THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW

FOR AUGUST, 1839.

Art. I. Modern Protestant Church Courts Unmasked. Providence : John E. Brown; New York: John S. Taylor.

WE

E have received a small volume thus entitled, which has recently been issued in the United States of America; and as may be inferred from its title, it is a decided opponent of all ecclesiastical tyranny, whether exercised at Rome, or in the mimic usurpations of transatlantic church-courts. It is a survey of the spirit, character, operations, and tendency of those daughters of Mother Babylon' which American Protestants have nursed, until they find that they have cherished a serpent to torture with its fangs, and to taint them with its poison. Although concise in its details, the book discloses some complex traits of American affairs, which we shall endeavour briefly to illustrate.

Mr. Colton, during his four years' residence in Britain, and Messrs. Reed, Matheson, Cox, and Hoby, have supplied many details and statistical facts concerning the American churches; but they have not conducted us into those recesses where the interior management is discoverable. Active and diligent as were the British Delegates, their intercourse was necessarily restricted; so that the true character of the churches in America, their organization, government, collisions, actual condition, and future relations, are very partially estimated, and the exciting controversies, with their momentous consequences, which have long agitated the religious community of that country have not as yet been adequately explained to us.

The citizens of America are a motley people, gathered from nearly every European country; but the large majority of them are of British extraction. The multitudes perpetually resorting to the United States, from Europe, necessarily modify the charac

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ter and relations of society. This remark applies chiefly to the States south of New England; because few foreigners except merchants, settle in that section of the republic; and, therefore, the commonwealths of the Puritan Pilgrims retain to the present hour many of their pristine attributes and steady habits,' as stamped by their Christian founders.

New England is emphatically the land of enterprise, freedom, education, and good morals. It has not, indeed, wholly escaped the withering blasts of Modern Infidelity, with the irreligion, errors, dissoluteness, and 'love of the world,' which have desolated so many countries within the last half century; but in all the grand lineaments of humanity, it stands a light-house to the nations, teaching them, that no other men are qualified for municipal self-government but such as are swayed by the dictates of revealed truth, and who combine ample knowledge with salutary decorum.

The general character of the Americans has doubtless been powerfully affected by the New England influence-and to the Puritans must be awarded the honour of having, by their religious principles, hindered the establishment of a state church, with a compound aristocracy of domineering prelates and hereditary civil dignitaries. The separation of those States from Britain could scarcely have been effected, or would have been attended with much greater difficulty, had such an oligarchy existed. The unquenchable spirit of conscientious insubordination to religious despotism, which originally impelled the Puritan Pilgrims to migrate, is the grand main-spring of all public movements in America. Occasionally it may appear to be dormant, or it may partially be diverted from its legitimate course, or it may be cajoled to expend its energies in defence of a bad and pernicious cause, or for a season it may be counteracted; but all is vain-there it remains, solid as their boasted granite; lasting as the tempest-beaten rock of Plymouth; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.'

During British supremacy, questions respecting church-government and the power of ecclesiastical judicature, to use the pompous phraseology of the American Rabbes, seem not to have occurred. In New England that anti-christian machinery was unknown. The Reformed Dutch churches being nominally combined with their brethren in Holland, were as little subject to that jurisdiction as the Congregationalists. The Episcopalians were part of the diocess of London, and that supervision being nominal only, they were like the Israelites of old, every man did that which was right in his own eyes.' The Baptists have always strenuously adhered to the principles of Roger Williams, who was religious and civil liberty personified. The Presbyterians left their hierarchical assumptions in Scotland, and freely

united with Congregationalists; so that little or none of the authority which Church Courts' now claim was arrogated by their Presbyteries or Synods. In that state the Christian denominations remained, until the war of 1775 to 1782 nearly severed the brittle ties which had previously united them.

After the peace of 1783, the surviving ministers and lay officers of the confederated churches recommenced their ancient systems. Little comparative interruption had occurred in New England, because, after the evacuation of Boston, excepting a few attacks upon insulated points, the actual conflict was removed from that region. Successively the various denominations became organized as at present; and an instructive lesson they give us, respecting the prodigious evils which flow out of a departure from the evangelical standard and simplicity.

The review of ecclesiastical affairs in America which we now propose, will principally advert to those large combined bodies submitting to an aristocratical government, which in many respects includes the evils of that lordship over God's heritage that mark our own Spiritual Courts.

The admonition of the apostle Paul addressed unto the churches of Galatia-Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath 'made you free '-is neither so accurately comprehended, nor so highly prized by transatlantic Christians generally as by British Nonconformists. That overwhelming conviction of human responsibility which characterized the early Puritans, and the "burning and shining lights' of the seventeenth century, is but a partially operative principle among the members of the American churches, who seem disposed to transfer their moral accountability to their ecclesiastical officers and Church Courts.'

