when the letter was written to the Legal Hundred. If he harbored regrets for the act it was too late to amend and he did the only thing remaining: dictate this letter, which as a voice from his grave he hoped would restrain the factions.
Whitehead gives nearly in full this famous Deed, and it is copied by Moore and also Tyerman.
It contains sixteen articles, and those interested in the text can find it in the references given. It entailed upon 100 out of 192 preachers then in the Conference all Wesley's personal authority, and legal power over the chapels for ever. It was enrolled in the High Court of Chancery, and has repeatedly been declared binding by the English courts. It is sharply criticized by Whitehead, but some of his exceptions are immaterial. Moore comes to its defense, and Coke was so severely charged with complicity as to call for an address to the societies explanatory of his connection with it. By its admirers it has been called the Magna Charta of English Methodism. Tyerman analyzes the choice of Wesley of the one hundred and shows some strangely invidious discriminations. They were made by a man eighty-one years of age, who, when the storm broke upon him from the excluded, five of whom, the two Hampsons, father and son, Joseph Pilmoor, William Eels, and John Atlay, had issued an appeal to the societies against the discriminations and were arraigned at the Conference of 1785, claimed that if mistakes had been made by him in the selections he was alone responsible, and they must be attributed, not to his will, but to his judgment. It resulted in the loss of these five, and some thirty others of the excluded sooner or later withdrew. It was the first evil effect of entailed Paternalism. Tyerman says: "It was a deed investing a hundred Methodist preachers with the unexampled power of determining, irrespective of trustees, societies, and congregations, who shall be the official ministers in the thousands of chapels occupied by Methodist societies at home and abroad, throughout the United Kingdom, and throughout the world. We purposely refrain from raising the question about the kind of church government involved in this great settlement." In common, however, with the annalists having Conference bias, he concedes that without this deed,
"the Methodist itinerancy must have ceased, and Methodism itself have been broken up into congregational churches." His final word is: "The reader must form his own opinion. Comment would be easy, but we purposely refrain." [4]
The writer would improve the opportunity thus suggested and offers as facts in bar of this concession two objections: first, that the whole history of Methodism as a missionary organization shows that it had its itinerant feature conserved more by the laity than by the ministry. The Deed made it imperative that no preacher should be continued in any circuit or station longer than three years. Yet Watson, one of the most prominent of the Conference preachers and writers, a little later, in his biography of Wesley, makes his only exception to the Deed against this provision. Both in[5]
England and America this "restrictive rule" as it came to be known, has met in the vast preponderance of cases its most persistent opponents not from the churches but from the preachers.
The Birstal chapel case already noted turned largely on the action of the trustees reserving to themselves not so much the power to continue beyond the restricted time a pastor, but the right to change at their own option, as often as deemed expedient. If, as already suggested, one hundred laymen had been added to the one hundred preachers as a body corporate, a conservative element would have been introduced insuring the itinerant plan and the unity of the societies Coke had proposed; Tyerman declares that the whole body of the preachers should have been incorporated, a plan he endorses, and this would have saved the Conference from much damaging agitation, discontent, and secession; but Wesley says he thought first of committing the matter to a dozen of the preachers, and appears to have fallen upon the hundred plan as a compromise, giving no better reason for it than the expense of assembling all the Conference annually and their absence from the fields of labor, as he sets forth in his "Thoughts upon some Late Occurrences," published in vindication of his action in the spring of 1785. He also felicitates himself on it as "such a foundation as is likely to stand as long as the sun and moon endure." The second and more serious objection[6]
to the Deed of Declaration is its entailment of Paternalism as a system of government in the kingdom of God. Almost anything maybe allowed Wesley during his life-tenure of absolute rule, and investment in himself of property. If not the wisest procedure that might have been adopted, for the nonce it was the most efficient, and the purity of his personal character was a guard against abuse.
But the Deed, in its sixteen articles, is a curious melange. It provides for the act of the majority being the act of the whole, provided not less than forty are present; and of the election by the one hundred of a President annually. The first business is the filling of vacancies out of the members of the Conference by this close corporation of the Legal Hundred. It was a wide modification of his views of the successorship when he purposed that Fletcher should wear his mantle. It recognized suffrage at least within the hundred, while it secured Paternalism in their choice of a personal head. It is futile, however, to consider all that can be said for and against it provisions. It has the virtue, if such it can be called, of securing a self-perpetuating machine with unlimited powers, with its foundation in property. It has the vice as an active principle of securing directly or indirectly the destruction of Methodist English unity, the very thing which its Founder was most anxious to avoid. One admission must be made: this and other mischievous resultants, if foreseen by others, could not have been by Wesley, as he was not making provision for a Church. The marvel cannot be suppressed that, if he studied New Testament precedents, he adopted not one of them. Their use did not come within his purview. Here let the question rest until in the sequel of this sketchy history of English Methodism the evidence shall develop, as heretofore promised, that this entailed Paternalism sowed the seeds and brought forth the fruit of constantly recurring agitation and disaffection within the Wesleyan Conference, with repeated divisions in the United Societies — now a misnomer by the excision of Reformers under the ninth article of the Deed: "That the Conference may and shall expel any member thereof, or any person admitted into connection therewith, for any cause which to the Conference may seem necessary."
1784 was, indeed, a "climacteric year for Methodism," — a phrase originating with Whitehead, and not with Southey, as Stevens seems to intimate, — not for the Deed of Declaration only, but for the ordinations of Coke, Whatcoat, and Vasey for America. Its exhaustive presentation would be proper at this period, and this is the method of Stevens and others; but as it necessarily recurs in association with the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church at the Christmas Conference of 1784, and as much additional light was thrown upon these ordinations by Alexander McCaine during the Reform controversy of 1824-30, reinforced since then by other discovered facts and
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 not understand at all. In this emergency he thought of Coke, who largely shared his confidence.[7]
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