History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

Reformation sustained to Romanism, while Protestantism sustains the same relation to doctrinal
Romanism as Methodist Protestantism sustains to ecclesiastical Methodism. And the continued
numerical inferiority of the one has its parallel in the continued numerical inferiority of the other.
So that those who maintain the rightfulness of hierarchal Methodism on the score of its continued
material and numerical superiority, must also maintain the rightfulness of hierarchal Romanism on
the same score. There is no escape from the logical dilemma. D'Aubigne further affirms that "the
Protestant Reformation was accomplished in the name of a spiritual principle." Methodist
Reformation was accomplished in the name of an ecclesiastical principle. This principle is traced
through the Methodisms of the world in these pages. Besides the bird's-eye view thus furnished, the
method followed enables the writer to accomplish the double purpose of claiming for the Methodist
Protestant Church all that is heroic in Wesleyan development as common property — its doctrinal
teaching and means of grace — and of demonstrating that ecclesiastical paternalism is responsible
for all the schism in the parent body subsequent to the Deed of Declaration as epochal of an
organized departure from New Testament precedents. This review will be necessarily sketchy and
condensed, but will be inclusive of everything material to the main purpose of disclosing the reasons
for Wesley's paternal polity as it culminated in the Deed of Declaration; its destruction of English
Methodist unity; the steady assertion of more scriptural and liberal principles by the English
Reformers and their repeated excision by the Conference having its empire in property; the organized
protest of the secedent bodies and their reflex influence in modifying exclusive ministerial rule until
it is well established that full lay participation in governmental methods is a certain futurity of
English Methodism. [2]
The purview of this History suggests the same general course in the treatment of North American
Methodism. Every great movement has its causative force, and the verdict of impartial history will
be that, on the human side of it, Francis Asbury was that causative force in the Methodist Societies
of this country. A born leader of men with a genius for control not inferior to John Wesley himself,
he found on this side of the Atlantic a sphere for the exercise of his rule-loving propensities — a
dominating passion which knew no subordination, except to his higher consecration to the kingdom
[3]
of God and the salvation of souls. By native predilection and educational direction he was a
monarchist in the State and a hierarchist in the Church. He cherished these views with a good
conscience, and his selected readings, as we learn from his Journal, were all to the end of confirming
him in his convictions. Evidently he made John Wesley his model. To be to American Methodism
what he was to English Methodism was the goal of his life. Paternalism found its personification in
him. It goes for the saying that no man comes to its successful and continuous exercise who has not
large qualifications for it. The infant Society in America found in him a master spirit. His devotion
and spirituality and love for souls were seen and read of all men and his striking personality asserted
itself among his lay preacher peers almost without visible effort. He grew into their affections and
confidence and that of the Society, and he ruled them by large consent irresponsibly; there being no
one his equal in practical wisdom, in strategic ability, in arduous labors and single-eyed consecration.
Nicholas Snethen, the ministerial father of Lay Representation for American Methodism, has aptly
said of this juncture: "Though nothing, or next to nothing, was attempted in the way of instruction,
so as to make the elder preachers the teachers of the younger ones; yet no preacher of any grade or
station was ever left a day without a superior. The principles and germs of a hierarchy were thus
[4]
incorporated in the very foundation of our primitive existence." This hierarchy was a marvelous
development. Under the inspiration of Asbury it grew with the growth of the American colonies in