There has been a tendency to sectarian concentration among ourselves, but its mischiefs were averted by a wakeful solicitude, that the executive should not possess more authority than that which the apostle implies in his instructive and delightful phrase, 'the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.' The hallowed intercommunion thus defined has recently been transmuted among the two most influential denominations of our American brethren into Ishmaelitish alienation.

From a variety of causes it happens that the extensive and numerous ecclesiastical confederacies in the United States, indirectly exercise a powerful influence over the religious character and the secular condition of that country. The principal combinations are those of the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the Episcopalians; and to these our remarks will be restricted. We shall not advert, except incidentally, to the truth of their respective creeds, or to the consistency of their church government and discipline, with the Scripture rule; our design being to present a

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narrative of facts, whereby the actual state of things among our brethren may be learnt.

I. METHODISTS. The first disciples of John Wesley appeared in the American colonies in 1766, a few years prior to the revolution. Their royalist prepossessions which were strong, and almost universal, greatly impeded their progress during the commotion; and several of the preachers were obliged to return to Europe to avoid the dangers to which their avowed principles exposed them. Mr. Asbury, however, withstood the storm, and surmounted all opposition.

After the capture of Cornwallis, when the war on the land was terminated, and a feeling of security and peacefulness returned, religious exercises became more regular, and the efforts to extend divine truth were more active and uniform. Many local preachers appeared in the scattered Methodist societies, and a correspondence with Mr. Wesley was opened in reference to the general interests of Methodism in the United States. The members had continued to receive the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper from Episcopalian ministers, where those persons were resident; but during the war they had nearly all disappeared. In this condition of affairs Mr. Asbury represented to Mr. Wesley the urgent necessity of devising some means to supply the deficiency, and to organize the societies into a separate confederacy of disciples.

John Wesley instantly resolved to enact a system for America, which he could not have organized in Britain. He decided for a prelatical oligarchy, as the corner-stone of the Methodist community in the United States-commingling ecclesiastical power entirely independent of the people, a clerical aristocracy amenable only to their own order, and a gradation of dignitaries assimilated to the English state church. There are deacons and priests; archdeacons under the name of presiding elders; and bishops like our diocesan prelates, only without the throne and mitre, and that they travel, and preach, and labour; and are not clothed in 'a goodly Babylonish garment.'

To effect this scheme, Mr. Wesley abridged the thirty-nine articles of our Establishment to twenty-five. He also adapted the liturgy to his own taste, and arranged a plan for the conferences, and all their temporal and spiritual economy. When all these preliminaries were executed, he selected Thomas Coke, a priest of the Church of England, as his substitute, to execute the whole scheme; and consecrated' him First Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. He also appointed Francis Asbury his colleague; and having commissioned two other priests for his new hierarchy, despatched Mr. Coke and them to ordain Mr. Asbury as deacon, elder, and bishop for

America, with a commission to ordain as priests and deacons all the local preachers whom they might deem it proper to admit as members of the first General Conference, which they were directed by Mr. Wesley instantly to assemble. Thus John Wesley laying his hands on the head of Thomas Coke, said, 'Receive 'thou the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a bishop, com'mitted unto thee by the imposition of my hands.' Whether John Wesley, Thomas Coke, and Francis Asbury, with their existing prelatical successors, believed that they bestowed and received the Holy Ghost for the discharge of their official functions is a topic of grave consideration, the decision of which cannot be determined by us, who are not initiated into the mysteries of consecration according to the Corpus Juris Canonici.

The first general conference of the Methodists was held at Baltimore in 1784, after the Wesleyan model. Those assemblies were perfect conclaves, composed only of preachers. No person knew their proceedings, except by their printed Minutes. All the houses of worship and other property, by their formal deed of trust, were actually vested in the Conferences, so that a more irresponsible power and a more abject dependence could not exist consistently with the lowest grade of Protestantism; but their deficiency in numbers and wealth then rendered these Assemblies mild and conciliating. As their societies and the opulence of their disciples increased, the Conferences gradually assumed more power, and became more haughty and lordly in their claims and acts. For some years a growing dissatisfaction was felt, although it did not assume a distinct form and an audible voice. But in 1824, a decisive restlessness was apparent. Circumstances of an exciting character produced a solicitude to hear the discussions of the General Conference, which that year assembled in Baltimore. After considerable agitation, lay members of the church were admitted to listen to their debates. Several instances of glaring clerical oppression occurred about this period; and it was consequently resolved to obtain, if possible, indemnity for past despotic grievances, and security against future encroach

ments.

A proposition was therefore made to reform the constitution of the Methodist church by the admission of lay officers to the Conferences. This attempt was followed by a long and general warfare among the American Methodists, which was terminated in the usual manner. The conclaves issued their anathemas against the schismatical rebels, who would not bow down to their jure divino authority; which fulminations were despised and ridiculed; and a secession was formed under the name of the Protestant Methodist Church, without prelates. They have been gradually and constantly extending their influence and enlarging their