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Church. Baptists were more rigid still, as they could fellowship none unless they had been baptized by immersion. To neither of these conditions could Methodists submit. Besides, by these denominations, they were regarded as shocking heretics, on account of their opposition to the Calvinistic doctrine of decrees and the final perseverance of the saints.

What shall the Methodists of America now do? We have seen their condition at the proclamation of peace. One more Conference-session brings them down to May, 1784; and adding the results of the year, they have about fifteen thousand members, and forty-six circuits served by eighty-four itinerant preachers. Prepared as they are for great achievements, it is clear they cannot go much farther without completing their ecclesiastical organization. God has bestowed on them all the gifts and graces necessary for the work of salvation; man would withhold from them the authority of its formal signs and seals. They have refrained from exercising that right which "the exigence of necessity,"as interpreted by stringent exponents of ecclesiastical polity, would allow; all in deference to regular order and to the preservation of unity-waiting, as they were encouraged to do, for some provision to be made that would compass both. Political events, which none could foresee, have now been determined; the crisis is upon them; they cannot wait longer. They have been standing on a question of expediency, not of right; of regularity, not of validity. The most able and venerable of their itinerants may not, on account of a restraint they hold themselves under, baptize a child or any one of the hundreds of their converts; may not give the simple emblems of the atonement to the thousands of souls they daily feed with the bread of life. The pure word of God is preached, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; but no sacraments are administered, because the Bishop of London refuses to lay his hands on somebody's head! Must these fourscore pastors and fifteen thousand Christians wait indefinitely? Or must they disband? Surely Christian fetichism could not ask so much.

"Dispassionately looked at," says Isaac Taylor, "Wesleyan Methodism did not so much violate as it rendered an homage to the principle of Church order; for if it broke in upon things constituted with a violence that threatened to overthrow whatever might obstruct its course, it presently emerged from its own

confusion, and stood forth as a finished pattern of organization, and an eminent example of the prevalence and supremacy of rules. The enlightened adherents of ecclesiastical institutions might well persuade themselves to see in Methodism not, as they are wont, a horrible Vandalism, but the most emphatic recognition that has ever been made of the very core of Church principles, namely, that Christianity cannot subsist, does not develop its genuine powers (longer than for a moment), apart from an ecclesiastical organization.”

This "homage to the principle of Church order," having been rendered, is destined soon to be repaid. What has been waited for and prepared for will, in a regular, primitive, and scriptural way, be obtained without any breach of unity, real or apparent; without any possible concession to a hierarchical heresy which had all along been disavowed; and at the same time showing that due respect to the principle of the ministerial transmission of Christian ordinances which was to guard Methodism in the future against the evils of radicalism and confusion. Wesley, long since satisfied of his right and power, as a Presbyter, to ordain preachers for the American Methodists, had hesitated to exercise that authority on the ground of expediency. Now he can say: "By a very uncommon train of providences, many of the provinces of North America are totally disjoined from the British Empire, and erected into independent States. The English Government has no authority over them, either civil or ecclesiastical." "No one either exercises or claims any ecclesiastical authority at all." And reciting the necessities of the situation, he concludes: "Here, therefore, my scruples are at an end; and I conceive myself at full liberty, as I violate no order and invade no man's right, by appointing and sending laborers into the harvest."

Let us return to the Old World, and bring up a chapter of history from that side.

CHAPTER XXV.

Primitive Church Government-Philanthropy-The Sum of all Villainies-Book Reviews on Horseback-West India Missions Planted-Christian PerfectionA Scheme of Absorption-The Calvinistic Controversy-Fletcher's ChecksDeed of Declaration-John Fletcher-Thomas Coke-Ordinations for America.

OHN WESLEY did much of his reading on horseback, when young, and in his carriage when old. Thus reading, he criticised and digested more books, in history, philosophy, and poetry, than most men get through with in the quiet of a library. Traveling five thousand miles a year, he could not afford to lose the time on the road. Leaving London for Bristol early in 1746, he read a book that had an effect upon his opinions and his life. Lord King was the nephew of the celebrated Locke, who left him a portion of his library. At the age of twenty-two (1691), he published "An Inquiry into the Constitution, Discipline, Unity, and Worship of the Primitive Church, that flourished three hundred years after Christ; faithfully collected out of the extant writings of those ages." He rose to be Lord High Chancellor of England, and died in 1734, in reputation for learning, virtue, and humanity. This book was Wesley's companion on his way to Bristol, and after reading it he wrote: "In spite of the vehement prejudice of my education, I was ready to believe that this was a fair and impartial draught; but if so, it would follow that bishops and presbyters are essentially of one order, and that originally every Christian congregation was a Church independent of all others."

Stillingfleet's "Irenicum," King's "Primitive Church," and enlargement by observation and reflection-as he associated continually with men who by every token had been "moved of the Holy Ghost to preach," and therefore were in the highest sense God's ministers and embassadors caused Wesley's opinions to undergo a change. The Conference of 1747 reveals this: The conversation one day proceeded to show, from the term "church" in the New Testament, that a national Church is "a merely political institution;" that the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons generally obtained in the early ages of the Church; but

that uniformity of Church government is not taught in Holy Scripture, and was never attempted till the time of Constantine. One question, with its answer, expresses Wesley's opinion, and that of his coadjutors, on a subject that was coming forward:

"Question: In what age was the divine right of episcopacy first asserted in England? Answer: About the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Till then all bishops and clergy in England continually allowed, and joined in, the ministrations of those who were not episcopally ordained."

In July, 1756, Wesley wrote: "I still believe the episcopal form of Church government to be scriptural and apostolical. I mean, well agreeing with the practice and writings of the apostles. But that it is prescribed in Scripture, I do not believe. This opinion, which I once zealously espoused, I have been heartily ashamed of, ever since I read Bishop Stillingfleet's 'Irenicon.' I think he has unanswerably proved that neither Christ nor his apostles prescribe any particular form of Church government, and that the plea of divine right for diocesan episcopacy was never heard of in the primitive Church." He preferred the Church of England, not because he thought it the only Church, but because, upon the whole, he thought it the best. The charm of apostolic succession is dispelled, so soon as he gets that venerable Romish fetich in position to be looked at through a dry light, and to be investigated as other subjects are investigated. Indeed, in reference to this, Wesley wrote (in 1761): "I never could see it proved; and I am persuaded I never shall." And later still was his well-known and oft-quoted utterance: "I firmly believe I am a scriptural episcopos, as much as any man in England, or in Europe. For the uninterrupted succession I know to be a fable, which no man ever did or can prove."

As a presbyter in authority, or a providential bishop, he employed preachers, and set them apart to the sacred office. It is true that it was several years before he began to use the imposition of hands; but that was a mere circumstance, not the essence of ministerial ordination. Richard Watson observes:

It has been generally supposed that Mr. Wesley did not consider his appointment of preachers without imposition of hands as an ordination to the ministry, but only as an irregular employment of laymen in the spiritual office of merely expounding the Scriptures in a case of moral necessity. This is not correct. They were not appointed to expound or preach merely, but were solemnly set apart to the pastoral office, as the Minutes of the Conferences show; nor were they regarded

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by him as laymen, except when in common parlance they were distinguished from the clergy of the Church; in which case he would have called any Dissenting minister a layman. The Minutes sufficiently show that as to the Church of Christ at large, and as to his own Societies, he regarded the preachers, when fully devoted to the work, not as laymen, but as spiritual men, and ministers; men, as he says, "moved by the Holy Ghost" to preach the gospel, and who after trial were ordained to that and other branches of the pastoral office.

Wesley was a philanthropist. Whatever concerned humanity's welfare, body or soul, concerned him; and his strongest language is called forth by cruelty and oppression. Here is another of his book reviews along the road: "I read a very different book, published by an honest Quaker, on that execrable sum of all villainies, commonly called the Slave Trade. I read of nothing like it in the heathen world, whether ancient or modern; and it infinitely exceeds, in every instance of barbarity, whatever Christian slaves suffer in Mohammedan countries." Here are sentiments in advance of his time; for it was not until fifteen years after this that the "Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade" was founded. One of the counts in the original indictment drawn by the Colonies, prefacing their Declaration of Independence, was that the English Government, headed by the king, persisted in this trade with all its iniquities, to the disgust and detriment of the American people; and the new Republic prohibited it, under the severest penalties. Wilberforce was coming forward into public life, and, pursuing the line of Wesley's protest, was to earn a place in Westminister Abbey. The visitor of to-day, walking through the aisles of that mausoleum of kings and statesmen and other great ones, may read an inscription on his tombstone ascribing to him the honor of saving his country from "the guilt and shame of the African slave trade."*

Another book review on horseback shows that Wesley's sympathies were not confined to any race or color: "I read Mr. Bolt's account of the affairs in the East Indies-I suppose much the best that is extant. But what a scene is here opened! What consummate villains, what devils incarnate, were the managers there! What utter strangers to justice, mercy, and truth-to every sentiment of humanity! I believe no heathen history contains a parallel.

*The book which Wesley read is supposed to have been one written by Anthony Benezet (1762), a French Protestant, who, after being educated in England, became a Quaker in Philadelphia, and was Whitefield's host when there.